Last year when I was praying you would run, you were asked if you would consider running as an Independent. You replied by saying,
“If it happens that I do not win that process, would I run outside of the system?” Sanders said in the interview broadcast by C-SPAN. “No, I made the promise that I would not and I will keep that promise. And the reason for that is I do not want to be responsible for electing some right-wing Republican to be president of the United States.”
I was so proud of you. You knew what was at stake. You had spoken out about right wing extremism and knew what we were up against.
“No matter what I do, I will not be a spoiler,” Sanders said. “I will not play that role in helping to elect some right-wing Republican as President of the United States.”
It has been months since you said those words. It feels even longer. It has been a long, exhausting, primary for everyone. All our nerve endings are a little raw and exposed. So forgive me please for saying this for I do not mean to add to that, but Bernie, you are now “helping” the right wing.
Donald Trump thanked you for that today.
"He's been tough on her. In fact, I'd like him to keep going because the longer he goes the more I'm going to like it," Trump told thousands of supporters during a campaign rally here in Harrisburg.
Trump lauded Sanders for keeping pressure on Clinton and particularly singled out Sanders’s comments attacking Clinton’s judgment. He also credited Sanders with being the first to question Clinton's qualifications for office.
"So Bernie Sanders, not me, said she is not qualified. So now I’m going to say, 'She’s not qualified.' OK?" Trump said.
I know that getting praise from Trump is not your intent. Helping the extremism that is today’s Republican Party is not your goal. But that is what is happening and can not be ignored. Your actions are doing damage to, whether any of us like it or not, the Democratic Party, the only fire wall we have against the Republicans taking the White House and the Supreme Court, the court upon which our goals will rise or fall.
Down ticket races are being threatened by your broad brush labeling of Democrats as members of a corrupt establishment as well. Some of your supporters are saying they won’t even vote for Russ Feingold because he supports Hillary. Such thinking is myopic and does damage to the very goals we all support. We need Russ and more progressives in Congress and on state and local levels. What you are doing is not helping us do so.
Bernie, when Donald Trump, and he’s far from alone on the Republican side, likes what you are doing, you are doing it wrong.
In October of last year, you knew that.
In October, as they gathered at a hotel outside Las Vegas to prepare for the first Democratic debate, Mr. Sanders’s advisers urged him to challenge Mrs. Clinton over accepting $675,000 from Goldman Sachs for delivering three speeches, according to two Sanders advisers. They thought the speaking fees meshed with the senator’s message about Wall Street excess and a rigged America. But Mr. Sanders, hunched over a U-shaped conference table, rejected it as a personal attack on Mrs. Clinton’s income — the sort of character assault he has long opposed. She has the right to make money, he offered.
It’s time for a re-boot. It’s time again to be the man I so badly wanted to run, the man who promised to never go negative. I want to hear your ideas being the focus of attention again, not personal attacks or negative broad brushing of all Democrats. I want your supporters to be able to vote for your vision. No matter how this primary turns out, we need your voice, untarnished and bold. We need to come together, work together to make our shared goals real, and ensure your promise to not help put a Republican in the White House. There is far too much at stake for anything less.