Bernie Sanders says Hillary Clinton has to earn his supporters' votes herself
The candidates will face off in five Tuesday primaries
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Your support makes all the difference.Bernie Sanders said he is not likely to encourage his supporters to vote for Hillary Clinton in the likely event that she becomes the Democratic presidential nominee.
Speaking at a MSNBC town hall in Philadelphia, Mr Sanders said that it is up to the former Secretary of State to win over voters who supported him.
“We’re not a movement where I can snap my fingers and say to you or to anybody else what you should do, that you should all listen to me,” Mr Sanders told the audience member, who is also a supporter of the Vermont senator. “You shouldn’t. You make these decisions yourself.”
He then pivoted to Ms Clinton: “And if Secretary Clinton wins, it is incumbent upon her to tell millions of people who right now do not believe in establishment politics or establishment economics, who have serious misgivings about a candidate who has received millions of dollars from Wall Street and other special interests.”
“She has to go out to you.”
In a separate town hall, Ms Clinton said she hopes to see support from Mr Sanders should he drop out of the race – although she stopped short of calling on him to do so.
“Certainly we share a lot of the same goals,” she told Rachel Maddow. “I think we have much more in common and I want to unify the party.” And to do so, Ms Clinton hopes Mr Sanders takes after her following her 2008 loss to then-Senator Barack Obama.
“I did not put down condition. I did not say, you know what, if Senator Obama does X, Y, and Z, I will support [him],” she said. “I spent an enormous amount of time convincing my supporters to support Senator Obama.”
“I hope that we will see the same this year.”
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