Bernie Sanders Exits 2020 Race, Extinguishing Hopes Of Change In A Time Of Crisis

Senator Bernie Sanders, I- Vt., announced in an email to his supporters Wednesday that he was suspending his campaign for the Democratic presidential ticket. “The campaign ends, the struggle continues,” Sanders said in the email.

With this move, the path is clear for former Vice President Joe Biden to claim the Democratic ticket and take on President Trump in the November elections.

Sanders later tweeted: "Today I am suspending my campaign. But while the campaign ends, the struggle for justice continues on."

Sanders became the first candidate in Democratic primary history to win the first three contests and seemed poised to take a commanding lead with a plurality of the field just before the campaigns of Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., and former South Bend, Indiana, mayor Pete Buttigieg suspended right before Super Tuesday (March 2).

Sanders led in the early Super Tuesday vote, but Biden made a dramatic U-turn with some blowout victories, thanks to same day Super Tuesday voting. Biden followed that up with more big wins, wresting states that Sanders had won in 2016.

Sanders leaves an indelible mark on the Democratic Party, as he shifted the conversation to the left and made ambitious left-wing policies like Medicare-for-All and the Green New Deal popular with large majorities of Democratic voters.

Biden acknowledged that contribution Wednesday in a series of tweets: "To Bernie and Jane, as friends, from Jill and me: You haven’t just run a political campaign; you’ve created a movement. And make no mistake about it, we believe it’s a movement that is as powerful today as it was yesterday. That’s a good thing for our nation and our future."

Despite the popularity of Sanders' programs and the hope that they would reform America's wildly expensive and inefficient health care system and provide a serious plan to combat climate change, Democratic voters overwhelmingly backed Biden as the primaries progressed.

Sanders fell behind the race as he failed to grow his coalition of young, liberal and first-time voters. In some states -- Michigan, Oklahoma, Minnesota, Idaho and Maine -- he polled lower than his 2016 numbers, while Biden's strong linkages to the African-American community helped him execute the dramatic turnaround.

Biden's claiming of the front-runner status had calmed establishment Democrats who worried that Sanders was taking the party too far left and would scare away donors and voters.

But the former vice president is already falling behind Trump in popular perception, with 36% respondents in a Politico / Morning Consult poll saying they believed Biden would have organized a better response to the current coronavirus crisis than Trump. By comparison, 44% said that they thought the president is doing a better job than Biden would in his place.