Sanders says it’s Clinton’s job to woo his supporters

The responsibility for reuniting the Democrats after a contentious race for the party’s nomination lays squarely at the feet of the winning candidate, according to candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

The Huffington Post reported Sunday morning that Sanders, speaking on “Meet The Press”, argued that healing the rift between his disaffected supporters and those of the party’s mainstream choice Hillary Clinton was the responsibility of the winning presidential nominee.

Sanders said:

Well, the responsibility that I accept in a very, very serious way is to do everything that I can to make sure that Donald Trump will not become elected president of the United States. Donald Trump, for a dozen different reasons, would be a disaster as president. I will do everything that I can to make sure that does not happen.

But at the end of the day, whether it’s Secretary Clinton or Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump, anybody else, the way you gain support is through the candidate himself or herself. So my job is to make sure that Trump does not become president. And I will do that. But if Secretary Clinton is the nominee, it is her job to reach out to millions of people and make the case as to why she is going to defend working families and the middle [class], provide health care for all people, take on Wall Street, deal aggressively with climate change. That is the candidate’s job to do.

Sanders was responding to host Chuck Todd’s comments that Clinton made the previous week on the show, saying Sanders was responsible for getting his supporters top swing their support to her.