While Bernie Sanders narrowly lost the Missouri presidential Democratic primary in 2016, he lost nearly two-to-one to Joe Biden in the Tuesday, March 10 Presidential Preference Primary in Missouri.
“He’s licking his wounds, and supporters like myself are too,” said state Rep. Rasheen Aldridge (D-St. Louis), who stumped for Sanders at the packed March 9 rally at Stifel Theatre. “He wasn’t expecting such a blowout, but it’s not over yet. His supporters in the other states must continue to get up and talk to as many people as possible.”
According to unofficial election results, Biden won decisively with 396,826 votes (60 percent). Sanders had 228,244 votes (35 percent).
On Tuesday, Sanders also lost to Biden in the crucial Michigan primary, as well as in Idaho and Mississippi, but won in North Dakota. Washington state was too close to call at press time, but Sanders was leading.
On Wednesday, March 11, Sanders said his primary focus is defeating President Trump, who he called a “pathological liar” and “racist.” In exit polls, voters overwhelmingly agree with Sanders’ policies for addressing wealth, education and healthcare inequities, he said.
“But we are losing the debate over electability,” he said.
Sanders said he looks forward to the Sunday Democratic debate, where he’ll ask Biden what he is going to do about the 500,000 people who have gone bankrupt from medical-related debt and about the fact that the United States is the only major country where healthcare is not a human right.
Aldridge said it’s important that the Democratic nominee selection not come down to a “brokered convention,” at the Democratic National Convention in July. The race isn’t over, Aldridge said, and Sanders still has a good chance. But if Sanders concedes, then Aldridge said he will rally behind Biden.
“We need to be as unified as can be to beat Trump,” Aldridge said. “If the superdelegates all go one way, it continues to divide us more. Then one side thinks it’s rigged.”
St. Louis Treasurer Tishaura O. Jones, who was originally a strong supporter of Elizabeth Warren and then stumped for Sanders on Monday, said Democrats need to keep their eyes on the prize.
“It’s unfortunate that the election is swinging away from Sen. Sanders, but we have to stay focused on beating Trump in November,” Jones said, “and we have to do that by any means necessary.”
Sanders’ black supporters in St. Louis cited a number of reasons they voted for him.
The state of healthcare — especially for children — is heartbreaking, said an African-American female pediatrician who wants to be identified as L.A. for this article. For this reason, she voted for Sanders.
“It’s high time we’ve had healthcare for everyone,” said L.A. “I’m tired of seeing children not getting treatments or having to jump through hoops to get treatment that they need.”
L.A. attended the Conversation of Color event held by the Sanders campaign on Sunday, March 8. While other Democratic candidates have talked about a “public health option,” she said that doesn’t go far enough.
“A public option was where we should have been over a decade ago, and now we’re at the point of crisis from a healthcare standpoint,” she said.
L.A. explained that if she has really sick children who need a specific kind of medicine or treatment, the insurance companies won’t approve them until she has exhausted all other cheaper treatments. The time it takes to try other options could be a detriment to the child’s health. For hospital stays, the insurance companies want the children to go home soon after procedures. And as Medicaid gets less and less funding, the children get less and less care, she said.
“It’s not something people think about because they might not have experienced it,” she said. “It’s basically every day of our work.”
Dante Foster is a 27-year-old postal worker. Medicine is a big financial burden for her mother, who is a diabetic.
“His main thing with Medicare For All,” Foster said. “I believe healthcare is a human right, and us being the only [industrialized] country not having it, it’s like saying we don’t have the right to live.”
At the March 9 rally in St. Louis, Sanders came out quoting Nelson Mandela, saying, “‘Everything seems impossible until it is done.’ And what happens is human beings end accepting the status quo unnecessarily. We are told by Congress what our options are. We are told by the media what our options are. And sometimes we forget to take a hard look at what goes on around us and where we want to go as a nation and as a people.”
Sanders spoke about his policy proposals: the Green New Deal to address climate change; Medicare for All; College for All; Housing For All; expanding Social Security; expanding background checks for gun owners and other programs.
Art Johnson is a 21-year-old education major at University of Missouri—St. Louis, who voted in a presidential primary for the first time.
“We have an opportunity for a progressive to move forward,” Johnson said. “With the results of Super Tuesday, there’s more of a sense of urgency and also with all the chaos that Trump has caused.”
Sanders’ national surrogate Cori Bush got the crowd roaring before Sanders came out on stage at the Stifel Theatre.
“In 2015, he was saying ‘Black Lives Matter’ when other people were calling us ‘terrorists’ and other candidates were saying ‘All Lives Matter,” said Bush, who is a nurse and Ferguson activist challenging U.S. Rep. Wm. Lacy Clay in August.
At the Conversation of Color, Bush said that she’s felt “invisible” as a dark-skinned black woman throughout her life, no matter what she did.
“I think about the work that we did in Ferguson, as much as we tried to do to get our voices, not much happened until other people joined,” Bush said.
It wasn’t until the Latinx, white, Palestinian and other communities stepped in that Ferguson became a powerful movement, she said, and that unity and strength in building community is exactly what she sees in the Sanders campaign.
“We only have today and tomorrow to make history,” Bush said, urging people to volunteer. “This is our moment, and we’ve got to take it. I know you may be tired, but let me tell you how tired you’ll be when you have the wrong person in office for another four years.”
