Donors to Bernie: Never surrender [View all]

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Sanders' wealthiest contributors don't care much about the delegate deficit. What matters to them is the senator's ability to reshape the Democratic Party agenda.

Forget about the Southern losses, the struggles with African-American voters and the big delegate deficit. Bernie Sanders’ wealthiest donors want him to continue fighting on, all the way to the July Democratic convention.

That won’t come as welcome news to the Clinton campaign and its allies, who point to the nearly insurmountable delegate lead Hillary Clinton has amassed – they’d like to begin the pivot to the general election. But the relatively small group of pro-Sanders millionaires doesn’t care. In their view, it’s crazy to concede now that the Vermont senator is beginning to string together wins in places as varied as Maine, Colorado and Oklahoma.


"What people need to understand is that Bernie started off as an unknown. As more and more people learn about him he gets more and more converts. Just look at the national graph of likely Bernie voters vs Clinton voters. Momentum is with Bernie and against Hillary. Now they are just about even. Soon Bernie will surpass Hillary," said Ben Cohen, the millionaire co-founder of Ben & Jerry's ice cream. "Clearly the mood of the country for Republicans, Democrats and Independents is anti-the-Washington establishment. That bodes well for Bernie and quite poorly for Hillary."

The wealthy Sanders supporters who have given the maximum $2,700 donation for the primary election aren’t necessarily focused on the senator’s chances of winning the nomination. Rather, like the small donors who provide 70 percent of his cash, they’re motivated by his message on economic inequality and poverty and see as playing an important role in remaking the presidential conversation – and the Democratic Party going forward.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/03/bernie-sanders-donors-220384