The Sanders wind-down begins

[BootinUp]

At his D.C. rally, there was no mention of Hillary Clinton or the Democratic convention.

By Gabriel Debenedetti

06/09/16 10:31 PM EDT

The walls are crumbling, and Bernie Sanders knows it.

Barack Obama made his support for Hillary Clinton official on Thursday. So did Vice President Joe Biden and liberal hero Sen. Elizabeth Warren. The major political groups surrounding Sanders are saying it’s time to unify.

The campaign is rapidly winding down around Sanders, the Senate gadfly-turned-unlikely revolutionary who outperformed everyone’s expectations, and he finally began to acknowledge it Thursday.

“We need real change in this country. And what people also understand is that no president, not Bernie Sanders, not anybody else, can do it alone,” he told roughly 3,000 supporters gathered near Washington’s RFK stadium on a hot evening, returning to his original stump speech about billionaires, the “corrupt campaign finance system,” and “the broken criminal justice system" without once mentioning Clinton or the Democratic Party’s convention.

“A little bit over a year ago we began this campaign. What the punditry thought is the campaign would not go very far. Well, here we are in mid-June and we’re still standing."

The signals that he now accepts the fact that he won’t be the party’s nominee were unmistakable.

Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/sanders-wind-down-224163#ixzz4BA9uetbG
Follow us: @politico on Twitter | Politico on Facebook