Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

Bernie Sanders Booed in Congress for Not Getting Behind Hillary Clinton

(JTA) — House Democrats booed Sen. Bernie Sanders on the floor of Congress Wednesday, sending him a strong message for not quitting his presidential campaign and endorsing Hillary Clinton.

The House of Representatives session in the morning directed intense questioning at Sanders, a Vermont Independent senator, about why he has not yet endorsed Clinton and given up his run for the sake of party unity, .

Sanders defended himself against the booing to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, saying the reported situation was “a bit of an exaggeration” and the conflict stems from simple “differences of opinion.”

“We look at the world a little bit differently,” the senator said.

“What I’m trying to do and the reason I ran for president is to help transform this country, to deal with income and wealth, inequality, a declining middle class, the fact that so many of the young people leaving school deeply in debt.”

Sanders went on to praise Clinton’s policy announcement Wednesday that combined his higher-education proposals with hers and did acknowledge her as the presumptive Democratic nominee.

“A lot of members are anxious about when is he going to explicitly support Hillary,” said Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt. “And what he’s saying is that’s an ongoing process. But if we want to win, we’ve got to take the long view that we need a platform that is going to genuinely create excitement for our nominee.”

In a previous session, House Democrats pressed Sanders on when specifically he planned to get behind Clinton, prompting Sanders to declare that elections are not necessarily about winning but about transformations.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.