What the Sanders Campaign Could Learn from the Clinton Campaign in ’08

Last night, when Hillary Clinton became the first woman to be the Democratic party’s presumptive nominee for president, something odd happened, and it wasn’t that I basically wept through her victory speech and watched this video multiple times, because my stance on this isn’t exactly a mystery and also I’ve been waiting for this moment since I was five. It was that on social media, Clinton supporters—as well as Sanders supporters happy to see a woman get the nomination—who’d kept quiet, perhaps out of fear of harassment, suddenly voiced their excitement at what’s objectively a historic win for gender equality, regardless of who you were rooting for.

But there was one moment in Clinton’s speech that stuck out to me—when she said she thanked Sanders for running a strong campaign that heightened her own, and said, “Now I know it never feels good to put your heart into a cause or a candidate you believe in and to come up short—I know that feeling well.”

That little smiling chuckle says a lot, because Clinton does know that feeling well.

In 2008, she ran a campaign that was, well, a lot like Sanders’ in that it didn’t reach out to a broad coalition of voters until it was too late. Where Clinton and Sanders differ is that this time in 2008, Clinton conceded to Obama, and she did it in a race that was much closer than the one she finds herself in with Sanders.

I remember when Clinton conceded, because I was a Clinton supporter, and, as I’m sure many Sanders supporters are now, I was heartbroken. I also never questioned whether I would vote for Barack Obama and work on his campaign, and I did both of those things. Proudly. Because some things are more important than a single candidate, no matter how strongly you may believe in or identify with that person.

Clinton’s concession to Obama was graceful, but it was also absolutely necessary after the occasionally damaging campaign she’d run against him. Obama’s victory as the first African American presidential nominee was historic—any response but graceful concession and recognition of the historic moment would’ve been inappropriate. Clinton went on to campaign for Obama, to serve as his secretary of state, and, now, to be waiting in the wings to receive his endorsement as the possible next president of the United States.

This is what Bernie Sanders should be doing. Not because he didn’t run a powerful campaign. But because the jig is up. The votes are in. The history has been made. That Sanders didn’t even bother to acknowledge the historic nature of Clinton’s win in his speech last night speaks volumes about a campaign that took pains to disparage the organizations that are doing the most valuable work on behalf of women in politics and expanding access to reproductive rights, and whose supporters are now shamelessly harassing female reporters in the wake of Clinton’s victory. This, when the real enemy is—and always has been—Donald Trump. In 2008, Clinton did the hard thing and moved on from a contentious primary election. It was time. And it was the right thing to do.

Sanders should do the same.