Former Vice President Joe Biden may be the presumptive Democratic nominee, but he's not taking the loyal supporters of his chief rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, for granted. On Thursday, Biden announced two new proposals specifically inspired by Sanders—lowering the Medicare eligibility platform to 60 and expanding student loan forgiveness for low-income and middle-class families.
In a statement, Biden said both Sanders and his supporters should "take pride" in knowing that his campaign had laid the groundwork for the proposals, according to The New York Times.
Biden's openness to adopting some elements of Sanders' platform reportedly factored into the senator's decision to exit the primary. Talks between the camps are ongoing. But Sanders has maintained a point of leverage by suspending his campaign but continuing to accumulate delegates that he can use as a means of influencing the Democratic platform in November.
But Sanders has also sounded some conciliatory notes. On The Late Show with Stephen Colbert Wednesday, Sanders conceded that Biden wasn't going to "adopt" his platform outright, but if Biden could "move in the direction, Sanders said, "I think people will say this is a guy that we should support and will support."
Biden made similar efforts to woo the supporters of Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren after she dropped out of the primary last month. He quickly took steps to endorse a Warren bankruptcy proposal that specifically took aim at a law Biden had supported as a senator in 2005, when Warren was still a law professor at Harvard University. The law favored the banking and credit card industries, making it particularly difficult for consumers to get debt forgiveness by declaring bankruptcy.
But Biden's new charge to unite the party behind him is much bigger than any single dispute he has had with his former liberal rivals on the campaign trail. His campaign seems to get that, as do both Sanders and Warren.
As Democratic pollster Peter Hart told the Times, “The galvanizing force in 2020 is Donald Trump." That seems clearer than ever amid Trump’s flailing federal coronavirus response that is costing an untold number of American lives.