From the Washington Post
In interviews with me, however, two of Sanders’s most important supporters in Congress — Senator Jeff Merkley and Rep. Raul Grijalva, the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus — said Sanders would have to accept the inevitably of Clinton’s nomination, and begin the process of getting behind her.
maybe I had too much champagne last night, maybe I had too much pixie dust but I think that Bernie Sanders is telling his surrogates and supporters that it is time to move toward unity before HE can make that final move.
“Once a candidate has won a majority of the pledged delegates and a majority of the popular vote, which Secretary Clinton has now done, we have our nominee,” Merkley, who is Sanders’ sole supporter in the Senate, told me. “This is the moment when we need to start bringing parts of the party together so they can go into the convention with locked arms and go out of the convention unified into the general election.”
That was Merkley, more upfront, Grijalva less certain, but realistic
“The reality is unattainable at some point. You deal with that. Bernie is going to deal with this much more rapidly than you think,” said Grijalva, who is also a super-delegate. “At some point, when we’re trying to flip 400 super-delegates, and it’s not gaining traction, I think you have to come to the conclusion that it’s not going to happen. You just move into a different direction. And that different direction is that we begin to try to integrate the party.”