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Obama and Bernie Sanders to Meet for Delicate Talks Obama and Bernie Sanders Are Meeting for Delicate Talks
(about 4 hours later)
Attempting to make deals in Washington has not always fared well for President Obama. On Thursday, however, he will try to negotiate, however gently, with Bernie Sanders about the Vermont senator’s exiting the Democratic race without inflicting damage on efforts to unite the party. More than a year after he began his presidential bid in the shadow of the Capitol, Senator Bernie Sanders landed in Washington on Thursday for a whirlwind round of meetings with President Obama and Senator Harry Reid that could herald the unwinding of his campaign.
The meeting, convened at Mr. Sanders’s request, will take place at the White House. After, Mr. Sanders will also hold talks with Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, the Senate minority leader. The return to Washington comes as the Democratic Party is trying to unify behind Hillary Clinton, its presumptive presidential nominee, even as Mr. Sanders has vowed to continue campaigning through the final primary contest in Washington, D.C., next week and to take his fight to the convention July 25-28 in Philadelphia.
Mr. Sanders refused to leave the race for the Democratic nomination on Tuesday night, despite Hillary Clinton’s having won the California primary by a wide margin. But some of his supporters have started to walk away, prompting growing calls that it is time to bring the party together to defeat the presumptive Republican candidate, Donald J. Trump. The senator spent Monday huddling with his team at his headquarters in Vermont before embarking on a morning flight to Dulles International Airport with his wife, Jane, and a small coterie of staff members.
But Mr. Sanders long identified as an independent, and while he caucuses with Democrats in the Senate, he does not consider himself one of them. And he has an ardent base of supporters, a number of whom have indicated that they cannot back Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Sanders, who requested the meeting with the president, pulled into the White House grounds at 10:56 a.m. after stopping at a nearby Peet’s Coffee for a scone. Mr. Obama is trying to negotiate, however gently, with him to exit the Democratic race without inflicting damage on efforts to unite the party.
The meeting with Mr. Obama could help accelerate the process of Mr. Sanders bringing his campaign to an end. Beyond commitment to the causes he has advanced, however, it is unclear precisely what Mr. Sanders wants. “My hope is, is that over the next couple of weeks, we’re able to pull things together,” Mr. Obama said during a taping of an appearance on the “Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” on Wednesday in New York. “There’s a natural process of everybody recognizing that this is not about any individual.”
After his meeting with Mr. Obama, Mr. Sanders will head across town to see Mr. Reid. While the two men are old friends, the conversation could be somewhat awkward as the minority leader has endorsed Mrs. Clinton and said publicly that Mr. Sanders should prepare to leave the race.
“Sometimes you just have to give up,” Mr. Reid said last week.
After Mrs. Clinton won Tuesday’s California primary Mr. Sanders refused to quit the race, despite Mrs. Clinton’s wide margin of victory and the fact that she had won enough pledged delegates for the nomination. But some of his supporters have started to walk away, prompting growing calls that it is time to bring the party together to defeat the presumptive Republican candidate, Donald J. Trump.
Although the Sanders campaign has already started laying off about half of its staff members, Mr. Sanders is maintaining “that the struggle continues.”
On Wednesday Mr. Sanders sent out a fund-raising email asking for contributions of $2.70 and at 7 p.m. he will hold a rally outside of R.F.K. Stadium in Washington, where he will discuss his plans for getting big money out of politics and making public universities tuition-free.