Gov. Peter Shumlin and Sen. Cory Booker, D-NJ, delivered a message of hope and unity to New England delegates Thursday.
“I understand we got a lot of folks in mourning here, a lot of folks across the country,” Shumlin said.
“I have the most extraordinary respect for Bernie Sanders,” Shumlin said. “And when you see the not only best communicator of the issues that we care about run the grassroots campaign the way he did, for the revolution that he’s been fighting for all his political life, I never doubted that he’s the best advocate I’ve ever met.”
Shumlin asked delegates to consider the stakes in this election. “In a year where we’ve got a friend of Putin running for president who will divide Americans based on race, religion, sexual orientation before we’re done and anything else that he can find, we have a huge challenge.”
And Shumlin told the audience that as a woman in politics, Clinton is held to a different standard. “If a woman running for president, for five minutes gave a speech the way one of my heroes, Bernie Sanders, gives a speech, what would happen to her?” he asked. “How long would she be a viable candidate? The women in this room know. Less than half a second.”
Booker said the upcoming elections would determine the direction of the Senate and the eventual confirmation of a Supreme Court justice that will replace Antonin Scalia, who died last February.
“We’ve got to make sure that when issues are being decided in the next congress that Mitch McConnell and all those forces that want to block, stop undermine (and) undercut, that they do not have the ability to set the agenda for the United States Senate,” he said.
Booker praised Sanders for changing the national conversation and the Democratic platform. “He made our nominee a much better candidate ready to take on Donald Trump,” he said.
