AP Photo Sanders: Voters see Clinton as 'the lesser of two evils'

American voters should not be forced to pick between “the lesser of two evils” this November, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders says.

Asked in an interview airing Sunday on ABC's "This Week" if that's how he'd describe a possible match-up between Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, Sanders said it was not him making the characterization.


“That’s what the American people are saying,” he said. “If you look at the favorability ratings of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, both of them have very, very high unfavorables.”

A recent CNN/ORC polls showed 57 percent of voters nationally viewed Trump unfavorably, while 49 percent viewed Clinton that way.

Sanders continued to emphasize that he'll stay in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, though he acknowledged the delegate math provides for “a very steep uphill climb.” He also appealed to so-called super delegates, who are not bound to any candidate at the Democratic National Convention, to consider switching their support from Clinton to him over issues of electability.

“If you look at virtually all of the polls done in the last six, seven weeks, in every one of them, nationally polls and statewide polls, we defeat Trump by larger margins — in some cases, significantly larger margins — than does Secretary Clinton,” Sanders said.

Sanders also pushed back against media reports about violence from his supporters at the recent state Democratic convention in Nevada.

“People were rude, that's not good. They were booing, that's not good. They behaved in some ways that were a little bit boorish, not good. But let's not talk about that as violence,” Sanders said.

If those same supporters want to protest at the national convention in Philadelphia, Sanders said that's their right, though he's not “encouraging anybody” to do so.

Highlighting the way his candidacy has emboldened the Democratic Party’s left flank, Sanders ticked off the stands he sees as necessary for Clinton to take if she's the nominee.

“I have every confidence that if Hillary Clinton is prepared to stand up to the greed of corporate America and Wall Street; is prepared to be really strong on the issue of climate change; support, as I do, a tax on carbon; is prepared to say that the United States of America should join the rest of the industrialized world and guarantee health care to all people, paid family and medical leave; is prepared to say that the grotesque level of income and wealth inequality today in America, where almost all new income and wealth is going to the top 1 percent. If she is strong on those issues, yeah, I think she will win and win by a large vote,” Sanders said.

“But if she is not, she's going to have her problems.”