Bernie Sanders’ supporters have some advice for President Barack Obama: Back off.

Thursday morning in the Oval Office, Obama took his not-so-subtle campaign to ease Sanders out of an active campaign directly to the senator himself. The president endorsed Hillary not long afterward in a video.


But even as some top Sanders supporters have started backing down since Tuesday night, when Clinton claimed the Democratic nomination — and as a planned Sanders letter to superdelegates campaigning for them to support him rather than Clinton appears in limbo — frustration is bubbling among those who want the senator to keep the campaign going.

In their view, the president is trying to prematurely end the fight. They warn that it won’t work and that the blowback might show him he’s not as popular with the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party as he might like to think.

“The president is not Sen. Sanders’ boss. We’ve got to get this straight here,” said Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator who’s been traveling the country on behalf of the campaign. “There’s respect that’s for the commander in chief … but Sen. Sanders is duly elected, and he’ll make his own decisions.”

Or else.

“In some ways, even though [the president’s] numbers are good, and good with the Democratic base, he overestimates,” said a Democratic strategist aligned with Sanders. “Much of the activist Bernie movement — I think he overestimates his strength with those people.”

The campaign is hypersensitive to any whiff of being treated as a smaller, protest candidacy, to failures to acknowledge that Sanders won more than 40 percent of the primary vote, or to being dismissed by what they see as the Democratic establishment. And an endorsement of Hillary Clinton by a president who many Sanders supporters believe fell short of his progressive promise has that establishment smell.

“They don’t want to see him shoved to the side,” the Democratic strategist said. “A lot of love is going to be more productive than a lot of pressure. There’s a strain out there that just wants to hit [Sanders] with a 2-by-4 and say, ‘get out.’ The better course is to show appreciation and engagement and show how much the party needs this guy.”

Sanders has never been much interested in what Democratic leaders have had to say about his presidential bid, and every call along the way for him to drop out seems only to have encouraged him to push ahead. That’s left prominent Clinton supporters worried about what the reaction to Obama’s urging will be.

“People talk to Bernie. But Bernie marches to his own drum. And that’s true if Clinton talks to him or if Obama talks to him,” said Clinton ally and former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell. “The president deserves an A for effort, but I’m not sure he’s going to have much of an impact.”

Sanders’ campaign itself has worked hard to look as conciliatory as possible to Obama, despite the shots others are taking.

“The president’s been great to Bernie. That’s all I’m going to say,” said Sanders strategist Tad Devine on Wednesday morning, before ducking into a lobby elevator at the Sheraton in Universal City, California, en route to returning to Vermont with the senator’s entourage. “That’s all I’m going to say. That’s what I told his people.”

But shivers have been going through the Sanders camp. Tuesday night in Santa Monica, the room exploded in relief as soon as the candidate made clear he was continuing — there was palpable anxiety that he was about to drop out.

That feeling reached to the inner circle of the campaign, with Sanders in meetings Wednesday in both California and Vermont with his wife, Devine and campaign manager Jeff Weaver.

Meanwhile, Obama’s been working the outreach, praising Sanders in his statement Tuesday night even as he congratulated Clinton for clinching the nomination, and then again in his appearance on the “Tonight Show,” taped Wednesday.

Wednesday night, at a Democratic National Committee fundraiser on the Upper West Side, Obama caught himself. "Now, we just ended — or sort of ended — our primary season."

Speaking to reporters on Air Force One earlier Wednesday flying to New York, White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Obama acknowledges as a two-term president that he’s part of the establishment in many ways but feels he’s been able to keep his connection to the grass roots alive.

Earnest also cited Obama’s high poll numbers with Democrats.

“I would expect that would have some influence on those who supported Sen. Sanders in the primary, but I also suspect that Sen. Sanders is going to have something to say about this as well,” Earnest said. “The president’s track record and the president’s reputation speaks for itself — as somebody who, yes, wields significant influence within the party and within the country.”

Massive crowds did line the streets everywhere the president’s motorcade drove in Manhattan on Wednesday afternoon.

But as Sanders’ supporters back away, Obama doesn’t seem to be at the top of their minds. Sen. Jeff Merkley, the only colleague to endorse Sanders, has said he thinks the race should go to the leader in pledged delegates and indicated that the campaign is over in his mind, too.

Merkley said the task of making peace would be up to the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton and Sanders campaigns. When it was pointed out to him that his list didn’t include a role for Obama, Merkley said figuring out what the president would do is a “good question” for him.

Asked about the situation as he left the House floor Wednesday, Rep. Alan Grayson (D-Fla.), who’s also endorsed Sanders, didn’t want to talk about Obama. But he also didn’t want to discuss backing down.

“These are all word games. She’s not now the nominee, that is a decision that is made in Philadelphia at a certain time and a certain place,” Grayson said. “The convention will choose the nominee. There’s no way legally to bring that decision forward. It is what it is.”

“As a superdelegate, I’m just waiting for Bernie Sanders for Philadelphia,” said Nevada DNC member Erin Bilbray.

Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), the first member of Congress to back Sanders, on Wednesday also signaled that he thought the end of the road had come — though he and other Sanders supporters, including senior adviser Mark Longabaugh, spent part of the day at the opening meeting of the Democratic convention platform committee in Washington, pushing for the concessions that they believe the campaign has earned.

“The man needs some space to think this over and then we'll have a chat. I have negotiations with superdelegates that’s ongoing but I'm not going to worry about that until I’ve had the discussion with Bernie,” Grijalva said.

The Clinton campaign, which took some hits for being seen as aggressively elbowing Vice President Joe Biden out of the running last fall — a fact that some Sanders staffers still recall — is now approaching cautiously, too.

“We admire and have a lot of respect for what Sen. Sanders and his campaign has achieved. Our campaign, and Sen. Sanders and his campaign, are mutually committed to ensuring that Donald Trump does not get into the Oval Office,” said Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook. “This isn’t simple and won’t happen overnight, but the work is well underway. We imagine Sen. Sanders will take a couple of days to think about what he wants to do and will need time to reconnect with his supporters and make decisions about how he wants to move forward, but the goals are clear.”

Again, Sanders’ supporters stress — that’s if Obama does this right.

“The president is highly regarded. The president does have a gift for smoothing things out, he really does. His voice is a necessary voice,” said Turner, former Ohio state senator. “He should weigh in on these kind of things, but they have to be careful to make sure it’s not in a way that you are dictating to progressives. It should be more of we hear you, and this is what we are willing to do.”

Heather Caygle, Gabriel Debenedetti, Annie Karni, Seung Min Kim and Daniel Strauss contributed to this report.

