Bernie Sanders has cleared the way for an endorsement of Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, and declared a successful end to his campaign to pull their party to the left during weekend negotiations over the Democratic policy platform.



“We have made enormous strides,” said Sanders in a statement issued after a meeting in Orlando that swung the party in his direction on the minimum wage, climate change and marijuana though failed to make headway on fracking and trade.

“Thanks to the millions of people across the country who got involved in the political process – many for the first time – we now have the most progressive platform in the history of the Democratic party,” he said.

Typically, the public pays little attention to this non-binding agenda for the national convention, but Sanders pushed hard to ensure changes as the price of encouragement to his millions of supporters to back Clinton, despite their often bitter fight for the nomination.

The Sanders campaign confirmed on Monday morning that he would appear together with Clinton in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on Tuesday for a joint rally that is likely to see him put aside recent ambiguity over his degree of support for her in November’s battle against Donald Trump.

The pair plans to “discuss their commitment to building an America that is stronger together and an economy that works for everyone, not just those at the top”, said Sanders in a one-line statement that marks the effective end of their 15-month tussle.

Not all his supporters seemed convinced by the compromises, particularly over trade, where the Sanders camp failed to insert outright opposition to Barack Obama’s controversial Trans-Pacific Partnership deal.

“This party is done,” wrote actor and Sanders surrogate Susan Sarandon after Clinton supporters blocked the proposed amendment. “[It has] warped into the party of the rich. No longer represents working people.”

However, proposals to increase the national minimum wage to $15 an hour and establish a “reasoned pathway for future legalization” of marijuana were widely hailed as significant shifts in a more progressive direction.

Clinton’s proposals for tackling climate change were also bolstered by tough new language on establishing a carbon tax, although a failure to get her team to change its support for fracking as a source of US natural gas also angered some Sanders supporters.

The relatively pain-free conclusion to the long process of building a platform for the convention in Philadelphia follows similar concessions by Clinton last week on health and education. In particular, she agreed to move closer to Sanders’ promise of tuition-free public college with a call to scrap fees for in-state tuition subject to a parental earnings threshold. On health, there were smaller steps towards the public insurance model favoured by Sanders in the form of suggested reforms to Obamacare.

Crucially, however, much now depends on whether Clinton can use Trump’s historic unpopularity to win back control of Congress for Democrats as well as the White House.

“While we have made great progress in the Democratic platform advancing the issues that have inspired millions of Americans in this campaign, the fight is just beginning,” Sanders acknowledged.

“If we are going to transform America and create a government which works for all and not just the 1% we need to elect candidates who will fight for these principles,” he added. “We need to elect a Democratic Congress and president and make certain that the language in the Democratic platform is translated into law.”

The progress also brought a happier end to the week for Clinton, who had narrowly escaped prosecution over her private server but was dealt a heavy political blow by FBI director James Comey, whose sharp criticism of her practices gave Republican critics fresh material with which to attack her.

Paul Begala, an adviser to the pro-Clinton Super Pac Priorities USA, said the partisan backlash would eventually die down and what would be remembered of this week was that she was cleared. He argued the week was a good one: she also appeared for the first time with the president on the campaign trail, and she worked with Sanders to unveil the college tuition plan.

“Those three things will matter in November,” Begala said. “All the rest will wash away.”

Begala said the week was a missed opportunity for Trump and the Republicans. “Trump and the Republicans fumbled their chance to attack Hillary effectively, Trump by bizarrely praising Saddam Hussein and the congressional Republicans by holding hearings that quickly revealed their partisan agenda,” Begala said. “FBI director Jim Comey is a Republican. He donated to the campaigns of John McCain and Mitt Romney. And yet he cleared Hillary, so the GOP stupidly is attacking him. Hillary is indeed blessed by the incompetence of her adversaries.”

During hearings, Comey said he was no longer registered with a political party.

And yet Clinton’s trust problem is larger than the email controversy. Public opinion polls and focus groups consistently find that American voters don’t trust her. Even those who say they plan to vote for her believe she has lied. A CBS poll from last month found that more than six in 10 voters don’t believe Clinton is honest and trustworthy.

“I personally know that I have work to do on this front,” Clinton said last week, in an effort to confront the problem directly. “A lot of people tell pollsters they don’t trust me. I don’t like hearing that.”

Clinton, as she has before, blamed 25 years worth of attacks by “political opponents and conspiracy theorists”, but she also owned up to her mistakes as well.

“You can’t just talk someone into trusting you. You’ve got to earn it,” she told an audience in Chicago, and promised she would work to rebuild that trust with voters.

Trump has predictably seized on this, arguably her biggest liability, and anointed her “Crooked Hillary”. But with his own dismal ratings on trustworthiness and honesty, it’s easy for Clinton to return the fire.

In Atlantic City on Wednesday, Clinton criticised Trump’s business dealings in a speech delivered on the boardwalk in front of the now closed Trump Plaza and Casino. Trump, she argued, was an untrustworthy salesman.

“He makes over-the-top promises, and says if people trust him, put their faith in him, he’ll deliver for them, he’ll make them wildly successful,” she said. “Then everything falls apart, people get hurt and Donald gets paid.”