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CEDAR RAPIDS — Sen. Bernie Sanders came within a whisker of defeating Hillary Clinton in Iowa’s caucuses, but there’s another image from the first-in-the-nation state that will stick with him.

It was at a town meeting “and I was talking about Social Security and this woman gets up and says ‘Let me tell you what it’s like to live in Iowa on $11,000 a year,’” Sanders recalled Wednesday. “The courage of her to speak up. We saw that a lot. People having the courage to say ‘I’m hurting, I’m in pain and I want you to know about it.’”

Although his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination is over, the fight for progressive ideals and to transform the Democratic Party continues, he said.

He and his campaign organization are negotiating with the presumptive nominee on a near daily basis to encourage Clinton to stake out the most progressive positions possible, Sanders said.

“There are areas where we have strong disagreement,” the Vermont independent said about Clinton, who he called “more or less an establishment candidate.”