U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders is suspending his presidential campaign, acknowledging Wednesday he no longer has a “feasible path to the nomination” in a contest stymied by coronavirus, and pledging to work with presumptive nominee former Vice President Joe Biden to push the progressive agenda forward.

Yet even as he exits the race, Sanders says he will remain on the ballot to keep gathering delegates to “exert significant influence over the party platform” at the convention.

The 78-year-old Vermont senator informed his team he was suspending during an all-staff conference call Wednesday morning, his campaign said, and addressed supporters shortly thereafter.

“I wish I could give you better news but I think you know the truth. And that is that we are now some 300 delegates behind Vice President Biden and the path toward victory is virtually impossible,” Sanders told supporters via livestream from Burlington, Vt. “While we are winning the ideological battle, while we are winning the support of so many young people and working people throughout the country, I have concluded that this battle for the Democratic nomination will not be successful.”

Sanders acknowledged those in his movement who wanted to “fight on to the last ballot cast at the Democratic convention,” but said “as I see the crisis gripping the nation, exacerbated by a president unwilling or unable to provide any kind of credible leadership and the work that needs to be done to protect people in the most desperate hour, I cannot in good conscience continue to mount a campaign that cannot win.”

Sanders’ exit clears Biden’s path to the Democratic nomination in a contest all but frozen by coronavirus since mid-March and simultaneously ends the Vermont senator’s five-year quest for the White House.

Biden responded to Sanders’ exit in a statement, saying, “Senator Sanders and his supporters have changed the dialogue in America. Issues which had been given little attention — or little hope of ever passing — are now at the center of the political debate. … And while Bernie and I may not agree on how we might get there, we agree on the ultimate goal for these issues and many more.”

The presumptive nominee pledged to reach out to Sanders moving forward and made overtures to his supporters, saying, “I see you, I hear you, and I understand the urgency of what it is we have to get done in this country. I hope you will join us. You are more than welcome. You’re needed.”

President Trump tweeted, “Bernie Sanders is OUT! Thank you to Elizabeth Warren. If not for her, Bernie would have won almost every state on Super Tuesday! This ended just like the Democrats & the DNC wanted, same as the Crooked Hillary fiasco. The Bernie people should come to the Republican Party, TRADE!”

Sanders, a democratic socialist and Vermont independent, skyrocketed to fame as a champion of progressive, anti-establishment ideals in his 2016 primary bid against presumed nominee former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton — a race that bitterly divided Democrats even as Sanders was credited by many for pushing the party further to the left.

He returned in 2020 with the same champion-of-the-middle-class message that made him a star four years earlier — building a platform around raising the minimum wage, combating climate change, erasing student loan debt and his signature proposal, “Medicare for All.”

“It was not long ago people considered these ideas radical and fringe, today they are mainstream,” Sanders told supporters Wednesday. “That is what we have accomplished together.”

But Sanders struggled early on in what was at one point the largest and most diverse Democratic presidential primary field in history.

His heart attack last October changed everything — endorsements from emerging progressive stars and a massive influx of cash rewriting the course of his campaign and catapulting him to the top of the heap heading into 2020.

As party moderates struggled to coalesce around a single candidate to blunt Sanders’ rise, the senator won the popular vote in the chaotic Iowa caucuses, eked out a slim victory in New Hampshire and cruised to an even more resounding victory in Nevada.

But Biden’s resurgence with a blowout win in South Carolina signaled the beginning of the end for Sanders, as moderates lined up behind the former vice president, giving him an edge in the Super Tuesday contests that began just days later that ultimately proved too much for Sanders to overcome.