Representative Tulsi Gabbard resigned from her post as vice-chair of the Democratic National Committee on Sunday, in order to support Bernie Sanders in his run for the party’s presidential nomination.

Gabbard made the announcement on Sunday, appearing as a panel member on the NBC show Meet the Press.

“I think it’s most important for us, as we look at our choices as to who our next commander-in-chief will be, is to recognize the necessity to have a commander in chief who has foresight, who exercises good judgment,” she said.

Sanders suffered a serious loss to Hillary Clinton in Saturday’s South Carolina primary, with only 26% to Clinton’s 74% of the vote. Afterwards, speaking from Minnesota, where he flew from Texas to concentrate on states staging Super Tuesday primaries this week, he vowed to continue to carry the battle to Clinton.

“In politics on a given night sometimes you win, sometimes you lose,” he said. “Tonight we lost. I congratulate Secretary Clinton on her very strong victory. On Tuesday over 800 delegates are at stake and we intend to win many, many of them.”

He was more downbeat during his own appearances on the Sunday talk shows, telling the same NBC show: “Well, we got decimated. It was pathetic, from our perspective. But by the way, the glimmer of positive news for our group was we won the 29 and younger.”

Gabbard, 34, an Iraq war veteran and now representative for Hawaii, became the fourth member of Congress to endorse Sanders. She elaborated on her decision, by saying it stemmed from Sanders’ cautious foreign policy.

“As a veteran and as a soldier I’ve seen first-hand the true cost of war,” she said.

“I served in a medical unit during my first deployment, where every single day I saw first hand the very high human cost of that war. I see it in my friends who now, a decade after we’ve come home, are still struggling to get out of a black hole.”

“I think it’s most important for us,” she continued, “to recognize the necessity to have a commander-in-chief who has foresight, exercises good judgment, who looks beyond the consequences, looks at the consequences of the actions they’re looking to take, before they take those actions, so we don’t continue to find ourselves in these failures that have resulted in chaos in the Middle East and so much loss of life.”

Gabbard’s words will come as a boost for Sanders, who has faced criticism from Clinton and questioning from the media over his perceived lack of foreign policy experience.

On the campaign trail and the debate stage, the senator has pointed to his vote against the Iraq war – which Clinton, then a senator for New York, supported – as evidence of his pragmatism and caution on such key foreign policy issues.

He also highlighted another, more contemporary difference of opinion with the former secretary of state on Sunday: US military intervention in Libya, which Clinton strongly supported during the revolution against dictator Muammar Gaddafi there.

“These are terrible dictators, but you’ve got to be thinking about the day after,” Sanders said on NBC. “I would’ve done it differently if I were president of the United States.”

Pressed on how he would have acted, the senator said he “would’ve worked more patiently. I know it was a difficult situation, but you can’t just go thinking about regime change.”

He agreed, however, with President Barack Obama’s decision not to try to create a no-fly zone over Syria, another proposal supported by Clinton. Obama and the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff have shied from this form of intervention for fears of entanglement and “unintended consequences”.