He endorsed her at the convention, and that's around the same time as any other runner-up ever endorses the nominee. He couldn't do it before the convention and still retain any semblance of dignity.
Bernie made 16 speeches for Hillary, making a passionate case for her at all of them He never refused to support down-ticket Dems.
And it's not as though he could have stopped his followers from saying what they said- no candidate has THAT kind of control over their supporters. And given that Hillary's primary campaign endless pushed the despicable lie that Bernie and his supporters didn't care about racism or defending choice- being to the left of Hillary's supporters, it goes without saying that they were committed antiracists and solidly pro-choice- and there's a lesson there: no candidate is going to get massive turnout in the fall from their opponent's supporterfs after her supporters spend months slandering them. There was simply no excuse for making those accusations about Bernie and his supporters at all- it was below the belt and uncalled for.
It was not Bernie's fault that Hillary's post-convention campaign was out of touch, that it took too much for granted, that it didn't make one campaign stop in Wisconsin and next to none in Michigan and Pennsylvania. And it damn sure wasn't Bernie's fault that BLACK turnout was massively down in the firewall states.
Look, it sucks that The Former Guy got in- but it's been repeatedly proved it wasn't Bernie's fault and, since Dems will need to get Sanders supporters to commit to the party and see it as a place where they can work for what they want and count on the party not shafting them- as it just shafted India Walton in Buffalo when she'd done nothing whatsoever to deserve it- this endless war against Bernie and those who stand with him needs to end.
There was never any good reason to say "he's not a Democrat"- it's enough that he organizes with Dems, and no good would have come of forcing him to formally identify as one- and there's no good reason to keep acting as if he should not have been allowed to run when we all know Hillary would have blown that election to Trump even if she'd had no opponents in the primaries at all.
Bernie HAD to run- it would have been unforgivable to have no candidates who supported economic justice at all and none who brought Occupy values into the contest, and Hillary wouldn't have won any more votes at all if her campaign had been nothing but "preserve the Obama status quo".
The Democratic future lies in accepting that the economic justice and social justice movements are not in conflict, that neither can win without the other also winning, and, especially, that the economic justice movement never deserved to be accused of only fighting for white people. The two struggles are distinct, but linked- and Martin Luther King died working to unite BOTH justice struggles.
