Two of Sanders' congressional supporters say that it's time for him to exit the race

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last updated 8 June 2016

Two of Sen. Bernie Sanders' top congressional supporters aren't onboard with the candidate's decision to "continue to fight," even after Hillary Clinton claimed the Democratic Party's nomination Tuesday. In an interview with The Washington Post's Greg Sargent, Sanders' sole supporter in the Senate, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), pushed Sanders to put the nomination battle behind him and move forward in supporting Clinton. "This is the moment when we need to start bringing parts of the party together so they can go into the convention with locked arms and go out of the convention unified into the general election," Merkley said. He added that he "would not support a battle that involves trying to flip superdelegates."

Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.), the co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, offered a similar assessment of the situation. "The reality is unattainable at some point," Grijalva told Sargent. "You deal with that. Bernie is going to deal with this much more rapidly than you think. At some point, when we're trying to flip 400 superdelegates, and it's not gaining traction, I think you have to come to the conclusion that it's not going to happen."