Democrats compromise on delegates

Name: WORLD
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Sen. Bernie Sanders (left) and former Vice President Joe Biden at the Democratic presidential debate in Charleston, S.C., in late February Associated Press/Photo by Matt Rourke

Former Vice President Joe Biden struck a deal on Thursday that allows his former rival for the Democratic nomination for president to influence the direction of the party. Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., will keep a little more than 300 delegates whom, under party rules, he forfeited when he suspended his presidential campaign. The deal may help Biden avoid embittering Sanders’ democratic socialist supporters at the Democratic National Convention scheduled for mid-August in Milwaukee.

Why do the delegates matter? Sanders’ backers now will get seats on key convention committees that draft the party’s platform. Biden’s aides are negotiating with Sanders and far-left groups on a range of policy matters. The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee consistently has pumped his policy slate farther left than that of previous nominees, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Dig deeper: From the WORLD archives, read Jamie Dean’s report on the time Sanders, a “not particularly religious” secular Jew, addressed Christian college students at Liberty University.