During a news conference at the White House on Thursday, President Barack Obama praised Bernie Sanders’ grassroots-funded campaign.
The president told journalists that Sanders’ fundraising efforts could help restore voters’ faith in the democratic system.
“You’ve got to give Bernie Sanders, for example, credit — building off some of the work I did; I, in turn, built off the work that Howard Dean did — for smaller donations, grassroots donors, to build up small contributions to allow candidates to be competitive,” President Obama said.
Obama also signalled that more should be done to fix campaign finance, saying it’s not enough for candidates like Sanders to voluntarily rely on small donations.
“I am a strong believer in finding ways in which we can make the financing of campaigns more democratic,” he said.
Throughout his campaign, Sanders has smashed major fundraising records, outraising every other candidate in the race, Democrats and Republicans, this year. He has received close to seven million donations from two million people.
In March alone, Sanders raised $44 million, almost all of it from small-dollar donors contributing to his campaign online.
