Sen. Bernie Sanders ended his campaign for president Wednesday, effectively paving former vice president Joe Biden’s path to the party’s nomination. The senator from Vermont had created a movement among his supporters, aided by the hashtag #NotMeUs, and is especially popular among millennial and Gen Z voters.
Over the course of his campaign, Sanders, 78, also garnered a number of celebrity endorsements, such as Ariana Grande and Cardi B. Many of the Democratic socialist’s high-profile supporters took to social media to express their dejection over Sanders shuttering his campaign.
Model, designer and outspoken activist Emily Ratajkowski, who helped spawn a #HotGirlsForBernie hashtag on social media, shared video of Sanders’s live-streamed address to her Instagram story and tweeted to her 1.5 million Twitter followers about feeling “hopeless.”
Comedian Sarah Silverman, a staunch supporter, thanked Sanders and expressed her sadness with a broken-heart emoji.
Actor Mark Ruffalo has been feeling the Bern since Sanders’ 2016 presidential bid, referring to the senator as “the original progressive” when he appeared in a Sanders campaign video in December. On Wednesday, Ruffalo retweeted the former presidential hopeful and called him an “inspiration.” Actress Cynthia Nixon, who in 2018 ran for governor of New York on a liberal platform, tweeted her appreciation of Sanders’ biggest policy talking points, such as Medicare-for-all.
On Instagram, actress Chloe Sevigny posted a photo of Sanders emblazoned with the words “Rage against the machine” and the simple caption, “Thank you Senator Sanders.”
The photo Sevigny tweeted has appeared on grass-roots merchandise in support of Sanders, in reference to his desire to shake up the status quo, a phenomenon that has been at the heart of his platform for decades.
In his message Wednesday to supporters, Sanders’ refusal to accept the existing state of affairs remained a central theme.
“Few would deny that over the course of the past five years, our movement has won the ideological struggle,” Sanders said in his live stream.
“It was not long ago that people considered these ideas radical and fringe. Today they are mainstream ideas, and many of them are already being implemented in cities and states across the country,” he continued. “That is what we have accomplished together.”
Though his bid for the presidency is over, Sanders has pledged to continue to push his liberal policies. As for what’s next on his plate? He’ll be a (virtual) guest on “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” on Wednesday night.
