Sen. Bernie Sanders is discouraging a "protest vote" for a third party candidate this November, saying Sunday the stakes in the 2016 White House race are too high.
In an interview on CBS News' "Face The Nation," the Vermont senator, who unsuccessfully ran in the Democratic presidential primaries, declared, "It is the time to look at which candidate is going to work best for the middle class and working families."
"I think what the focus has got to be on now is understanding that this moment in history, for a presidential election, is not the time for a protest vote," he said.
Sanders said third-party candidates like Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson and Green Party nominee Jill Stein are important, and "when I was younger, I ran on a third party here in the state of Vermont."
"So I'm not here to disparage third-party candidates who historically have played a very, very important role in this country in raising issues and moving this country in certain directions," he said.
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