Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont was back on the campaign trail in New Hampshire throwing haymakers at former President Donald Trump while making the case for Vice President Kamala Harris and Democrats up and down the ballot.

“Trump cannot get elected,” Sanders said. “We’ve got to do everything we can to make sure that does not happen.”

Sanders, the independent senator, progressive champion and two-time runner-up for the Democratic presidential nomination, made his case to supporters packed into a hotel ballroom during his first of two stops Friday in New Hampshire, a crucial general election swing state.

In an interview with the Monitor minutes earlier, Sanders took aim at Trump, who two months ago was convicted of 34 felony counts in the first criminal trial of a former or current president in the nation’s history.

“This is the most important election I think in our lifetimes. I will do everything that I can to see that Donald Trump is defeated,” the senator stressed.

Sanders rattled off his reasons.

“The American people will not and cannot accept a president who is a pathological liar, somebody who believes that women should not be able to control their own bodies, somebody who in the midst of massive heatwaves thinks climate change is a hoax and somebody who actually does not believe in democracy, has not said that he will accept those election results if he loses,” Sanders said So, for all of those reasons, Trump must be defeated.”

The senator was making his two-day swing through New Hampshire and Maine less than a week after President Joe Biden suspended his 2024 re-election rematch with Trump. Biden made his move amid mounting pressure from within the Democratic Party for him to drop out after a disastrous performance in last month’s first presidential debate with Trump.

The embattled president’s immediate backing of Harris ignited a surge of endorsements of Harris by Democratic governors, senators, House members and other party leaders. By Monday night, the vice president announced that she had locked up her party’s nomination by landing the backing of a majority of the nearly 4,000 delegates to next month’s Democratic National Convention. On Friday morning, former President Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama formally endorsed the vice president.

Harris has also hauled in a staggering $129 million in fundraising since Biden’s announcement, her campaign boasted on Thursday morning.

While Sanders is campaigning on behalf of Harris, he hasn’t formally endorsed the vice president.

“I think if the vice president is to win this election and obviously I want her to win, I think she has to start talking about issue of relevance to the working class of this country because there are tens of millions of people who are really hurting,” Sanders said. “They want to know what the next president is going to do for them and I hope very much that Vice President Harris will make that clear.”

“The path towards victory is to talk about issues that are relevant,” Sanders reiterated.

Sanders said Harris should talk about lowering prescription drug costs, getting the wealthiest in this country to start paying their fair share, expanding child care and affordable housing. “I think we’ve got to be very strong on the issue of climate change and make it clear that we’re going to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel if we’re going to save this planet for future generations,” he added.

Sanders said that Harris’ choice of a running mate – which may come in the next two weeks, will be a signal on whether she’ll project a progressive agenda as she runs for the White House.

“I think it will and I hope very much she looks at one of the many progressive people who are out there who I think would do a good job as vice president,” the senator said.

Trump over the past week has worked to define Harris, a former San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general, as an ultra-liberal, as he’s pointed to her record in the U.S. Senate before becoming vice president.

Speaking to a packed arena in Charlotte, North Carolina on Wednesday, Trump charged that Harris was the “most incompetent and far-left vice president in American history…She is a radical left lunatic who will destroy our country if she ever gets the chance to get into office.”

And pointing to Sanders, Trump argued that Harris is “more liberal than Bernie Sanders. Can you believe it?

Asked about that comment, Sanders laughed.

“It’s not true,” Sanders said. “Once again Trump is lying. Let me just simply say that for better or for worse, Kamala Harris is not more progressive than I am.”

Whitmer says two women could top ticket

Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, who was a top surrogate for Biden’s re-election campaign, says his blockbuster announcement that he was ending his 2024 bid came as a complete surprise.

“By the same token, I think it was the right decision and that’s why we have a vice president. Kamala Harris has been his number two for four years,” Whitmer said. “No one should be surprised that he steps away, that she’s the one to step into the breach.”

Republicans charge that the ascension of Harris has been anything but democratic - and they point to Biden’s own words.

Before dropping out, the president had repeatedly cited the 14 million votes he won in this year’s Democratic presidential primaries as a reason he should stay in the 2024 race.

“The voters – and the voters alone – decide the nominee of the Democratic Party,” he emphasized in a letter on July 8. “Not the press, not the pundits, not the big donors, not any selected group of individuals, no matter how well-intentioned.”

Trump, at a rally in Charlotte, North Carolina on Wednesday called the switch at the top of the Democrats’ national ticket “an undemocratic move.”

“These are nasty people, the Democrats,” Trump argued.

Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas claimed in a social media post this week that “Joe Biden succumbed to a coup by Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, and Hollywood donors, ignoring millions of Democratic primary votes.”

Whitmer dismissed the notion.

“It is hard to take the Republican criticism seriously because one day it’s ‘Joe Biden shouldn’t be running.’ The next day it’s ‘well he should be running,’”she said. “Give me a break.”

Whitmer was interviewed Thursday evening at a house party in Durham, during her third and final campaign event of the day on behalf of Harris in the swing state of New Hampshire.

Whitmer’s name has repeatedly come up this week – among other high profile Democratic Party leaders – as a potential running mate for Harris.

The governor said she plans to stay put.

“I am not a part of the process. I made it very clear that I am committed to fulfilling my term as governor in Michigan, and so I’m not going anywhere,” Whitmer said. “I think I can be an even better ally to a Harris administration on the ground in Michigan.”

Whitmer, who was a co-chair of the Biden campaign and is now a co-chair of the Harris campaign, did say that America is ready for two women on a national ticket.

“Of course, America can have two women on a national ticket. We’ve had two men since the dawn of time. Women can lead as we’ve shown in many states where you’ve had great women leaders,” she said. “Women know how to get things done. So two women would be better than one.”

No Republican has carried New Hampshire in a presidential election in the last 24 years, but recent polling suggested a margin-of-error contest between Biden and Trump.

But two new public opinion surveys released on Thursday from the University of New Hampshire and Saint Anselm College indicated Harris holding single digit leads over Trump in the Granite State.

Billy Shaheen, one of New Hampshire’s two members on the Democratic National Committee and the husband of Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, was at the Durham house party where Whitmer drew cheers from the crowd of a couple of hundred party activists.

“A phenomenal crowd,” he said. “They are pumped. And you know what wins elections? Passion. Passion wins elections. This crowd is passionate.”

John Tackeff, a longtime Democratic Party activist in New Hampshire and former strategist, agreed.

“Friends of mine who are not politically involved at all have been asking me the past couple of days how to get involved,” he said. “It’s truly shocking to see the moment in the past couples of days.”

New Hampshire GOP chair Chris Ager sees it differently when it comes to Harris.

“Democrat party elites and corporate money have coronated the most extreme left-wing U.S. Senator as their nominee, without voter vetting. After the honeymoon period, voters will once again reject her hard-core leftist agenda,” he said in a statement.