Bernie Sanders, Following Many of His Supporters, Is Set to Back Hillary Clinton

Senator Bernie Sanders speaking to supporters in Los Angeles in March. Credit Monica Almeida/The New York Times

When Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont takes the stage to endorse Hillary Clinton on Tuesday in Portsmouth, N.H., a majority of his supporters will have already told pollsters they would back her in a general election.

Several liberal organizations and lawmakers have shifted their allegiances to Mrs. Clinton, and Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and President Obama have appeared with her on the campaign trail.All of which raises the question of whether Mr. Sanders’s endorsement of Mrs. Clinton will be too little, too late.

Mr. Sanders defeated Mrs. Clinton in New Hampshire by 22 percentage points in the Democratic primary, and he won an upset victory over Mrs. Clinton in Michigan, often inspiring legions of young liberals who viewed Mr. Sanders as the anti-establishment choice.

But the revolution appears to be ending with a whisper rather than a roar.

Since June 7, the Clinton campaign has wooed Mr. Sanders’s grass-roots supporters in states he won. Marlon Marshall, the Clinton campaign’s director of state and political engagement, went to Wyoming. Jake Sullivan, the campaign’s top policy aide, spoke to Mr. Sanders’s supporters in Washington State.

And the campaign hired members of Mr. Sanders’s staff as his team laid off employees, including his deputy campaign manager, Rich Pelletier, and organizers in charge of college campuses and labor.

Last week, Mr. Sanders made some policy inroads with Mrs. Clinton, who inched closer to his proposal to make public colleges and universities tuition-free and who reaffirmed her support for adding a “public option” to the Affordable Care Act.

Mr. Sanders has not been a high-profile surrogate, however, and it is unclear if the skills that fueled his rise will resonate for Mrs. Clinton, whom he has attacked for months over her ties to Wall Street and accused of being overly hawkish on foreign policy.

While there is little doubt the two will put aside their policy differences to try to defeat Donald J. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, other questions remain: Will Mr. Sanders adjust his stump speech to praise Mrs. Clinton? Will his supporters (some of whom called Ms. Warren a “sellout” after she campaigned with Mrs. Clinton) buy it? And will they hug?