THE ARTICLE “FeistySanders puts Clinton team in a balancing act’’ (Page A1, May 23) neglects the current status of the primary election.

While reporter Victoria McGrane noted that new polls show Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in a dead heat, she failed to include that, according to the recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll, Bernie Sanders leads Trump 54 percent to 39 percent.

This indication of Sanders’ superior ability to defeat Trump in November is not the only reason he should stay in the race.

A vote for Clinton and her programs is not a vote for Sanders and his programs. Sanders’ advocacy for debt-free college education, universal health care, protection for American workers from trade agreements, a ban on fracking, and the elimination of the death penalty are some of the important issues in which his stands differ substantially from Clinton’s.

Moreover, for the Democratic Party to ask Sanders “to marshal his troops to Clinton’s defense’’ shows a basic misunderstanding of his campaign. It is a movement of hundreds of thousands of independent-minded small donors who are drawn to Sanders’ progressive agenda and who are able and willing to make up their own minds about whom to vote for or not vote for in November.

Jo Anne Preston

Arlington