Bernie Sanders’ supporters have some advice for President Barack Obama: Back off.
Thursday morning in the Oval Office, Obama will take his not-so-subtle campaign to ease Sanders out of an active campaign directly to the senator himself. But he’ll need to be diplomatic.

Even as some top supporters have started backing down since Tuesday night, when Hillary Clinton claimed the Democratic nomination — and as a planned Sanders letter to superdelegates campaigning for them to support him rather than Clinton appears in limbo — frustration is bubbling among those who want the senator to keep the campaign going.

In their view, the president is trying to prematurely end the fight. They warn that it won’t work and that the blowback might show him he’s not as popular with the Sanders wing of the Democratic Party as he might like to think.

“The president is not Sen. Sanders’ boss. We’ve got to get this straight here,” said Nina Turner, a former Ohio state senator who’s been traveling the country on behalf of the campaign. “There’s respect that’s for the commander in chief … but Sen. Sanders is duly elected, and he’ll make his own decisions.”

Or else.