Bernie Sanders Plans To Woo Superdelegates Even After California Primary, Says He Has Funds To Do So

Bernie Sanders won’t be dropping out, not after California, and not while there are still superdelegates to lobby for.

The Democratic Socialist candidate has indicated that he has the campaign funds to continue his campaign beyond the California primary, should Hillary Clinton not secure the required number of delegates to become the presumptive nominee. Bernie will use this extra time to pursue superdelegates, the group of each state’s party officials that has favored Hillary during the election cycle.

In the post-California primary landscape, Bernie says that he will be attempting to sway unpledged superdelegates where he lacks the proportionally allocated pledged delegates. In the nation’s most populous state, Sanders had often been counted out in early polls that showed Clinton walking away with a killing. On Wednesday, Bernie joked that not even Hillary’s own campaign seemed to believe that anymore, reported The New York Times.

“I wonder why Secretary Clinton and her husband, Bill, are back in California? I thought we had lost and it was all over. But I guess [Hillary] is maybe looking at some polling that would suggest otherwise.”

In the tensely divided math of delegates and superdelegates, it’s hard to precisely number how many Sanders and Clinton have amassed. In some states, one candidate picked up more than his or her competitor at county conventions, which will slightly alter the final vote at the Democratic convention. Those minor changes aside, Hillary stands somewhere around 270 pledged delegates ahead of Bernie at this point in the election; and, even she lies more than 600 delegates away from automatically winning the nomination by hitting 2,383.

More substantial to both Bernie and Hillary at this point are superdelegates. As many as 543 have pledged their support for Clinton compared to just 44 for Sanders, according to Bloomberg. While he’s often derided the inclusion of superdelegates in the total delegate scoreboard, Bernie will now find himself going after them as a lifeline to the nomination.

In the weeks preceding the primary, polls for California have begun to show Bernie in a more favorable light. Recent data is, however, quite split about the outcome of the largest election of the Democratic primary. Some surveys show a lead of as little as 2 percentage points for Hillary, including the two most recent from Public Policy Institute of California and NBC/WSJ/Marist. Others claim she’s still holding out ahead as much as 18 percentage points ahead of Sanders, such as one from SurveyUSA and KABC.

With 475 delegates and 73 superdelegates, California is Sanders’ last stand to win a sizable portion of the 900 or so total delegates remaining in the Democratic race. Most of those will be selected on Tuesday. New Jersey, New Mexico, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota will vote alongside California. After that, only Washington, D.C. and a few U.S. territories remain, a small offering that doesn’t appear to dissuade Bernie.

At that same press conference where he vowed to pursue superdelegates beyond California, Bernie was clear that the campaign still had the financial resources to stay alive. That’s despite the fact that Sanders has only a select few more states and territories to run in.

“We have absolutely the financial resources that we need to run a very, very strong campaign here in California and in the other states and in D.C. and Puerto Rico and Virgin Islands and throughout the rest of the campaign.”

What do you think about Bernie Sanders’ plan to pursue superdelegates beyond the California primary?

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