Sanders insists race isn’t over, vows to fight on to convention

Fresh off his victory in Indiana, Sen. Bernie Sanders said today that his campaign could gain more momentum this month and push the Democratic primary battle all the way to the party’s convention this summer.

In an interview with PBS NewsHour’s Judy Woodruff on Friday, Sanders insisted he still had a shot to win the Democratic nomination, despite Hillary Clinton’s lead in pledged and superdelegates.

“We have a narrow path to victory, but I’m going to fight to see that we can win,” Sanders said.

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Sanders needs roughly 1,000 delegates to clinch the nomination, while Clinton needs less than 200 to become the party’s nominee, giving her a major advantage as the primary season winds down.

But Sanders pointed to upcoming primaries in West Virginia and Oregon, two states with large numbers of white and working-class Democrats who Clinton has struggled to capture this year.

“I think that we stand a good chance to win the primary in West Virginia,” Sanders said.

The Vermont senator said he was confident he could win Oregon as well and could compete in Kentucky and California, which has 546 delegates and holds its primary on June 7.

Sanders also defended a letter his campaign sent to Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz, in which he slammed the DNC for loading Clinton supporters on the committees tasked with organizing the convention in Philadelphia in July.

“What the chairwoman has done so far is really absurd. She has stacked the deck completely,” Sanders said. “All that that letter says is treat us fairly.”

Sanders said if the effort failed, he would use other means to push his agenda at the convention, though he insisted he wasn’t planning to undermine Clinton if she wins the nomination.

“If we don’t win the nomination, we look forward to sitting down with Secretary Clinton and seeing where we go from there,” Sanders said.

The comment seemed to extend an olive branch of sorts, but Democratic strategists said the longer Sanders stays in the race, the more damage it might do to Clinton in a general election matchup with Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee.

Trump’s two remaining rivals dropped out of the GOP race this week after Trump won Indiana, clearing the way for the real estate mogul to clinch the nomination and set his sights on Clinton.

“Sanders’ presence in the race only damages her because it continues to reinforce the argument that” Clinton is part of the establishment, said Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic consultant and former Bill Clinton campaign advisor.

“There is no question that Sanders has made it easier for anyone to categorize her as an enemy of change,” Sheinkopf added.

Clinton notched a big win in New York on April 19 and several key victories in northeastern states at the end of April that seemed to speed her path toward the nomination.

But Sanders’ victory in Indiana earlier this week gave him fresh momentum and could lead to a string of victories later this month.

Sanders was leading Clinton 45-37 in the latest statewide poll in West Virginia, which holds its Democratic primary on Tuesday.

The Vermont senator touted his lead in the polls during a campaign swing through the state this week. And he told the NewsHour that his plan to invest $41 billion in rebuilding coal communities was resonating with voters in West Virginia.

“We have got to transform our energy system away from fossil fuel,” Sanders said. But “we cannot leave high and dry the coal miners and the workers in that industry.”

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Sanders’ focus on helping coal workers comes after Clinton was criticized for saying in a March town hall that clean energy policies would “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business.”

Clinton apologized for the remark at a campaign event in Kentucky this week and said it was taken out of context. Still, the incident exposed Clinton’s weakness in states like West Virginia with large numbers of white, working-class Democrats that make up a big part of Sanders’ base.

In the interview, Sanders also defended his foreign policy experience, saying that his decision to vote against the Iraq War marked an important difference with Clinton, who supported the war in a vote that came back to haunt her in her 2008 presidential campaign and again this year.

“Iraq is and has been the most important foreign policy issue that this country has faced in our modern history,” Sanders said.

Sanders also seized on reports that the Clinton campaign was reaching out to donors who backed former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, who dropped out of the GOP primaries in February after a string of poor performances in the early voting states.

“Are you really going to stand up to the working class and the middle class while you’re collecting millions from Jeb Bush supporters,” he said. “Those are the kinds of things that make not only my supporters, but ordinary Americans nervous.”