Hillary Clinton’s campaign manager tamped down Bernie Sanders’s upset victory in Michigan on Tuesday by declaring that Clinton’s delegate lead continues to creep closer to her clinching the nomination.
“From the beginning, we have approached this nomination contest as a battle for delegates. And while Sen. Sanders has placed big bets on pulling out wins in certain individual states, we have sought to play everywhere in every state to win as many delegates possible,” campaign manager Robby Mook said Wednesday on a conference call with reporters.
{mosads}”We are nearing the point where our delegate lead will effectively become insurmountable.”
On Tuesday, Sanders and Clinton split Michigan and Mississippi, the two states up for grabs. But the margins told a different story.
Clinton ran up the score in Mississippi, winning 29 delegates to Sanders’s 4, according to The Associated Press. While Sanders won in Michigan, he won 65 delegats compared to Clinton’s 58 thanks to the razor-thin margin there.
That reality, Mook told reporters, means that Clinton now has a larger lead than Barack Obama had over Clinton during his 2008 campaign.
Sanders’s team is banking on the fact that his upset victory in Michigan will cast doubt on the race’s current narrative, as polls showed Sanders well behind Clinton in the days before Tuesday. And they continue to pledge to keep the campaign going until the convention, arguing that delegate-flush states like California, New York and New Jersey that don’t hold primaries until the latter part of the primary calendar could help them close the gap.
To capture the nomination, a candidate needs 2,382 delegates. Including superdelegates, Clinton has 1,221 delegates, while Sanders has 571.