Bernie Sanders unveils plan to beat Hillary Clinton in the delegate chase

On Monday, Sen. Bernie Sanders' campaign laid out their plan for winning the Democratic nomination, despite Hillary Clinton's lead among pledged and at-large delegates. It mostly involves momentum and persuasion. After beating Clinton by double digits in three caucuses over the weekend — in Washington, Alaska, and Hawaii — Sanders still trails her by about 250 delegates and 440 superdelegates. In a 45-minute phone conference, three top Sanders aides argued that Sanders can make up that gap by June and win the nomination by persuading the superdelegates that Sanders is the stronger candidate. Neither candidate will win with pledged delegates alone, senior adviser Tad Devine predicted.

Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver said that Sanders has a "substantial" number of superdelegates up his sleeve, but that they aren't ready to go public yet. "It would be easy for them at this point to be pledged to Hillary Clinton, given some of the media narrative and the establishment support she has," Weaver said. Campaign press secretary Symone Sanders told CNN on Monday that "superdelegates are kind of like football recruits," explaining: "You know, they say they are coming but until they have signed on the dotted line and they're in practice, you don't know that they're all the way with you and that they're on your team." They'll sign with Sanders when they see he's winning, she added.

In a separate call, Clinton chief strategist Joel Benenson said that before Sanders starts talking about winning with superdelegates, he has to earn 57 percent of the remaining pledged delegates to catch up with Clinton. That's possible, but many political handicappers consider it highly unlikely. Sanders has performed best in caucuses, for example, and there are only two of those left — in Wyoming and North Dakota — notes FiveThirtyEight's Harry Enten. Sanders raked in $4 million in contributions over the past two days, "and this has been a crazy year in politics," he adds." But there's nothing in the recent results to suggest that the overall trajectory of the Democratic race has changed."

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Benenson said Clinton should sew up the nomination on April 26, when Pennsylvania and several other Northeastern states vote.