Bernie Sanders campaign to 'reassess' if Tuesday's primary contests don't go well

Sanders camp will reassess strategy if results disappoint following Tuesday primaries.

(Image credit: Jeff Swensen/Getty Images)

last updated 26 April 2016

If the races in Connecticut, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Rhode Island don't go well for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) Tuesday, his campaign says he'll likely have no choice but to "reassess" his standing in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Sanders currently only has 1,192 delegates to opponent Hillary Clinton's 1,946. The polls show Clinton is ahead in at least four of the five states voting Tuesday, where 384 delegates are up for grabs.

"If we are sitting here and there's no sort of mathematical way to do it, we will be up front about that," Sanders senior strategist Tad Devine said. "If we have a really good day, we are going to continue to talk about winning most of the pledged delegates because we will be on a path toward it. If we don't get enough today to make it clear that we can do it by the end, it's going to be hard to talk about it. That's not going to be a credible path. Instead, we will talk about what we intend to do between now and the end and how we can get there."

However, even if Sanders ends up confronting the mathematical impossibility of clenching the nomination, his campaign remains certain he won't be dropping out of the race. No matter what happens, Devine says, Sanders will compete in every contest, including California and Washington, D.C., in June. "Reassess does not mean that he's not going to be part of this race," Devine said. "Reassess does not mean that his message, that we think is the most powerful message, is going to change."