Sanders insisted to a crowd in Indiana on Wednesday that he is still in the race to win it, but his focus now is primarily on influencing the Democratic platform if Clinton is the nominee.
According to Politico:
Staffers who were working in states that voted Tuesday were told by campaign manager Jeff Weaver to look elsewhere for work rather than continue on to the next voting states, according to people close to the campaign. The news comes as Sanders looks to spend more time in California, which is set to vote in June.
While Sanders appears set for a handful of wins in May, his path to the nomination appears all but closed off after he lost Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, and Connecticut on Tuesday night.
The math is a huge problem for Sanders. According to Fox News:
As of early Wednesday, Clinton had 2,141 delegates to Sanders’ 1,321; it takes 2,383 to win. The total includes so-called “superdelegates” who are not bound to primary results.
Fox News also interviewed Sanders' campaign communications director Michael Briggs:
[A]s has been visible in the Republican race, laying off staff is often one of the earliest signs of a campaign winding down as it runs out of money. Even though Sanders has outraised Clinton, the Sanders campaign has also outspent Clinton’s.
Briggs confirmed to Fox News that "hundreds" of field staff from the five states in Tuesday's primaries were told they are being let go. Briggs maintained that the changes are part of "right-sizing" the campaign after the elections.
Politico says Briggs confirmed it's not just workers in the 5 states being let go -- workers have been "trickling out" of the Burlington, Vermont headquarters since March.
The campaign has let field staffers go before — including early in March, after his sweeping losses on Super Tuesday — and aides have been trickling out of the organization in recent weeks. But Wednesday’s move signifies a bigger move to reshape the size of the campaign operation.
The losses are primarily in the five states that voted on Tuesday, but other staff have also recently left the campaign, including some based in the Burlington, Vermont, headquarters. Briggs said field staff from other states may leave the campaign as well.
The real problem may be money -- notwithstanding Sanders' large war chest. Like Jeb Bush, he may have spent too much too fast. Politico writes:
While Sanders has raised large amounts of money online, and started April with $17 million according to his most recent Federal Election Commission report, he has also spent at a very high rate, including $46 million in March. It is unclear how much money his campaign currently has on hand.
So is Sanders in or out? I think he's giving lip service to still being in the race for the nomination because he wants to keep the donations coming. Who's going to donate to him just so he can have a say in the Democratic Party platform?
