Top aides from the Bernie Sanders campaign promised Wednesday afternoon that things are about to dramatically change in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination contest.
Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver and senior strategist Tad Devine took reporters questions about the state of the race hours after a disappointing Tuesday that saw Sanders win fewer delegates than Clinton and win no states, despite conditions about as favorable as they could be for a Sanders victory.
In the morning, NBC News calculated that Sanders would need to earn 65% of all the remaining pledged delegates to win the party's nomination, a feat "which is almost impossible under the Democrats' proportional system," according to the calculations.
BuzzFeed News asked Weaver if the Sanders campaign could be called a "long shot" from Wednesday forward.
"It is what it has always been, which is an uphill fight," he said. "This campaign from day one has always been an uphill fight, there's no doubt about it. We started with no infrastructure, no money, no name recognition outside of small area of the country."
Devine and Weaver sketched out their map for the future, which despite the long odds in terms of delegate math, they said was a path that favored Sanders. They promised Sanders would do well in upcoming western caucuses and primaries, including in the final state on the Democratic map in 2016, California. The campaign aides said Sanders would do well in New York, the state Clinton calls home and that she represented in the Senate.
Devine again returned to his often-repeated notion of the Democratic contest as a "dynamic" race. Things happen, he has said before, and he said Sanders intends to stick around until the end to take advantage of the way things change over the coming months.
Weaver said Sanders path will remain a tough one.
"It has always been an uphill fight and it continues to be," he said. "And it will continue to be an uphill fight until we pass the secretary in pledged delegates."