MIAMI — Fresh off a commanding Super Tuesday performance, Hillary Clinton now faces her newest problem: How to win over Bernie Sanders while he refuses to give up.

The results of the 11 states that voted March 1 widened Clinton’s delegate lead and made Sanders’ task of catching up to Clinton even more daunting -- and implausible. While Sanders held his own in a handful of states – he won Minnesota, Colorado, Oklahoma and Vermont -- the former secretary of state carried Massachusetts and steamrolled him in the South with decisive wins in Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee, Alabama and Virginia, where she won black voters by landslide margins, according to exit polls.


“All across our country today, Democrats voted to break down barriers so we can all rise together,” Clinton said at her Miami victory rally, previewing a unification message for the Democratic Party. “This country belongs to all of us….not just the people who look one way, worship one way, or even think one way.”

Her speech was a letter addressed to Donald Trump, but there was just one problem: Clinton is still stuck in a primary – and Sanders gave no sign Tuesday night that he was ready to leave the race anytime soon.

The two Democrats still have to share the debate stage twice over the next 10 days. And Clinton will still have to continue drawing contrasts with Sanders ahead of the March 5 and March 6 contests -- when Kansas, Louisiana, Maine and Nebraska all vote – before she can turn her full attention to the unpredictable Trump.

Trump’s nearly across-the-board victories Tuesday focused the race on a general election, threatening to leave Sanders as a side show.

Even as Sanders attempts to push forward, Tuesday night’s results fundamentally altered his role in the Democratic primary -- from serious presidential contender to grassroots icon.

“If Sanders stays in the race, he’ll become a candidate running on a message, rather than a platform that he plans to enact,” said Ben LaBolt, an adviser to President Obama’s 2008 campaign. “Secretary Clinton faces a delicate balancing act – appealing to a general election audience while making clear that she remains concerned about income inequality and the outsized role special interests play in the political process.”

Sanders admitted as much in his election night party in Vermont. “This campaign is not just about electing a president,” he told supporters, indicating he would soldier on to promote his message of a rigged economy.

The 74-year-old Democratic Socialist was chastened by his stunning, near-50-point loss in South Carolina, sources close to him said. But Sanders has been telling his advisers that he has two driving motivations for staying in the race: First, he wants to out-raise Clinton -- an establishment candidate with access to Wall Street cash -- to prove Democrats can thrive financially by locking out the special interest donors.

The competitive politician belied by Sanders’ rumpled suit has been telling people around him that he cannot bow out as long as continues to poll better than Clinton in some head-to-head match-ups.

But the calls for him to drop out began as the first polls closed Tuesday night.

“Our view is that the primary race is done, and she’ll treat it that way,” said Jonathan Cowan, a former adviser to Bill Clinton and president of the moderate think tank Third Way. “If the Sanders campaign stays in the race and goes after Clinton when it is obvious they can’t win, they will only be making it that much harder for Democrats to win the White House in the fall – and in the era of Trump, that’s a very dangerous game to play.”

The Clinton campaign, sources said, has no plans to leverage Tuesday night’s success into efforts to pressure Sanders out of the race – in part because Sanders’ operatives have already made clear they plan to carry on well into the spring.

“Everybody has to make their own decisions,” Clinton told POLITICO when asked if Sanders should get out of the race. Clinton spoke to reporters briefly while visiting a coffee shop in Minneapolis Tuesday -- she flew 1,300 miles for a toe touch in the caucus state Sanders ultimately won.

But Clinton has little footing to push Sanders out of the race after he defeated her in four states Tuesday, and may even understand his motivation for staying in -- she waged a protracted battle against Obama through June in 2008, even after it became virtually impossible for her to catch up with him after the 11 straight victories he won following Super Tuesday that year.

But Democrats said Sanders is in a weaker position than Clinton was eight years ago. “While we were building a strong delegate lead, she continued to win big states and there was some chance she could regain the momentum needed to win the nomination,” LaBolt said. “After tonight, it would take a miracle for him to come back and win the nomination.”

Clinton has been incorporating more contrasts to Trump into her stump speech since her landslide victory in South Carolina last weekend. "Instead of building walls, we're going to break down barriers," she said Tuesday night.

Democratic strategists said it would be wise for her to double down on a general election message to remind voters of the high stakes ahead.

“The more you focus on the big stakes of the election, the better,” former Obama strategist David Axelrod told POLITICO. “And in that pursuit, Donald Trump may be a great gift.”

LaBolt also predicted that “Donald Trump will do as much to unify the Democratic Party as any Democratic nominee is going to. The threat of an opposition that presents the absolute opposite of Barack Obama’s record and temperament may coalesce the party on its own.”

Those close to Sanders said they expect he’ll use the next two weeks to decide on his path forward, while understanding that the calendar and the delegate math do not add up for him.

But he’s not giving up. "At the moment we believe he can still win this thing,” said a veteran Democrat close to the campaign. “We have to adjust the argument."

There's likely to be a significant tonal shift, Sanders' camp said, given Clinton's clear strength with delegates and super-delegates. After riding the momentum of his 22-point victory in New Hampshire last month, Sanders’ back-to-back losses in Nevada and South Carolina have changed the psychology of his campaign -- the Hillary Clinton they had been told to fear finally showed up.

"She's running really hard now -- that wasn't necessarily the case before," said a staffer at the center of Sanders' New Hampshire win. "She's good."