Bernie Sanders is still running against Hillary Clinton. But by the end of Tuesday night, Clinton made it clear she now sees Donald Trump as her real rival.



Clinton took won four of five primaries, and while Sanders notched a win in Rhode Island, Clinton’s victories in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut and Delaware made her the night’s unambiguous victor — and added to her ballooning delegate lead.




By the time Clinton took the stage Tuesday night, she seemed ready to put the primary behind her and take the fight to Republicans in the general election.



Speaking to a large crowd in Philadelphia, where Democrats will hold their national convention, Clinton directed her criticism exclusively at Trump and other Republicans. For Sanders, she offered praise, gratitude — and an appeal to the senator and his supporters to unite behind her ahead of the general election.



“There’s much more that unites us than divides us,” Clinton said, before reciting a list of policy priorities that she and Sanders share. “We will have to work hard together to prevail against candidates from the other side.”

Clinton’s speech followed a week in which her campaign repeatedly asserted Sanders’ window to capture the nomination had closed. But despite Tuesday’s losses, Sanders campaign kept up its vow to keep the contest going through the general election — even as he signaled, in an acknowledgment of his dimming prospects, his interest in shaping the Democratic platform.



"The people in every state in this country should have the right to determine who they want as president and what the agenda of the Democratic Party should be,” Sanders said in a statement congratulating Clinton on her wins. “That's why we are in this race until the last vote is cast.”



But the statement also pointed to a new focus.





"That is why this campaign is going to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia with as many delegates as possible to fight for a progressive party platform that calls for a $15 an hour minimum wage, an end to our disastrous trade policies, a Medicare-for-all health care system, breaking up Wall Street financial institutions, ending fracking in our country, making public colleges and universities tuition free and passing a carbon tax so we can effectively address the planetary crisis of climate change," the statement read.



Speaking earlier in the evening at a rally in West Virginia, Sanders repeated familiar themes about how far his long-shot campaign had come from its early days and said he performed better in polling match-ups against Trump than did Clinton. He also criticized closed primaries, saying that independents whose votes will count in the general election should not be locked out of picking the Democratic nominee.



"We were in New York state last week [and] 3 million people in New York state could not vote because they were independents,” Sanders said. “Well you know what? Those folks and independents all over the country will be voting in November for the next president of the United States.”

His campaign hit that theme again in a post-results statement, noting that Sanders had won Rhode Island, the one open primary held Tuesday.



The New York Times reported Tuesday that the candidate will huddle with his advisors on Wednesday to “reassess where his candidacy stands,” a meeting that comes as his campaign tries to figure out an endgame for a campaign that came farther than most anyone expected.

With superdelegates included, Clinton now has 90 percent of the delegates she needs to clinch the Democratic nomination, according to the Associated Press.



Before Tuesday, Clinton had 1,428 to Sanders’ 1,153. With superdelegates, she led Sanders 1,944 delegates to 1,192.

There were a total of 384 pledged delegates at stake Tuesday, 284 of them coming from Pennsylvania and Maryland.

As with all states in the Democratic primary, the five states voting Tuesday award delegates proportionally based on the popular vote. With 90 percent of the vote counted in Maryland, Clinton had 63 percent of the vote to Sanders’ 33 percent. And with 91 percent of the vote counted in Pennsylvania, Clinton had about 55 percent of the vote to Sanders’ 43 percent. Clinton notched a big win in Delaware and a narrow one in Connecticut.

The lone bright spot for Sanders in Rhode Island. Polls in the week ahead of the primary had the two candidates close, but Sanders won by 11 percentage points.



The losses were widely expected for Sanders, but in the week ahead of the contests, he continued swinging.

At an MSNBC town hall Monday night, he said he’d do whatever he could to keep a Republican out of the White House, whether he wins the nomination or not. He added, however, that if Clinton wanted his supporters to back her, it was her job to bring them over, saying they have “serious misgivings about a candidate who has received millions of dollars from Wall Street and other special interests.”

He also called on Clinton to back his plan to expand Medicare and to take a more aggressive stance on reducing fossil fuel use to address climate change.

Sanders also discussed the prospect of naming a female vice president Tuesday, saying “there are many women who would be qualified” during an appearance on MSNBC’s "Morning Joe."

He added that Elizabeth Warren “has been a real champion in standing up for working families."

On Tuesday, his wife Jane Sanders said the campaign would release tax returns from earlier years when Clinton released the transcripts of paid speeches she gave to Wall Street financial firms.

In the run-up to the primary, the Clinton campaign pounded the message that Sanders had already lost.

"We believe we are going to expand our lead in pledged delegates," chief Clinton pollster and strategist Joel Benenson said ahead of Tuesday’s contests on MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports." "It’s going to, you know, make it virtually impossible for Senator Sanders to catch us after this as the nominee."

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who supports Clinton, was more direct when asked whether he believes Sanders could win: “No. I do not," he said.

