Even as wins in the Kansas and Nebraska caucuses appeared to revive the flagging Bernie Sanders campaign, Hillary Clinton was trying to preemptively stop it.

Hours before the results were declared Saturday, the Clinton campaign announced its pledged delegate lead had grown to 199 on Super Tuesday — larger than Barack Obama’s highest margin during the 2008 primary and a stockpile that makes it very difficult for Bernie Sanders to catch up.


Clinton’s delegate lead only increased with her thumping victory in the Louisiana primary, even as Sanders prepared to add yet another small caucus state to his column. Maine, which votes Sunday, is expected to throw its support behind Sanders, too.

Clinton operatives have yet to make any overt calls for the Vermont senator to suspend his campaign as his path to the nomination becomes narrower. But since Clinton’s blowout victory in South Carolina late last month, the campaign has continually highlighted the delegate math, hoping the deficit will make the argument itself.

Now, Sanders has a difficult path to the nomination and no apparent eagerness to drop out. His top aides and supporters began making a new argument to justify the long slog: It’s great for Clinton.

It’s not an opinion necessarily shared in her circles. Clinton insiders are eager to begin recruiting to their cause Republicans turned off by the prospect of Donald Trump — and the threat of Sanders sticking it out until June makes the general election pivot more difficult.

But even if Sanders can’t win, his operatives contend, his participation in the process will boost turnout among Democratic voters and keeps Clinton in the news — the alternative, they argue, is ceding months of headlines to Trump and the fractured Republican Party.

“It’s important to vigorously contest these contests, and Bernie Sanders is capable of bringing millions of new people into the process,” said Sanders’ senior strategist Tad Devine, citing exit polls from Massachusetts, a Super Tuesday state Clinton won, that showed 17 percent of voters were new to the process and those voters overwhelmingly supported Sanders.

Democratic turnout could be a time bomb for the party — about 3 million fewer Democrats voted in the 15 states that held primaries or caucuses through March 1 than did in 2008. Meanwhile, Trump’s candidacy has turned out droves of new voters.

“If Bernie can turn out voters all across America, that’s very important for the nominee; it’s important for Democrats up and down the ballot,” Devine said. “If not, you cede the ground to the opposition in the months ahead, and they’re putting on quite a show. If you look at John McCain in 2008, you can see that argument makes a lot of sense.”

In the 2008 race, Devine said, when Clinton and Obama engaged in a primary that lasted through June, “McCain was forgotten about and eclipsed. That’s a factor they should consider. And unlike the Republicans, Bernie Sanders is not engaging in these gross personal attacks. It can be very constructive.”

In 2008, however, Devine seemed to make a different argument about the value of an extended primary. In an appearance on “Hardball” with Chris Matthews that year, he said of the raging primary battle between Clinton and Obama: “if this race degenerates, it will hurt who the nominee is.”

How constructive the rest of the primary stands to be is a looming question for Clinton. “As long as she is winning, and as long as she isn’t forced to constantly try and maneuver to the left of Bernie Sanders,” it’s not a bad thing, former Mitt Romney strategist Kevin Madden said of Sanders remaining in the race. “That’s the biggest risk that Bernie Sanders has posed and could continue to pose, which is that a number of times during this campaign, Hillary Clinton has been forced to abandon the centrist Clinton brand to try and out-liberal an avowed socialist.”

Leading into the weekend, Sanders was still playing offense — just before Clinton’s big jobs speech in Detroit on Friday, his campaign released the transcript of a speech she delivered in India as secretary of state, talking up the benefits of outsourcing jobs abroad.

So far, Clinton’s campaign has interpreted many of Sanders’ attacks as a stealth campaign to raise questions about her authenticity and character. But other progressives agreed that a tussle over the issues would be positive for Clinton. “Democrats could go dark for weeks as Donald Trump gets tons of election night airtime with the ‘winner’ label attributed to him over and over again, uninterrupted,” said Adam Green, co-founder of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee.

Steve Schmidt, who served as chief strategist for McCain’s failed 2008 bid, disagreed with Devine’s argument that the prolonged Democratic battle hurts the Republican nominee. “There are two finite commodities on a political campaign — time and money,” Schmidt said. “The more time you have, the more money you can raise. The notion that you are better off in being delayed in being able to turn to the general election is wrong.” The spring months, he said, would be better used building the billion-dollar organizing infrastructure needed to hone a general election message and win in November.

Some Republican operatives also said they expected between 35 percent and 40 percent of the GOP electorate to walk on Trump, if he becomes the party’s nominee. And Clinton needs to move to the middle to begin reaching out to those voters and convincing them: We agree on more than you think.

In recent weeks, Clinton ally and Correct the Record founder David Brock has been pushing the idea within Clinton circles that the trend lines in the Republican race present a big opportunity for a GOP crossover vote for Clinton — and that there should be an organized effort to help make that happen. Last week, for instance, former Republican New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman said she would support Clinton over Trump, a move that is expected to be a gateway for other Republican voters to follow suit.

But with Clinton stuck in a battle against Sanders — she faces him in a debate Sunday night in Flint, Michigan, and will debate him again Wednesday in Miami — it’s harder to begin making the pivot.

“Sen. Sanders remaining in the race allows his anti-Wall Street, anti-elite rhetoric to target Clinton constantly,” said Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf. “Bernie Sanders helps Trump, the angry populist, every day he remains a candidate.”