Bernie Sanders has flip-flopped strategically in the weeks since Hillary Clinton put a near-lock on the Democratic presidential nomination. At times he has vowed to battle Clinton through the party’s July convention. At other times he has shifted his stated goal to building a movement, a tacit admission that his own fight is over.

Both of those possibilities could be read into remarks the Vermont senator made Monday night in Sacramento and Tuesday morning in Stockton as he opened his campaign for California. But the one he seemed to relish the most was the possibility of beating Clinton in the June 7 primary in a state so central to her family’s political fortunes.

In rallies with the usual Sanders touches — thousands of adoring fans, a hoarse candidate feeding and feeding off of their passion — the senator pulled few rhetorical punches. He skewered Clinton’s positions on climate change, the minimum wage, the environment, the Iraq war, and the future of giant American banks. He mocked her connections to Wall Street — adding his usual suggestion that she is part and parcel of a “corrupt” system.

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“Secretary Clinton has also given speeches on Wall Street for $225,000 a speech,” he said in Sacramento, standing before giant American and California flags as thousands booed the mention of her name.

But for a single line — a mid-sentence acknowledgment that he has to climb a “steep hill” to win the Democratic nomination — Sanders ignored the very real impediments that make it almost impossible for him to overtake the front-runner.

Clinton has nearly 300 more pledged delegates than Sanders, in addition to a net advantage of almost 500 unpledged superdelegates. Because of the proportional way Democrats award delegates, it would take mammoth wins by Sanders in all remaining states, with margins yet unseen this election season, to draw close to Clinton.

The former secretary of State could lose every state until the end of the primary season and still have more delegates than Sanders. She only needs to win a little over a third of the remaining vote to prevail.

But no front-runner wants to limp into the nominating convention, and a string of Clinton losses would further unnerve Democrats already worried about the unpredictability of a fight with Donald Trump.


That, plus Sanders’ tough rhetoric, signals continued turbulence for Clinton, both in terms of her desire to shift attention to Trump, and in terms of the time and money she will need to spend to guard against a late-season embarrassment here.

Doubling her difficulties is Trump, who is delivering an anti-Clinton yin to Sanders’ yang.

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In recent days, Trump has attempted to break into Clinton’s huge lead among women in high-wire fashion, by casting her as a sort of anti-feminist who enabled President Clinton’s extramarital affairs and “destroyed” the women involved.


The move has a huge potential for backlash, considering the view of many women that Hillary Clinton was a victim, not a victimizer, when it came to her husband’s actions. (And then there is all of Trump’s other baggage involving women, which already has been the target of both anti-Trump Republicans and a Clinton-allied super-PAC.)

At best, from his perspective, Trump’s argument represents a gender variation on George W. Bush’s 2004 campaign strategy against Democratic nominee John F. Kerry. The Bush effort went after a perceived strength: Kerry’s service in Vietnam. Trump is going after Clinton’s strength among women.

That may be giving the new Trump thrust too much credit for strategy, but whether he was operating on planning or just pique, he did at least seem to be working in tandem with Sanders’ continued approach.

Trump was reminding voters who may see the Clinton years rosily — or who may not be old enough to remember them at all — of the more tawdry elements left unmentioned by Hillary Clinton when she touts the millions of jobs gained during her husband’s tenure. (Trump’s comments have been amplified by repetition in an almost endless loop on cable news programs.)


Sanders’ message rests on a related notion: that Clinton represents the Democratic Party, policies and approaches of the past.

“In every primary, in every caucus election up to now, this campaign has won the overwhelming majority of votes of people under 45 years of age and what that tells me and should tell everyone is that our vision of a nation which strives for economic, social, racial and environmental justice is the vision for America’s future,” he said in Sacramento, adding pointedly: “Our agenda is the future of America and the future of the Democratic Party.”

The danger for Clinton is that both messages underscore one of the prime criticisms of her candidacy: Been there, done that.

While her unfavorable ratings are not as spectacularly deep as Trump’s, they are worse than most successful candidates’ negative assessments. And much of that derives from criticisms of her that date back to the era referenced by Trump and the policies mentioned by Sanders.


Clinton has largely ignored Sanders of late, barely mentioning him in a multi-stop visit to California last week. She has aimed her fire at Trump’s positions, and on Monday refused to discuss his comments about her actions surrounding her husband’s infidelity.

She positioned herself as looking forward, not back to the past.

“I have nothing to say about him and how he’s running his campaign,” she told reporters in Aldie, Va., on Monday.


“I’m going to let him run his campaign however he chooses. I’m going to run my campaign, which is about a positive vision for our country with specific plans that I think will help us solve problems that we’re facing,” she said. “I am going to continue to really reach out to people, to listen to people and to make the case for the kind of president that I would like to be.”

Clinton campaign aides are confident that the same appeal that delivered California to Clinton over Barack Obama during their 2008 campaign will lead her to a win over Sanders this year.

With a month to go before California’s votes are tallied, however, neither Sanders nor Trump was ceding any ground.

cathleen.decker@latimes.com


Follow me on Twitter: @cathleendecker. For more on politics, go to latimes.com/decker.

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