Sanders said Sunday west coast is ‘probably the most progressive part of America’ where ‘people are not going to be voting for establishment politics’

Bernie Sanders: Clinton 'creamed us' in south but west coast will be better

Bernie Sanders on Sunday admitted he had been “creamed” in many southern states by his rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, Hillary Clinton, but said Democrats were “not going to win those states in the general election”.

Sanders, speaking on CBS, was asked about the delegate math that gives Clinton a nigh-insurmountable lead in delegates and superdelegates combined.

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Sanders said his campaign had a good path forward even though “the deep south” was “not a strong area for us”, and pointed out that in Illinois and Missouri the campaigns nearly split the delegates available despite Clinton winning the states.

“She creamed us in Mississippi and Louisiana and South Carolina,” he said, before adding that Democrats are “not going to win those states in the general election”.



“As we head to the west coast, which is probably the most progressive part of America, I think as you go forward you’re going to see us doing better and better.”

“Those people are not going to be voting for establishment politics. They want real change.”



He added: “Hillary Clinton has moved over the last 10 months to the positions I’ve been advocating for the last 20 or 30 years. Our history in politics is very different and I think the people of this country deserve to know that.”



Clinton, he said, was receiving “many millions of dollars through your Super Pac, from Wall Street, drug companies”. Posing a rhetorical question to voters, he said: “Are you really going to be the agent of change, taking on Wall Street, taking on the moneyed interests?

“That is an issue that the voters are going to have to decide.”

Asked about delegates again, and whether he was trying to court superdelegates away from Clinton, Sanders said: “The whole concept of superdelegates is problematic.”

Superdelegates are elected Democratic officials and other party insiders who are not bound to support a candidate according to how their states vote. They give the party an outsize say in determining a candidate, and were created in 1982 after several outsider candidates won the party nomination.

The system was a point of complaint for both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama’s 2008 campaigns, although the vast majority of delegates – 4,051, compared to 712 superdelegates this year – are divvied up according to voting results and state rules.

But Sanders suggested the free-agent delegates should listen to their constiutencies this year: “I think it might be a good idea for superdelegates to listen to the people in their own state.”

“I just talked to a person the other day who said, ‘You know what? I am going to listen to my state, and if my state votes for you, Bernie, you’re going to have my vote.’”

He also argued that he stands in the best position to defeat Republican frontrunner Donald Trump in the general election, and said that delegates would hear his point. “I think you’re doing to see some superdelegates saying, ‘You know what, I like Hillary Clinton, but I want to win this thing. Bernie is our guy.’”