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Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders' campaign manager Jeff Weaver, speaks in the spin room after the Brown & Black Forum, Monday, Jan. 11, 2016. | AP Photo Sanders: 'We are in this campaign to win'

WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. — Fresh off four bruising losses that all but shut the door on a realistic path to the Democratic nomination Tuesday night, Bernie Sanders said he still thinks he can beat Hillary Clinton.

"Let me make this clear, so there is no confusion: We are in this campaign to win, and become the Democratic nominee," he told a crowd at Purdue University ahead of Indiana's May 3 primary, insisting that he can still finish with more pledged delegates.

To do so, he would need to win roughly two-thirds of all the pledged delegates left after his losses in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Maryland, and Delaware on Tuesday. (He won Rhode Island.)

Sanders currently trails Clinton by well over 200 delegates.

He then previewed a more likely fight: a convention scrap over the party's platform.

"But if we do not win, we intend to win every delegate that we can, so that when we go to Philadelphia in July we are going to have the votes to put together the strongest progressive agenda that any political party has ever seen," he said. "Our goal, whether we win or we do not win, is to transform the Democratic Party, to open the doors to working people, to senior citizens, to young people, in a way that does not exist today."



Jeff Weaver, Sanders' campaign manager, echoed those remarks Wednesday, saying that he "absolutely" sees a path to victory for the Vermont senator.

Weaver said on CNN that he expects Sanders to have good performances in upcoming state contests, particularly in California on June 7, which he thinks the senator will win.

"This is a campaign for winning, and I think when you watch his speeches today in Indiana, they are going to look a lot like his speeches from Monday. There's not really any change in the campaign. The campaign is going forward, it has a plan," Weaver said. "This is a campaign for the nomination, for victory, and to transform as Bernie says the country and the party."

He added: "It is certainly an uphill fight, but it's been an uphill fight since we started this campaign."

Repeating an argument that surrogates and the candidate himself have made frequently, Weaver said that closed primaries have hurt Sanders by blocking the support of independent voters. And he argued that Sanders can pull independents away from Donald Trump.

But Weaver shot down Trump's suggestion that Sanders run as an independent.

"Mr. Trump's been saying a lot of nice things in the last 48 hours, but believe me, Bernie Sanders is committed to making sure that Donald Trump does not get into the White House," Weaver said.

Gabriel Debenedetti reported from West Lafayette, Ind.