In the last week or so, Bernie Sanders has been questioned twice on national television about high-profile endorsements that he didn’t win. Both times, he provided strange answers.

The most publicized incident occurred on MSNBC during an interview with anchor Rachel Maddow last Tuesday night. Asked whether he had competed for the endorsements of Planned Parenthood, Human Rights Campaign, and NARAL Pro-Choice America, all of which he lost to Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, the senator from Vermont replied that “some of these groups” were part of the “political establishment” that he’s “taking on.” Two days later, Sanders contradicted many of his own defenders, saying that the groups aren’t “establishment” and that “they’re standing up and fighting the important fights that need to be fought.” Walking it back helped to calm things down, as did belatedly joining Clinton on Friday in demanding a repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which prevents federal funding for abortions.

Less noted—but arguably more damning—was something Sanders said two days before the Maddow interview, at the final Democratic presidential debate before next week’s Iowa caucuses. Moderator Lester Holt, the NBC Nightly News anchor, reminded Sanders that Clinton has been endorsed by Congressional Black Caucus chairman G.K. Butterfield—and that the congressman from North Carolina had written at theGrio that it “was not a hard decision.” Holt noted Sanders’s deep polling deficit among minority voters and asked, “How can you be the nominee if you don’t have that support?”

“When the African American community becomes familiar with my congressional record and with our agenda, and with our views on the economy, and criminal justice,” Sanders replied, “just as the general population has become more supportive, so will the African American community, so will the Latino community. We have the momentum, we’re on a path to a victory.”

Bernie Sanders embraces Cornel West in Iowa. Alex Wong/Getty Images

I can see why this line might make sense, especially to those white Sanders supporters who seem quizzical about why black voters have been slower to “feel the Bern.” His argument that he’s simply less familiar to voters of color than Clinton certainly holds weight; her husband may have been the most effective white politician as far as interracial political appeal in my lifetime.