Hilary Clinton is the first woman to ever win the Iowa caucuses. | AP Photo Memo from Clinton's campaign manager: Sanders can't win

MANCHESTER, N.H. — In a memo to top fundraisers on Tuesday, Hillary Clinton's campaign manager sought to manage expectations for her campaign in New Hampshire while explaining her narrow victory in Iowa Monday and making the case that Bernie Sanders is no longer a viable candidate for the nomination.

“New Hampshire is Bernie Sanders’ backyard. Vermont shares a media market with New Hampshire, and the voters of New Hampshire have a history of supporting candidates from New England,” wrote Robby Mook in the note, according to copy obtained by POLITICO. “So it’s not surprising that Sanders maintains a double-digit lead in the polls there."


It’s a message that the campaign has worked overtime to promote as Clinton continues to trail Sanders in the state that votes Feb. 9, and it comes shortly before some high-level Clinton fundraisers descend on the state for a summit in Nashua where they will be briefed on campaign strategy — and where they will have some tough questions for the campaign staff after the razor-thin victory in Iowa.

In the more-than-800-word note that went out to fundraisers on Tuesday, the campaign manager also mapped out Clinton’s path forward past Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, and South Carolina. Making no mention of any Republican candidates, he made the demographic case for Clinton and against Sanders.

“It’s important to remember that while the first four states receive a lot of attention, they only represent 4% of the delegates needed to win the nomination,” he wrote. “The states with primaries and caucuses in March represent 56% of the delegates needed to win the nomination, with nearly half of those delegates awarded on Super Tuesday alone. Seven of the 11 Super Tuesday states have large minority populations — including Alabama, Georgia and Texas, which are expected to see majority-minority turnouts."

“The reality is that Sanders needed a decisive victory in Iowa in order to have a viable path to the nomination,” he wrote, also pointing out that the Sanders camp had said it would win with a turnout of over 170,000 — a number that was surpassed without a Sanders victory. "His own campaign said repeatedly that Sanders needed to win in Iowa, which based on demographics and ideology, should have been one of his strongest states."

The tone of the missive was largely positive, and it opens with a reminder that Clinton is the first woman to ever win the Iowa caucuses, as well as a note that the makeup of the electorate — largely white and liberal — favored Sanders.

But it also had undertones of caution, subtly pre-butting the worries that some Democrats have started whispering about in the wake of Clinton’s less-than-resounding victory on Monday.

"From day one, we’ve said that we expect this primary to be competitive. Running for president isn’t supposed to be easy,” the note concludes. "That’s why we’ve built a national organization designed to secure the delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination. We are on a path to do just that."