Sanders Won't Back Down Just Yet

The presidential primaries are nearly over with. There are just a few more Democratic contests in May and April before the highly anticipated July convention. There are still 1,243 delegates available to the party, with 14 contests remaining. Former Sec. of State Hillary Clinton is leading Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, with 1,645 of the 2,383 delegates needed to secure the nomination. Sanders trails with 1,318. He's confident that winning is still possible, but that some changes need to happen at the level of the Democratic establishment. Specifically, he says that it's time that superdelegates start voting with the general public, rather than just with their interests.

Currently, Clinton has picked up the most superdelegates in the primary races thus far. She holds 520 superdelegates compared to Sanders' 39, which doesn't seem like a "fair" allocation of superdelegates, considering that neither candidate has won any state by such a huge margin to create so large of a difference. Instead, many superdelegates came out in support of Clinton even before Sanders announced he was running, and many others have sided with Clinton, even in states that Sanders has won.

According to CNN, during a Sunday news conference in Washington, Sanders said that the road to a nomination is certainly going to be tough, but that it's not impossible. He also said, "Those superdelegates in states where either candidate has won landslide victories ought to seriously reflect on whether they should cast their superdelegate vote in line with the wishes of the people in their states." Thus far, even in states where Bernie did win big, superdelegates didn't side with him — or, more importantly, with voters.

Even with Clinton's 1,645 delegates, it's very possible that she will have a tough time winning the 2,383 total that she needs to secure the nomination ahead of the July convention. There are still 942 pledged delegates at stake in the remaining Democratic contests. However, Clinton won't be winning all of them, and she still needs 738 more to secure the nomination.

Sanders knows this, too. During Sunday's news conference, he said, "It is virtually impossible for Secretary Clinton to reach the majority of convention delegates by June 14 with pledged delegates alone ... In other words, the convention will be a contested convention." Sanders won't be backing down so easily.