Bernie Sanders vowed to fight on despite losing any hope of gaining the Democratic nomination in a speech from Santa Monica, California, just a day after the Associated Press and most other major news organizations reported that frontrunner Hillary Clinton had, in fact, secured enough delegates to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination.
Scroll down this page to watch a full replay of the Bernie Sanders election night rally in Santa Monica.
But in a statement issued shortly after the AP announcement, Bernie Sanders disputed whether Clinton had really clinched the nomination, because the unpledged “superdelegates” who have pledged to vote for her could still change their minds and switch to backing Sanders.
So Bernie Sanders election night rally starts at 10 pm in Santa Monica. He usually speaks for an hour, guaranteeing a late night for media.
— Judy Farah (@newsbabe1530) June 6, 2016
According to a count by The Green Papers election data site, Clinton has won 1,811 pledged delegates to just 1,526 for Sanders — a shortfall of 285 pledged delegates for the Vermont senator.
With 694 delegates at stake in six primaries on Tuesday — in California, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Dakota, North Dakota, and Montana — Clinton must win just 215, or 31 percent, to reach 2,026 which is a majority of pledged delegates in the race.
Watch the ABC News report of the AP delegate count confirming that Hillary Clinton has won the nomination in the following video.
That means she would need 357 unpledged, or “super” delegates to vote for her at the Democratic National Convention in July, to give her 2,383, or a majority of both pledged and unpledged delegates combined.
“Secretary Clinton does not have and will not have the requisite number of pledged delegates to secure the nomination. She will be dependent on superdelegates who do not vote until July 25 and who can change their minds between now and then,” said Bernie Sanders campaign spokesperson Michael Briggs in a statement Monday, following the AP report. “They include more than 400 superdelegates who endorsed Secretary Clinton 10 months before the first caucuses and primaries and long before any other candidate was in the race.”
Bernie Sanders himself vowed to fight on in a fiery speech Monday at a rally in San Francisco. Watch a full replay of that speech in the video below.
To watch a full replay of the defiant Bernie Sanders election night speech at Santa Monica Airport in Santa Monica, California, click on the video below.
Though publicly Bernie Sanders was striking a defiant pose , according to some reports, behind the scenes the campaign has taken on a gloomy atmosphere, leading to speculation that Sanders will use the Santa Monica election night rally to finally bow out of the contest for the 2016 Democratic presidential nomination — throwing his support behind Hillary Clinton in her race to defeat Republican Donald Trump and become the first woman in the 240-year history of the United States to become president.
A report by MSNBC campaign correspondent Kasie Hunt on Monday suggested that even Sanders may now realize that his quest for the Democratic nomination has ended in failure.
“He had some aggressive comments over the weekend suggesting he’s going to stay in this,” Hunt reported on the news network. “But I will say, I’m picking up from some sources — I covered the Sanders campaign for quite some time — that the mood in the campaign is a little bit more solemn than you might expect, even for the candidate himself and his family.”
WATCH: @BernieSanders rides a merry-go-round in Santa Monica, CA https://t.co/acl6WAVNfT https://t.co/cJY5VwdbFX
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) June 6, 2016
On Saturday at a rally in Los Angeles, Sanders said that he planned to take what he called his “enormous momentum” all the way to the convention, which opens in Philadelphia on July 25.
“If we can win, and win big here in California and in the other states, and in Washington D.C., we are going to go into the Democratic convention with enormous momentum,” Sanders told his loyal followers. “With your help, I believe, we will come out with the nomination.”
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If Bernie Sanders does not end his campaign at the Santa Monica election night rally, he has not yet announced whether he will hold any rallies in Washington, D.C., where the final primary contest of 2016 takes place on June 14.
[Featured Photo By Scott Olson / Getty Images]