Bernie Sanders's campaign put out a statement tonight that, for the first time, implicitly admits what delegate-counters have been saying for a few weeks now: He's not going to be the nominee. 
 
 He's not going to drop out of the race, but in the opening paragraph of his statement he speaks of looking forward "to issue-oriented campaigns in the 14 contests to come" — an indication that he'll be ratcheting-down the anti-Clinton rhetoric, not ratcheting it up. But the real bombshell comes later in the statement when he describes the goal of amassing delegates primarily in terms of influencing the party platform rather than determining the nominee. 
 
 Read the whole thing (with emphasis added): 
 
 I congratulate Secretary Clinton on her victories tonight, and I look forward to issue-oriented campaigns in the 14 contests to come. I am proud that we were able to win a resounding victory tonight in Rhode Island, the one state with an open primary where independents had a say in the outcome. Democrats should recognize that the ticket with the best chance of winning this November must attract support from independents as well as Democrats. I am proud of my campaign’s record in that regard. The people in every state in this country should have the right to determine who they want as president and what the agenda of the Democratic Party should be. That’s why we are in this race until the last vote is cast. That is why this campaign is going to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia with as many delegates as possible to fight for a progressive party platform that calls for a $15 an hour minimum wage, an end to our disastrous trade policies, a Medicare-for-all health care system, breaking up Wall Street financial institutions, ending fracking in our country, making public colleges and universities tuition free and passing a carbon tax so we can effectively address the planetary crisis of climate change. 
 
 This amounts to a savvy, classy way to begin winding down a campaign that was much more successful than anyone expected it to be but still quite far from actually winning. Sanders is staying in the race and giving his supporters something to vote for, thus giving his operation something to continue organizing around. 
 
 The reality, however, is that while the text of the platform is a good focal point, it's not especially important in the grand scheme of things. The real test for the political revolution's lasting impact will be whether Bernie and Bernie's supporters can help Bernie-style candidates win down-ballot races and influence the composition of Democratic caucuses in Congress and state legislatures. ||||| Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton points to members in the audience after speaking at the 2016 Legislative Conference of North America's Building Trades Unions in Washington, Tuesday,... (Associated Press) 
 
 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton points to members in the audience after speaking at the 2016 Legislative Conference of North America's Building Trades Unions in Washington, Tuesday, April 19, 2016. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) (Associated Press) 
 
 NEW YORK (AP) — Front-runners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton swept to resounding victories in Tuesday's New York primary, with Trump bouncing back from a difficult stretch in his Republican campaign and Clinton pushing tantalizingly close to locking up the Democratic nomination. 
 
 "The race for the nomination is in the home stretch, and victory is in sight," Clinton declared to cheering supporters. 
 
 Trump captured more than 50 percent of the vote in New York and was headed toward a big delegate haul in his home state, a commanding showing that keeps him on a path to the GOP nomination if he continues to win. He claimed at least half of the 95 delegates at stake Tuesday, and was likely to add to his tally in individual congressional districts. 
 
 A confident Trump insisted it was "impossible" for his rivals to catch him. 
 
 "We don't have much of a race anymore," he said during a victory rally in the lobby of the Manhattan tower bearing his name. He peppered his brash remarks with more references to the economy and other policy proposals than normal, reflecting the influence of a new team of advisers seeking to professionalize his campaign. 
 
 Clinton's triumph padded her delegate lead over rival Bernie Sanders and strengthened her claim to the Democratic nomination that eluded her eight years ago. In a shift toward the general election, she made a direct appeal to Sanders' loyal supporters, telling them she believes "there is more that unites us than divides us." 
 
 With 247 delegates at stake, Clinton picked up at least 104 while Sanders gained at least 85. Many remained to be allocated, pending final vote tallies 
 
 Sanders energized young people and liberals in New York, as he has across the country, but it wasn't enough to pull off the upset victory he desperately needed to change the trajectory of the Democratic race. Still, the Vermont senator vowed to keep competing. 
 
 "We've got a shot to victory," Sanders said in an interview with The Associated Press. "We have come a very long way in the last 11 months, and we are going to fight this out until the end of the process." 
 
 The fight for New York's delegate haul consumed the presidential contenders for two weeks, an eternity in the fast-moving White House race. Candidates blanketed every corner of New York, bidding for votes from Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs to the working class cities and rural enclaves that dot the rest of the state. 
 
 The nominating contests will stay centered in the Northeast in the coming days, with Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland and Pennsylvania all holding contests next week. Sanders spent Tuesday in Pennsylvania, as did Republican Sen. Ted Cruz, Trump's closest rival. 
 
 Cruz panned Trump's win as little more than "a politician winning his home state," then implored Republicans to unite around his candidacy. 
 
 "We must unite the Republican Party because doing so is the first step in uniting all Americans," Cruz said in remarks read off a teleprompter. 
 
 Trump needed a strong showing to keep alive his chances of clinching the GOP nomination before the party's July convention — and to quiet critics who say the long primary season has exposed big deficiencies in his campaign effort. 
 
 Having spent months relying on a slim staff, Trump has started hiring more seasoned campaign veterans. He's acknowledged that bringing new people into his orbit may cause some strife, but says the moves were necessary at this stage of the race. 
 
 Cruz is trying to stay close enough in the delegate count to push the GOP race to a contested convention. His campaign feels confident that it's mastered the complicated process of lining up individual delegates who could shift their support to the Texas senator after a first round of convention balloting. 
 
 Ohio Gov. John Kasich, the only other Republican left in the race, sought to add to his scant delegate total in New York and keep up his bid to play a long-shot spoiler at the convention. He bested Cruz on Tuesday and is refusing to end his campaign despite winning only his home state. 
 
 Trump's political strength, though he boasts of drawing new members to the party, has left some Republicans concerned that his nomination could splinter the GOP. Among Republican voters in New York, nearly 6 in 10 said the nominating contest is dividing the party, according to exit polls. 
 
 The surveys were conducted by Edison Research for The Associated Press and television networks. 
 
 Trump leads the GOP race with 756 delegates, ahead of Cruz with 559 and Kasich with 144. Securing the GOP nomination requires 1,237. 
 
 Among Democrats, Clinton now has 1,862 delegates to Sanders' 1,161. Those totals include both pledged delegates from primaries and caucuses and superdelegates, the party insiders who can back the candidate of their choice regardless of how their state votes. It takes 2,383 to win the Democratic nomination. 
 
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 AP writers Lisa Lerer, Julie Bykowicz, Emily Swanson and Steve Peoples contributed to this report. 
 
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 Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC and Jonathan Lemire at http://twitter.com/JonLemire ||||| Bernie Sanders is still running against Hillary Clinton. But by the end of Tuesday night, Clinton made it clear she now sees Donald Trump as her real rival. 
 
 
 
 Clinton took won four of five primaries, and while Sanders notched a win in Rhode Island, Clinton’s victories in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Connecticut and Delaware made her the night’s unambiguous victor — and added to her ballooning delegate lead. 
 
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 By the time Clinton took the stage Tuesday night, she seemed ready to put the primary behind her and take the fight to Republicans in the general election. 
 
 
 
 Speaking to a large crowd in Philadelphia, where Democrats will hold their national convention, Clinton directed her criticism exclusively at Trump and other Republicans. For Sanders, she offered praise, gratitude — and an appeal to the senator and his supporters to unite behind her ahead of the general election. 
 
 
 
 “There’s much more that unites us than divides us,” Clinton said, before reciting a list of policy priorities that she and Sanders share. “We will have to work hard together to prevail against candidates from the other side.” 
 
 Clinton’s speech followed a week in which her campaign repeatedly asserted Sanders’ window to capture the nomination had closed. But despite Tuesday’s losses, Sanders campaign kept up its vow to keep the contest going through the general election — even as he signaled, in an acknowledgment of his dimming prospects, his interest in shaping the Democratic platform. 
 
 
 
 "The people in every state in this country should have the right to determine who they want as president and what the agenda of the Democratic Party should be,” Sanders said in a statement congratulating Clinton on her wins. “That's why we are in this race until the last vote is cast.” 
 
 
 
 But the statement also pointed to a new focus. 
 
 
 
 
 
 "That is why this campaign is going to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia with as many delegates as possible to fight for a progressive party platform that calls for a $15 an hour minimum wage, an end to our disastrous trade policies, a Medicare-for-all health care system, breaking up Wall Street financial institutions, ending fracking in our country, making public colleges and universities tuition free and passing a carbon tax so we can effectively address the planetary crisis of climate change," the statement read. 
 
 
 
 Speaking earlier in the evening at a rally in West Virginia, Sanders repeated familiar themes about how far his long-shot campaign had come from its early days and said he performed better in polling match-ups against Trump than did Clinton. He also criticized closed primaries, saying that independents whose votes will count in the general election should not be locked out of picking the Democratic nominee. 
 
 
 
 "We were in New York state last week [and] 3 million people in New York state could not vote because they were independents,” Sanders said. “Well you know what? Those folks and independents all over the country will be voting in November for the next president of the United States.” 
 
 His campaign hit that theme again in a post-results statement, noting that Sanders had won Rhode Island, the one open primary held Tuesday. 
 
 
 
 The New York Times reported Tuesday that the candidate will huddle with his advisors on Wednesday to “reassess where his candidacy stands,” a meeting that comes as his campaign tries to figure out an endgame for a campaign that came farther than most anyone expected. 
 
 With superdelegates included, Clinton now has 90 percent of the delegates she needs to clinch the Democratic nomination, according to the Associated Press. 
 
 
 
 Before Tuesday, Clinton had 1,428 to Sanders’ 1,153. With superdelegates, she led Sanders 1,944 delegates to 1,192. 
 
 There were a total of 384 pledged delegates at stake Tuesday, 284 of them coming from Pennsylvania and Maryland. 
 
 As with all states in the Democratic primary, the five states voting Tuesday award delegates proportionally based on the popular vote. With 90 percent of the vote counted in Maryland, Clinton had 63 percent of the vote to Sanders’ 33 percent. And with 91 percent of the vote counted in Pennsylvania, Clinton had about 55 percent of the vote to Sanders’ 43 percent. Clinton notched a big win in Delaware and a narrow one in Connecticut. 
 
 The lone bright spot for Sanders in Rhode Island. Polls in the week ahead of the primary had the two candidates close, but Sanders won by 11 percentage points. 
 
 Delegate Tracker Democrats Delegates Remaining: 56 Delegates 2,814 1,893 56 0 2,382 Delegates Needed for Nomination 
 
 
 
 The losses were widely expected for Sanders, but in the week ahead of the contests, he continued swinging. 
 
 At an MSNBC town hall Monday night, he said he’d do whatever he could to keep a Republican out of the White House, whether he wins the nomination or not. He added, however, that if Clinton wanted his supporters to back her, it was her job to bring them over, saying they have “serious misgivings about a candidate who has received millions of dollars from Wall Street and other special interests.” 
 
 He also called on Clinton to back his plan to expand Medicare and to take a more aggressive stance on reducing fossil fuel use to address climate change. 
 
 Sanders also discussed the prospect of naming a female vice president Tuesday, saying “there are many women who would be qualified” during an appearance on MSNBC’s "Morning Joe." 
 
 He added that Elizabeth Warren “has been a real champion in standing up for working families." 
 
 On Tuesday, his wife Jane Sanders said the campaign would release tax returns from earlier years when Clinton released the transcripts of paid speeches she gave to Wall Street financial firms. 
 
 In the run-up to the primary, the Clinton campaign pounded the message that Sanders had already lost. 
 
 "We believe we are going to expand our lead in pledged delegates," chief Clinton pollster and strategist Joel Benenson said ahead of Tuesday’s contests on MSNBC's "Andrea Mitchell Reports." "It’s going to, you know, make it virtually impossible for Senator Sanders to catch us after this as the nominee." 
 
 Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, who supports Clinton, was more direct when asked whether he believes Sanders could win: “No. I do not," he said. ||||| NEW YORK (AP) — From a car wash in Queens to a hockey arena in Buffalo, both parties' presidential candidates spread out across New York Monday in a final quest for votes, a surreal scene for a state that hasn't experienced contested White House primaries in decades. 
 
 For Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump, victories in New York Tuesday could help quiet critics who have questioned their strength as front-runners. Each has suffered losses in recent contests that emboldened their rivals, though they still lead in delegate counts and are favored in New York. 
 
 Clinton, who represented the state as a senator for eight years, spent the final hours of campaigning trying to drive up turnout among women and minorities, her most ardent supporters. Since Sunday, she's danced to Latin music at a Brooklyn block party, vowed to defend abortion rights to female supporters in Manhattan, prayed at black church in Westchester, drunk a bubble tea at a dumpling shop in Flushing and cheered newly unionized workers in Queens. 
 
 "We're not taking anything for granted," she said Monday after greeting workers at the Hi-Tek Car Wash & Lube in Queens. "Tell your friends and your family, everyone, to please vote tomorrow." 
 
 Clinton's campaign was blunter in outlining the state of the Democratic race. Clinton's campaign manager Robby Mook declared the primary effectively over, saying Sanders faced a "close to impossible path to the nomination." With the contest between Sanders and Clinton becoming increasingly tense, Mook said the Vermont senator had to choose whether he wanted to stay on a "destructive path" that could hurt the party's eventual nominee. 
 
 Sanders has rattled off a string of wins in recent primaries and caucuses. But unless he can topple Clinton in a delegate-rich state like New York, he faces increasingly limited opportunities to change the trajectory of the race. 
 
 While polling shows Clinton with a comfortable lead in New York, Sanders held out hope for a closer race. 
 
 "This is a campaign on the move," Sanders shouted to a crowd of thousands gathered along the waterfront in Queens Monday night, with the Manhattan skyline serving as a dramatic backdrop. "This is a movement getting the establishment very, very nervous." 
 
 For Trump, New York is an opportunity to rebound from a trying stretch for his campaign — and with an exclamation point. The biggest question for him heading into Tuesday is whether he captures more than 50 percent of the vote statewide, which would put him in strong position to win all of the state's 95 GOP delegates. 
 
 Trump was closing his New York campaigning with an evening rally in Buffalo, where thousands packed the city's hockey arena to catch a glimpse of the billionaire businessman. He's spent the past week emphasizing his ties to New York, particularly New York City, where he was born and where buildings bear his name. 
 
 "We love this city," he said Monday in brief remarks to reporters in the lobby of Trump Tower. "You look at the other folks that are running, they couldn't care less about New York." 
 
 A big win for Trump is crucial if he hopes to clinch the nomination before the party's convention in July. If the race isn't settled by then, he faces the very real prospect of losing to Ted Cruz, whose campaign is mastering the complicated process of lining up individual delegates who could shift their support to the Texas senator after the first round of convention balloting. 
 
 In New Mexico Monday, the state Republican Party announced a two-week extension for delegate applicants who missed an April 15 deadline. Cruz allies in the state criticized the move as a ploy by the Trump campaign as it tries to catch up with his rival's operation. 
 
 "This is truly Trump," said state lawmaker Rod Montoya, who has applied to be a delegate to the national convention. "Rather than learning how the process works, he cries and complains to get the process changed because he doesn't like it." 
 
 Cruz, who infamously panned Trump's "New York values" earlier in the primary, was bracing for a tough showing in Tuesday's contest. He was already looking ahead on the primary calendar, spending Monday campaigning in Maryland, where voters head to the polls next week. 
 
 Trump leads the GOP race with 744 delegates, ahead of Cruz with 545 and Kasich with 144. It takes 1,237 to win the GOP nomination. 
 
 Among Democrats, Clinton has accumulated 1,758 delegates to Sanders' 1,076. Those totals include both pledged delegates from primaries and caucuses, as well as superdelegates, the party insiders who can back the candidate of their choice regardless of how their state votes. 
 
 Heading into Tuesday's primary, Sanders needs to win 68 percent of the remaining delegates if he hopes to clinch the Democratic nomination. It takes 2,383 to win. 
 
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 AP writers Hope Yen, Lisa Lerer, Steve Peoples, Julie Bykowicz and Morgan Lee contributed to this report. 
 
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 Follow Julie Pace at http://twitter.com/jpaceDC and Jonathan Lemire at http://twitter.com/JonLemire
– Bernie Sanders isn't giving up the fight after Tuesday's primary results—but there may be a shift in what he's fighting for. In what Vox describes as "a major hint that the race is over" and a "savvy, classy way" to start winding down his campaign, Sanders issued a statement Tuesday night saying he is looking forward to "issue-oriented campaigns in the 14 contests" to come and that he plans to go to the Democratic convention with "as many delegates as possible to fight for a progressive party platform." Clinton won four out of five states and her delegate haul puts her 90% of the way to the nomination, according to the AP, leaving Sanders little chance of winning, even with his surprise victory in Rhode Island. Sanders plans to "reassess his candidacy" Wednesday, according to the New York Times, and chief strategist Tad Devine says there will definitely be "adjustments" if it turns out there is no mathematical route to the nomination. The thing "to watch now is whether Sanders tempers his rhetoric against Clinton, a tacit acknowledgement that the math is close to conclusive, or whether he keeps going at her hammer and tongs," writes Chris Cillizza at the Washington Post. Politico notes that in her victory speech Tuesday night, Clinton praised Sanders, listed the policy priorities she shares with him, and urged his supporters to unite behind her. "There's much more that unites us than divides us," she said.