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. 
 
 ||||| Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gestures at her presidential primary election night rally, Tuesday, April 26, 2016, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) (Associated Press) Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gestures at her presidential primary election night rally, Tuesday, April 26, 2016, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke) (Associated Press) 
 
 WASHINGTON (AP) — With five more states in the rear-view mirror, presidential candidates will spend Wednesday recalculating cold, hard delegate math and plotting strategy for the contests still to come — 10 for Republicans, 16 for Democrats. 
 
 After a strong night Tuesday, front-runners Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will try to brush off their rivals like lint on a sleeve. Bernie Sanders and Ted Cruz will look for love in Indiana. John Kasich will look further out on the political calendar to Oregon for someplace to show viability. 
 
 What to watch on Wednesday, the day after five Northeastern states had their say in the presidential race: 
 
 DIALING FOR DELEGATES 
 
 Pennsylvania elected 54 unpledged Republican delegates on its primary night. The prospective delegates' names were listed on the ballot with no information about which presidential candidates they support. So it'll take some effort to figure out who they plan to back. Watch for commitments to different candidates to start trickling out. Pennsylvania had 17 other delegates who will be bound to Trump, who won the popular vote there as part of his five-state sweep Tuesday. 
 
 DONALD TRUMP: POLICY WONK? 
 
 As Trump tries to shift gears toward the general election, he's eager to show he's got a command of the issues, not just the skills of a political provocateur. His foreign policy address Wednesday in Washington will be the first in a series of policy speeches. It's not clear how detailed he'll be, though. Trump often complains that the Obama administration has been "too predictable" with overseas strategy, and should leave enemies guessing. 
 
 But first, he'll be doing a victory tour on the morning TV shows. 
 
 ALL IN FOR INDIANA 
 
 Next up on the primary calendar: Indiana, which votes on May 3. The candidates all are active there except Kasich, due to his non-compete clause with Cruz. Trump's Hoosier strategy includes an appearance in Indianapolis on Wednesday night with basketball coaching great Bobby Knight and withering criticism of United Technologies' decision to move two of its Carrier heating and ventilating parts plants in Indiana to Mexico, eliminating 2,100 U.S. jobs. Clinton's "make it in America" pitch touches some of the same territory, including criticism of Carrier, in a state where nearly one out of five jobs is supported by manufacturing. 
 
 SHAKY CEASE-FIRE 
 
 Keep an eye on how Cruz and Kasich execute their stop-Trump alliance, in which Kasich agreed to clear a path for Cruz in Indiana, and Cruz will do the same for Kasich in Oregon and New Mexico. Kasich may have agreed not to campaign in Indiana, but he decided to go ahead with a fundraiser there on Tuesday, for example. And he stopped short of urging his supporters in Indiana to back Cruz. 
 
 HOOSIER CRUZ-ER 
 
 With Kasich on the sidelines in Indiana, Cruz is investing heavily there in radio and TV advertising and he'll spend considerable time campaigning in the state this week. He's got a late afternoon rally Wednesday in Indianapolis. 
 
 THE LONG GOODBYE 
 
 Clinton keeps trying to leave Sanders behind but he's been resisting taking the hint, even though his long odds of capturing the nomination deteriorated even further Tuesday night after he lost to her in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and Connecticut. The Vermont senator won Rhode Island. 
 
 Wednesday will be a time for assessing what's next for Sanders, who'll be campaigning in Indiana. Watch his rhetoric in coming days for hints of futility. On Tuesday, he was still vowing "to fight all the way to the Philadelphia convention." But lately, he's allowed himself to be drawn into speculation over what Clinton would need to do to win over his supporters in the general election. 
 
 And no wonder: After Tuesday, she's 90 percent of the way to the nomination. 
 
 AD STRATEGY 
 
 Watch where the candidates and outside groups put their money. So far, Indiana is attracting the most investment. Anti-Trump groups Club for Growth and Our Principles PAC are spending about $2 million on TV and radio commercials there, and Cruz's campaign and a supportive super PAC have about $1.8 million planned, according to ad tracker Kantar Media's CMAG. Trump is in for $1 million in Indiana ads. So far, Clinton doesn't have Hoosier ad plans, while Sanders is putting about $1.6 million into paid media there. The presidential squad has yet to broaden its plans much beyond Indiana. Sanders has about $600,000 in California ads booked, but look for far more money to show up in this pricey, delegate-rich state before its June 7 election. 
 
 ___ 
 
 AP writers Stephen Ohlemacher and Julie Bykowicz in Washington and Scott Bauer in Madison, Wisconsin, contributed to this report. 
 
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 Follow Nancy Benac on Twitter at http://twitter.com/nbenac ||||| Video 
 
 Donald J. Trump and Hillary Clinton barreled toward a general election showdown on Tuesday night as they dominated primaries in Pennsylvania, Maryland and other Eastern states, piling up enough delegates to close in on their parties’ nominations. 
 
 Looking past their fading rivals, the two even taunted each other in dueling election-night events. Mrs. Clinton chided the Republican’s penchant for harsh language by saying that “love trumps hate.” Mr. Trump was more bluntly dismissive of Mrs. Clinton, saying her appeal boiled down to her gender. 
 
 “Frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she would get 5 percent of the vote,” Mr. Trump said. 
 
 Mr. Trump had the more convincing performance on Tuesday: He swept all five primaries, winning landslides of more than 30 percentage points over his rivals, Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio. His routs represented a breakthrough: He received more than half the vote in every state, after months of winning most primaries by only pluralities. 
 
 The big night for Mr. Trump and Mrs. Clinton intensified the aura of inevitability around their nomination bids and created urgent new challenges for their rivals. More significant, it increased Mr. Trump’s chances of avoiding a fight on the floor of the Republican convention in July and of claiming the nomination on the delegates’ first ballot. 
 
 “When the boxer knocks out the other boxer, you don’t have to wait around for a decision,” he said boastfully at an election-night appearance before supporters at Trump Tower in New York. He added: “As far as I’m concerned, it’s over.” 
 
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 Mr. Cruz and Mr. Kasich fared so poorly on Tuesday that together they were likely to win just 10 of the 118 bound delegates up for grabs. Rhode Island, Connecticut and Delaware also went for Mr. Trump, who was on track to bring his total to about 950 of the 1,237 needed to clinch the nomination outright. 
 
 Mr. Cruz is now under growing pressure to beat Mr. Trump in Indiana’s primary next week, perhaps the last real chance the stop-Trump forces have to halt his march to the nomination. He and Mr. Kasich forged an alliance to thwart Mr. Trump in Indiana, but it has yet to show signs of working. 
 
 Even before polls closed in the East on Tuesday night, Mr. Cruz tried to pre-empt the rush of coverage about Mr. Trump’s dominance. 
 
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 “Tonight this campaign moves back to more favorable terrain,” Mr. Cruz told supporters in the Knightstown, Ind., gymnasium where the high school basketball movie “Hoosiers,” about underdogs who triumph over a big-city rival, was filmed. 
 
 On the Democratic side, Senator Bernie Sanders won only the primary in Rhode Island and fell further behind Mrs. Clinton in their race to amass 2,383 Democratic delegates to clinch the nomination. Clinton advisers predicted late Tuesday night that she was poised to net roughly 50 more pledged delegates than Mr. Sanders, out of 462 up for grabs, adding to her lead of about 240 going into the primaries. 
 
 Clinton advisers said Tuesday’s final delegate tally would reveal not if, but when, Mrs. Clinton would win the nomination: either in early June, if she continues at her current pace, or as soon as the Kentucky and Oregon primaries on May 17, if she does better than expected in the coming weeks, once her support from more than 500 superdelegates is included. Superdelegates could switch their votes at any point, but Mrs. Clinton’s are widely considered to be staunch supporters. 
 
 Mrs. Clinton predicted that she would return to Philadelphia this summer for the Democratic convention “with the most votes and the most pledged delegates.” 
 
 She pledged to heal the party’s wounds after a long nomination fight, telling Sanders supporters that “there is much more that unites us than divides us.” But she also looked past Mr. Sanders to take a swipe at Mr. Trump and his campaign motto, “Make America Great Again.” 
 
 Video 
 
 “Despite what other candidates say, we believe in the goodness of our people and the greatness of our nation,” Mrs. Clinton said. 
 
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 Mr. Sanders, speaking Tuesday night to an audience of 6,500 people in West Virginia, which votes May 10, said emphatically that he would stay in the race. He made an unusually pointed appeal to superdelegates, arguing that he had won more votes from independents and from Republicans than Mrs. Clinton and would be a stronger general election candidate. 
 
 After the rally, however, Mr. Sanders issued a statement saying he would go to the Democratic convention in July “with as many delegates as possible to fight for a progressive party platform” — a remark that some Democrats interpreted as his first acknowledgment that he would not attend the convention as the nominee. 
 
 Still, for all his fortitude, Mr. Sanders plans to reassess his candidacy on Wednesday and decide whether to adjust his strategy if Mrs. Clinton’s delegate lead appears all but insurmountable. His senior strategist, Tad Devine, said the Sanders team would discuss a range of issues including how to adjust messaging about the nominating process and what route if any there is to winning it. Mr. Devine said he could still see a mathematical path to securing the nomination but added that, if it changed, the campaign would have to adjust. ||||| 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.
– 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.