Despite Hillary Clinton's near-insurmountable delegate lead, Bernie Sanders isn't going down without a fight.
The tone of this race has drastically sharpened, but Democratic operatives say they aren't worried about any damage done by it — especially if Donald Trump is the Republican nominee.
"For all that Donald Trump has done to divide the Republican Party, he's going to be the great Democratic unifier," said Michael Bronstein, a Pennsylvania Democratic strategist.
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An ugly fight (for now)
Some Sanders supporters have launched a #BernieOrBust movement, which encourages voters to stay home or write in Sanders' name in the general election.
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Susan Sarandon, a Sanders supporter, told MSNBC on Monday that she doesn’t know if she could ever back Clinton. Sarandon suggested she may vote Trump instead, causing an uproar on Twitter from Clinton and Sanders supporters alike.
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Sanders himself hasn’t stopped his supporters from booing Clinton at his large rallies. And he even evaded a question during an interview with Meet the Presshost Chuck Todd on whether he'd back Clinton, if she wins the nomination.
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"Look, it's too early to talk about that," Sanders said. "Right now, we have a lot of momentum. We're focusing on Wisconsin, New York State. We have a path to victory. We are going to win this nomination process."
Top Clinton strategist Joel Benenson said Monday that Clinton will refuse to debate unless Sanders changes what they called a "negative" tone.
But the Sanders campaign says it isn't worried that its comments about Clinton could put the party in a weaker position to take on the Republican nominee in November. (Trump currently leads in delegates in the GOP primary.)
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"I don’t think we’ll ever see that on our side, and we’ll never see it from Bernie,” Sanders’ top strategist TadDevine said.
Ultimately, they'll come together
Despite all this fighting, polling suggests that Democrats will unite at the end of the primary — especially with Trump as the nominee.
Nearly 90% of Democratic primary voters say they would support either Clinton or Sanders, if they were the nominee, according to a recent New York Times/CBS News poll.
"Trump is a great motivator for Democrats of almost all stripes,” said Mark Mellman, a longtime Democratic pollster. He added that Democrats won't hand control of the White House -- and possibly the next Supreme Court appointment -- to the Republicans.
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Democratic strategists also point to past primaries as evidence that the party will eventually unite.
"Trump is a great motivator for Democrats of almost all stripes."
After Clinton lost in 2008, many of her supporters launched the Party Unity My Ass (PUMA) movement, saying they would never vote for Obama.
In the end, though, most of the PUMAs came around.
"You know, we’re still in the heat of the nomination struggle, and people don’t like to cede the point that they may not win," said Kathy Sullivan, a Clinton supporter from New Hampshire.
"But in 2008 I was obviously all in for Hillary Clinton, but when we got the convention, I -- as well as all of the other people who were Clinton delegates -- voted for Barack Obama [...] because we knew how important it was."
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