Bernie beats Hil in W.Va., but she still nears clinch

WEST VIRGINIA was almost heaven for Bernie Sanders.

The persistent progressive senator won the Mountain State’s Democratic primary in convincing fashion Tuesday, dealing front-runner Hillary Clinton another blow in her efforts to secure the party’s nomination and take on GOP rival Donald Trump.

But Sanders’ victory almost definitely will not be enough to block her path to the nomination.

In fact, as the Vermont senator was leading Clinton 51% to 37%, with 67% of precincts reporting, he will likely collect a little over half of the state’s 37 Democratic delegates because they are divvied up proportionately.

Even if Sanders split the state’s delegates, he would still have only 1,434 and would trail Clinton by nearly 800 delegates, a nearly insurmountable gap. She has 2,228 delegates — just 155 shy of the 2,383 she needs to secure the nomination.

But at an energetic rally later Tuesday in Oregon, Sanders appeared unfazed.

“We have now won primaries and caucuses in 19 states. And let me be as clear as I can be: We are in this campaign to win the Democratic nomination,” he told a crowd in Salem, Ore., whose Democratic primary is next Tuesday. “And we are going to fight for every last vote.”

“We fully acknowledge — we’re good at arithmetic — that we have an uphill climb ahead of us. But we are used to fighting uphill climbs. We have been fighting uphill since the first day of this campaign.”

Meanwhile, Trump, the last man standing in the Republican race, won his party’s primaries in West Virginia and Nebraska, adding to his lead in the delegate count.

In West Virginia, Trump got 76% support, with 67% precincts reporting, compared with 9% for Ted Cruz and 7% for John Kasich, who both dropped out of the race last week.

In Nebraska, Trump got 61% support, with 45% of precincts reporting, compared with 19% for the Texas senator and 12% for the Ohio governor.

The support for Cruz and Kasich amounted to protest votes against Trump by the evershrinking contingent of “#NeverTrump” Republicans who have vowed to do whatever they can to keep him from the GOP nomination.

Trump continued his preparations as his party’s presumptive nominee, readying for a Thursday meeting with House Speaker Paul Ryan and narrowing his list of potential running mates to “five or six people.” Trump didn’t disclose who was on the list but said he hadn’t ruled out Chris Christie.