LOS ANGELES -- Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders on Saturday vowed to take his bid for the nomination to the Philadelphia convention in July, asking news organizations not to declare front-runner Hillary Clinton the presumptive nominee.

"It is extremely unlikely that Secretary Clinton will have the requisite number of pledged delegates to claim victory on Tuesday night," Sanders said in Los Angeles, where he was campaigning ahead of Tuesday's primary in California. "Now I have heard reports that Secretary Clinton has said it's all going to be over on Tuesday night. I have reports that the media, after the New Jersey results come in, are going to declare that it is all over. That simply is not accurate."

The Vermont senator predicted that when the primary season ends June 14, neither candidate will have enough pledged delegates to declare victory. He said they will instead be dependent on superdelegates -- party leaders and elected officials -- to reach the 2,383 delegates needed to secure the nomination.

"In other words, the Democratic National Convention will be a contested convention," Sanders said.

On Saturday, Clinton handily won in caucuses in the Virgin Islands, according to unofficial figures announced by the Democratic Party. There was no immediate indication of how many of the seven delegates she would pick up.

An Associated Press count of superdelegates shows Clinton leading 547-46. Including those superdelegates, Clinton began Saturday with 2,316 delegates to Sanders' 1,547, and she is poised to surpass 2,383 this week.

"It is a deeply flawed process," Sanders said Saturday, "and whether I win this nomination or I do not win this nomination, I will do everything I can to change it."

Sanders wants Democrats to break with tradition. Superdelegates have historically backed the candidate who wins the most delegates from primaries and caucuses. In 2008, that was Barack Obama.

Recalling Clinton's 2008 campaign against Obama, her team has avoided urging Sanders to leave the race. But if Sanders loses California, he's likely to face pressure to drop out. Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada said last week that "sometimes you just have to give up."

But few expect Sanders to quickly follow the example set by Clinton, who campaigned extensively for Obama after suspending the roll call vote at the 2008 convention. She later became his secretary of state.

"Given what he has said, I suspect there will certainly be a roll call vote at the convention," said Jeff Weaver, Sanders' campaign manager.

Targeting Trump

Clinton has largely avoided talking about Sanders, focusing her attention on presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.

As Clinton toured California on Saturday, crowds burst into applause at the mention of the speech she gave Thursday in which she cast Trump as dangerously unqualified to be president.

"I loved it. I was waiting for that," said Leslie Milke, 56, of Woodland Hills, a professor at Los Angeles Mission College in Sylmar, where Clinton spoke Saturday. "I knew she was capable of that kind of speech. ... It really made me feel energized. It made me feel like we can win."

In her Thursday speech in San Diego, Clinton said Trump would lead the nation toward war and economic crisis, adding that electing Trump would be a "historic mistake." She continued that theme Saturday.

"I think it is time to judge Donald Trump by his words and his deeds," she said Saturday in Oxnard, Calif. "I think his words and his deeds disqualify him from being president."

She later joked about some of Trump's past remarks, saying: "One of my personal favorites is he said he knows how to deal with Putin because he took the Miss Universe pageant to Moscow."

Earlier in the day, at Los Angeles Mission College, Clinton attacked Trump for talking in what she said were "hateful, very prejudicial, really unacceptable ways."

Clinton supporter Walter Guzman, 44, of Oxnard, said he was glad for the speech, adding that "she needs to stop concentrating on Bernie and start concentrating on Trump."

Sonia Prince, 60, of North Oxnard, said she'd prefer not to hear about Trump at all.

"Bad publicity or good publicity, it's publicity for him," she said.

Protests against Trump turned violent Friday in San Jose, Calif., when demonstrators jumped on cars, pelted Trump supporters with eggs and water balloons, snatched signs, and stole "Make America Great Again" hats off supporters' heads before burning the hats and snapping selfies with the charred remains.

Obama, speaking Friday at a Democratic National Convention fundraiser in Miami, urged Democrats to avoid such confrontations.

"It is very important for us to remind ourselves of who we are and what is best about American democracy and not slip into some of the bad habits that currently manifest themselves in the other party," Obama said.

"There's no room for violence. There's no place for shouting," he added. "There's no room for a politics that fails to at least listen to the other side -- even if you vehemently disagree. Because I believe if you've got the better argument, then you don't need to do that. Just go out there and organize and persuade."

Before he departed the fundraiser, the president said he hoped "the Republican fever" would someday break and that it would be "once again a sensible center-right party" with which the Democratic Party could negotiate.

Obama said he doesn't watch much political news on television -- he said he generally just watches sports -- but that his staff told him that Trump generated 70 percent of recent political news coverage. He called on Democrats to develop a sense of urgency to get their message out.

Battle for endorsements

Obama has tried to avoid showing favoritism in the Democratic race, wary of turning away Sanders supporters while votes are still being cast. But Clinton has tied herself closely to the president. That has helped solidify the support of black voters, but it has also stirred many of Obama's opponents, especially those who disagree with him on immigration issues.

While Obama has given work permits and deportation deferrals to some in the U.S., he has also overseen the deportation of more than 2.5 million illegal aliens. Democrats such as Rep. Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., the highest-ranking Hispanic in the House Democratic leadership and a Clinton backer, are telling Hispanic critics of those deportations that Democrats are much more likely than Republicans to pass legislation that allows illegal aliens to stay in the U.S.

Both Sanders and Clinton have pledged to go further than Obama in curtailing deportations of illegal aliens. Both have turned to immigrant activists, some of whom came to the country illegally, to help design their platforms on the issue.

"They're actually competing to see who has the most progressive immigration policy and more refined policy platform. And that is a beautiful thing," said Angelica Salas, who leads the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights Los Angeles.

Sanders and Clinton are also competing for the support of the AFL-CIO, the labor federation representing 12.5 million workers, which has so far withheld an endorsement. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has stayed neutral in the primaries, but Clinton supporters say her backing could help bridge the gap between Sanders and Clinton loyalists.

Warren has focused her attention on Trump, calling him a "fraudster-in-chief" whose top goal is lining his own pockets.

Speaking at the Massachusetts Democratic Party's state convention Saturday, Warren criticized the Republican candidate over his Trump University, saying he put together an army of salesmen to focus on how much money prospective students could come up with before pushing them to pay tens of thousands of dollars.

Trump University, which promised to teach participants the secrets of real estate success, is now the target of lawsuits. Trump has said the university's customers were overwhelmingly satisfied.

Sanders, meanwhile, is campaigning against both Trump and Clinton.

"I am running for president because I want to give the American people a real choice in this election -- a choice not just to vote against somebody but to vote for a vision for where our great country can become," Sanders said at the Los Angeles news conference. "It is very clear that Donald Trump's negative ratings are enormously high, unprecedented for a major party presidential candidate, and Secretary Clinton's negative ratings are also very, very high."

Information for this article was contributed by Ken Thomas, Kevin Freking, Josh Lederman and Catherine Lucey of The Associated Press; by Kate Linthicum of the Los Angeles Times; and by Greg Jaffe, John Wagner, Anne Gearan and Karen Tumulty of The Washington Post.

A Section on 06/05/2016