Bernie Sanders wanted outright victory in Iowa. But he will have to settle for this

Bernie Sanders has two feet down on the ground in New Hampshire, but even as he hits the campaign trail here, the echoes of Iowa — and the lingering angst over Monday night’s mess — are still weighing on his mind.

Unable to declare victory or rationalize defeat, Sanders has begun stumping ahead of the Granite State primary next Tuesday with one eye on the slow-motion rollout of the caucus results, which have left the campaign in a state of frustrated suspense as Sanders — like the rest of the Democratic primary field — tries to craft a coherent narrative from incomplete and in many ways incoherent information.

Sometime in the next day, days, or weeks, Iowa will declare its winner. But the harsh truth now is that the moment — one the campaign hoped would be a watershed going forward — is gone. The planned celebration never came off. The glorious opening shots of Sanders’ second bid for a political revolution were corked.

Instead, the campaign is caught between two realities: a strong performance of its own that fell short of expectations and a new, heartening round of evidence that moderates opposed to him appear split and unlikely to coalesce anytime soon.

On Wednesday morning, Sanders spoke with a mix of exasperation — at the rolling fiasco in Iowa — and optimism over what, with more than 70% of precincts reporting, showed him poised to finish, at worst, a strong second or tied, or even slightly ahead, in the contest for convention delegates and the winner of both raw vote counts.

Visit CNN’s Election Center for full coverage of the 2020 race

“I assume that one of these years that vote count will be completed,” Sanders said in Derry, New Hampshire, on Wednesday morning. “In Iowa they have a complicated system and there’s a realignment vote — we’re winning that one as well. We’re going to have an equal number of delegates from Iowa going to the national convention.”

Though Sanders remains in an enviable position relative to the other campaigns, the mixed bag of data out of Iowa could be a signal of bumps in the road ahead. The final turnout numbers for the caucuses are expected to reach or slightly exceed 2016’s totals, but it will not come close to the record showing of 2008 — a dent in the Sanders’ campaign’s theory that he could march to the nomination on the strength of an explosion of popular support.

Top Sanders aides told CNN over the last 48 hours that their field organization in Iowa laid the foundation for success in upcoming states, where they believe the Vermont senator is in a strong position to notch more material successes. Iowa state director Misty Rebik, in a tweet on Wednesday, pointed to a report that Sanders dominated at a multilingual satellite caucus in Cedar Rapids. Another senior aide, Chuck Rocha, has touted Sanders’ performance with Latino caucusgoers.

But even if Sanders successfully expanded the universe of voters of Iowa, questions remain over how he fared among the known planets.

The campaign is predicting strong showings in New Hampshire, Nevada and in key Super Tuesday states, especially California, the Democratic primary’s biggest prize, which would more clearly validate their strategy. Top staff are also quietly bullish about outperforming expectations in South Carolina, where Sanders got waxed by Hillary Clinton in 2016.

That confidence is largely tied to Joe Biden’s weak showing in Iowa. The former vice president entered the caucuses with lower expectations, but if he finishes closer to Sen. Amy Klobuchar, in fifth place, than Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who seems to have locked down third, questions about Biden’s viability over the long haul are likely to mount.

Biden admitted as much, at least as it pertained to his own campaign, in remarks Wednesday in New Hampshire, where he conceded that the results out of Iowa stung.

“I’m not going to sugar coat it. We took a gut punch in Iowa. The whole process took a gut punch,” Biden told supporters in Somersworth, before turning his attention to a new round of direct hits on Sanders and, perhaps more notably, former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg.

Sanders, too, has lamented the bungling of the caucuses, telling a crush of reporters on his way to New Hampshire that Monday had not been “a good day for democracy.”

Still, many Sanders allies viewing the competition from a distance — the ones who didn’t have to spend hours in a Holiday Inn ballroom waiting on a celebration that never came — believe he remains comfortably positioned going forward

“The Sanders campaign should be heartened because the Iowa results show them having the clearest path, and just as importantly, Biden collapsing beyond anyone’s expectation. Even if Pete does end up winning the final count, it’s pretty clear he has no viable path to the Democratic nomination so that’s not a real concern,” said Karthik Ganapathy, a 2016 Sanders campaign aide who co-founded a communications shop with current campaign spokesman Mike Casca, referring to Buttigieg’s struggles with voters of color.

Ganapathy, who remains friendly with many members of the 2020 Sanders staff, told CNN he believed the more tangible hit the campaign took on Monday night might be to its fundraising, which remains strong but lost out on a major potential boost.

“In 2016, I remember standing in a high school gym in Concord next to our digital director Kenneth, who had his phone out, making a sound for every donation as it came in. And it was just going crazy while Bernie was giving his victory speech. So I’m annoyed on their behalf that someone else’s incompetence cost them that kind of opportunity this time around, to raise hugely off of your candidate being simulcast across multiple networks,” Ganapathy recalled. “That’s a thing that’s hard to replicate.”

For Sanders, then, the waiting continues: For a moment, for a win, for the first concrete sign — undeniable to voters and pundits and other campaigns — that his path to the nomination remains in place.