The divided outcome on Tuesday in Kentucky and OR means Clinton won’t yet be able to turn all of her attention to the general election and taking on presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump, who locked up his party’s nomination after the rest of his rivals dropped out in early May.
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The two Democrats shared the states, as Hillary Clinton won Kentucky in the last minute, with just half a percentage point over Bernie Sanders.
Clinton went into the night looking for a strong win in Kentucky following several recent losses to Sanders.
Donald Trump, the only candidate left in the Republican field, won the state’s GOP primary, even though the state votes exclusively by mail.
Despite having an nearly unassailable lead in the number of delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination, and with the primary battle heading toward the final contests next month, Clinton will need Sanders supporters on her side in the general election.
The outcomes in Kentucky and OR, where Sanders led by 9 percentage points with roughly three-quarters of the vote counted, did not dramatically change the delegate count.
Democrats are faced with a delicate balancing act as long as Sanders remains in the primary race, needing to pivot towards Trump without taking Clinton’s nomination for granted and alienating passionate backers of Sanders.
“Let me be as clear as I can be. And don’t tell Secretary Clinton because she might get nervous”, he said.
“If the Democratic Party is to be successful in November, it is imperative that all state parties treat our campaign supporters with fairness and the respect that they have earned”, the statement reads.
“We just won OR and we’re going to win California”.
What’s more, Sanders’ victory in OR ensures that he will continue to bedevil Clinton until the next Democratic contests in two and a half weeks. The people of this country want a government which represents all of us, not just the 1 percent, super PACs and wealthy campaign contributors.
Few are demanding publicly that Sanders get out of the race immediately.
The Sanders campaign released a statement Tuesday and condemned the violence in Las Vegas.
Bloomberg’s Margaret Talev, meanwhile, suggests that the Democratic party is looking increasingly divided. Roberta Lange, the state party chairwoman, said the protesters tossed chairs, rushed the convention stage and targeted her with death threats.
Clinton repeatedly tried to turn the focus to Trump while campaigning in Kentucky over the weekend, calling the billionaire real estate mogul a “loose cannon” and saying she had “never heard such reckless, risky talk from somebody about to be a nominee for president than I’ve heard from Donald Trump when it comes to nuclear weapons”. Based on the current numbers, OR awarded Bernie Sanders 28 delegates, while Hillary Clinton received 24. Clinton and Sanders will each pick up at least 25 delegates in Kentucky, with five delegates remaining to be allocated pending final vote tallies. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) won Oregon’s primary. “I wanted to put them both in a blender and whir them up together”, she said.
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In Las Vegas, the state Democratic Party convention fell into chaos after almost 60 of Sanders’s potential delegates were deemed ineligible by the Nevada State Democratic Chairperson Roberta Lange.
