Although Mrs Clinton is only 70 delegates short of the 2,382 she needs to win and so will nearly certainly cross the win-line even if she loses in California since the state that allocates its 546 delegates on a proportional, not winner-takes-all, basis.
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Clinton also slammed Trump on immigration at a rally in Oxnard, a city of about 200,000 located northwest of Los Angeles that is nearly 75 percent Hispanic. “I think his words and his deeds disqualify him from being president”, Clinton said in Oxnard, Calif., on Saturday. Hillary may have an edge with older and establishment Democrats, but if Bernie can mount any kind of get-out-the-vote effort with the independents he probably has more of a shot than people think.
“This is not someone who should ever have the nuclear codes”, said Clinton.
Hoping for an upset in California, the Vermont senator pointed to a litany of differences with Clinton over his support for a tax on carbon to curb climate change, her use of super PACs and their conflicting votes on the Iraq war.
According to Real Clear Politics, Clinton holds an overall average of 10.8 points over Sanders, but in California, that average narrows significantly, with Sanders behind Clinton by 4.7 points overall and by just two points in two recent polls, and pulling out over her by one point in a poll on Friday, reports The Hill.
And most say Trump is capable of standing up to special interests, at 52 percent – more so than for Clinton, at 44 percent, Gallup found.
“We are trying to elect a president”, Clinton said during a long riff on Trump, “not a dictator”.
Bernie Sanders looked as if he would limp into the California primary and watch his upset bid over Hillary Clinton fizzle, but a surge in the polls and rumblings that superdelegates committed to Clinton may be showing hesitation has given his campaign new energy.
Clinton, with 2,312 delegates, needs 71 more delegates to reach the required 2,383 for the Democratic nomination.
“I believe, on Tuesday, I will have decisively won the popular vote and I will have decisively won the pledged delegate majority”, Clinton told CNN in an interview.
As expected, young people were on hand in droves, some of them too young to vote but still excited to see Sanders.
Earlier in the day, at Los Angeles Mission College in Sylmar, Clinton attacked Donald Trump for talking in “hateful, very prejudicial, really unacceptable ways”.
He accused Clinton of misrepresenting his foreign policy views and revived a nickname he once reserved for former rival Ted Cruz.
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Trump responded by saying she lied about his positions and by ripping her record as secretary of state, which he says was marred her handling of government emails and the death of a USA ambassador in Libya. She’s not running to be everybody’s friend.
