Hillary Clinton fought on two fronts in California on Saturday as she sought to wrap up her battle with Bernie Sanders for the Democratic nomination, taking aim at him and at Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, with attacks on their immigration stances. Clinton, who is expected to clinch the Democratic nomination in the coming days, said that electing Trump would be a “historic mistake”.
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Earlier this month, former President Bill Clinton campaigned for his wife in the Virgin Islands while Sanders opted to focus more on neighboring Puerto Rico, which has 60 delegates at stake in a primary Sunday. Clinton made appearances in Sylmar and Oxnard, while Sanders made stops in Exposition Park and Boyle Heights. Mr Sanders now has 1,547 delegates, of which 46 are super-delegates, but claims he can convert enough of Ms Clinton’s super-delegates to sway the result.
Sanders cited an interview that Luis Mirander, Democratic National Committee communications director, gave to CNN in April, in which he said that superdelegates should not be included in delegate totals on primary and caucus nights. Sanders has 1,545. California, the most populous USA state, has 548 delegates who are awarded proportionately to the popular vote. “In other words, the Democratic National Convention will be a contested convention”, he said.
While voters went to the polls in the Virgin Islands, Clinton and Sen.
“The idea that more than 400 superdelegates came on board Secretary Clinton’s campaign before any other candidate had declared their willingness to run for office is totally absurd”, Sanders said.
“I’ve always said I’m going to support the candidate that wins the majority of pledged delegates and who ever that ends up being, whether it’s Sen”.
The federal district of Washington, DC, holds the final Democratic primary on June 14. Beyond that, Sanders’ campaign manager Jeff Weaver said they are considering whether Sanders might appear at more rallies around the country after the primaries and speak in Chicago at a gathering of Sanders’ activists on June 17-19. He added: “If he wins California and a lot of states, he’ll want to make a closing argument to the superdelegates”.
Sanders won 61.6 percent of the vote in Minnesota’s March 1 contest to 38.4 percent for Clinton. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., says he has earned the right to have a strong influence on the party’s platform at the DNC in Philadelphia this summer.
Clinton delivered a foreign policy speech this week in which she warned Trump’s rhetoric is downright unsafe.
It was nearly as big a margin as Barack Obama had in 2008, when he beat Clinton by 90 percent to 8 percent.
“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”, he said.
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The AFL-CIO, the labor federation representing 12.5 million workers, has also withheld an endorsement but could send a powerful message to union members by backing Clinton.
