However, Clinton has urged the media houses to wait for the remaining six primaries which holds on Super Tuesday, June 7.
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Including the massive prize of California, a half-dozen states will vote Tuesday, with 806 Democratic delegates at stake.
“We are on the brink of a historic and unprecedented moment but we still have work to do”. Trump, for his part, portrays Clinton as a liar who can’t be trusted.
On the eve of California’s primary, Democratic presidential candidate Sen. He goes into the final Super Tuesday contest of the campaign this week vowing to fight on until the convention in July, despite being mathematically eliminated from the race.
Relying on superdelegates furthers Sanders’ argument that the system is “rigged” by Establishment insiders, but it also leaves the door open for Sanders to continue contesting the nomination right into the Democratic Convention in July. “Secretary Clinton does not have and will not have the requisite number of pledged delegates to secure the nomination”.
Assuming Sanders does not manage to change the minds of superdelegates, there are plenty of ways he can exert influence by withholding an endorsement and staying in the hunt for the nomination.
Clinton, a former NY senator, is heavily favored in Tuesday’s New Jersey primary and winning a share of the state’s 142 pledged delegates would likely put her over the top. And he did not back off Clinton, calling her out on several occasions for their numerous policy differences, including fracking.
Of the 4,765 total delegates to the Democratic National Convention, 714 are superdelegates.
Clinton enters the general election boasting one of the most impressive resumes of any recent presidential hopeful. She has also survived multiple political crises by drawing on nearly supernatural resilience and is renowned for her mastery of policy. Instead, once Republican voters determined that Donald Trump was the likely victor, the remaining candidates bailed out of the race and most have since closed ranks behind him.
And when former OH state Sen. And Republicans believe her foreign policy record, tainted by her dealings with Libya and Russian Federation while secretary of state, could turn into a huge opening for their candidate.
She has won 29 states and US territories, to 21 for Sanders.
And it certainly doesn’t mean it will be a “contested” convention, given that Clinton leads Sanders now by 523 superdelegates (571 to 48).
Sanders argues superdelegates should not be counted, since they don’t formally cast their votes until the national convention.
“The frustration of Sanders supporters isn’t just about our candidate not doing so well”, he said.
“If I win tomorrow in California, if we do very well, and I don’t know that we will – we may – and we do well in the other states, if there are superdelegates out there who say, ‘you know what, looking at the objective evidence of polling, looking at the objective evidence of who has the strongest grassroots campaign and can bring out the larger voter turnout, ‘ which I think is crucial for November, if some of those superdelegates begin to think that is Bernie Sanders, I think that is not an insignificant thing”, he said. “It’s like an anointment”.
The Clinton campaign is stressing this is an “important milestone”, but it doesn’t want voters to be discouraged from going to the polls Tuesday, especially in California. Although he had a delegate lead after the primary season, he could not win without superdelegate support.
The reason for the focus on pledged delegates is because early on in this contest, the Sanders campaign, facing such a deficit with superdelegates – he’s never been a Democrat before this year – said it would be unfair for superdelegates to put Clinton over the top, even if Sanders beat her with the “will of the people”.
During a Monday evening rally in San Francisco, Sanders didn’t mention the news that Clinton had reached the milestone. “That’s an indication of a campaign on its last legs”.
About an hour and a half before Sanders took the podium at Crissy Field, the AP declared Hillary Clinton the presumptive nominee.
She was able to clinch the nomination, however, on her strong performance in the Deep South and strength in big states like NY and Pennsylvania along with her advantage among superdelegates.
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The opening nominating clashes in the snows of winter set the tone, from her wafer-thin victory in the Iowa caucuses to her defeat in the New Hampshire primary, for a tight, increasingly bitter nominating race.
