With superdelegates, Clinton has 2,316 delegates to Sanders 1,547, putting her 67 delegates away from the 2,383 necessary to secure the nomination.
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The AP and NBC reported that Clinton reached the 2,383 delegates needed to become the presumptive Democratic nominee with a decisive weekend victory in Puerto Rico, a US territory, and a burst of last-minute support from superdelegates. On Monday, she pointed to her 2008 decision to unite the party and said Democrats needed to do the same to take on Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee. If Sanders wins California, it will not be enough to deny Clinton the nomination, but it would be an important symbolic victory as Sanders has pledged to carry his fight to the Democratic convention in Philadelphia at the end of July.
Saturday’s press conference mirrored one Sanders had in Washington on May 1, following his losses in Pennsylvania, Connecticut, Delaware and Maryland days earlier. And since the start of the AP’s survey in late 2015, no superdelegates have switched from Clinton to Sanders.
But Obama has been wary of putting his hand on the scale during a long and sometimes bitter Democratic primary race between Clinton and leftist party rival Bernie Sanders.
“If you asked me about the Clinton Foundation, do I have a problem when a sitting secretary of state and a foundation run by her husband collects many millions of dollars from foreign governments, governments which are dictatorships?”
California, New Mexico and South Dakota are expected to be close races, with Clinton predicted to win by margins no greater than five percentage points, Abramowitz said.
“We’re going to fight hard for every single vote”, Clinton declared. “She will be dependent on superdelegates who do not vote until July 25 and who can change their minds between now and then”. “My job in the next 24 hours is to win California”.
Asked by reporters in San Francisco if he had talked to Obama, Sanders demurred.
There are four delegates remaining in Puerto Rico, but they can not be allocated until the vote count there is finished.
However, a somewhat uncharacteristically cautious Sanders said, “Let’s assess where we are after tomorrow”.
Sanders would not speculate to reporters about what a poor showing in Tuesday’s primaries might mean to his presidential campaign.
Earnest also said that “certainly somebody who claims a majority of the pledged and superdelegates, you know, has a strong case to make” – a description that fits Clinton.
Sanders, the first Jewish candidate to win major party nominating contests, said in a statement that the AP had rushed to judgment. The “Bernie or Bust” movement may be even stronger in California, where the USC Dornsife/LA Times poll indicated that Clinton lagged behind Sanders 43 percent to 44 percent among registered voters.
Sanders will try to make the case that he is the most electable candidate to take on Donald Trump. Some 27 percent of Sanders’ supporters said in May that they would vote for neither candidate or another alternative.
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Clinton, who is now 26 delegates shy of surpassing the number of delegates needed to clinch the Democratic nomination, is expected to do so on Tuesday, when states like New Jersey and California hold their primaries.
