Hillary Clinton looks set to take on Donald Trump for the White House after securing the 2383 delegates needed to become the Democratic nominee. About half of them are still avoiding committing to Clinton in her expected general election fight against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.
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After the Associated Press and NBC reported on Monday night that Clinton had clinched the number of delegates needed to win her party’s nomination, a Sanders campaign spokesman castigated what he said was the media’s “rush to judgment”.
Mr Sanders, however, insisted that the convention will be contested because he is still lobbying superdelegates – party officials and state leaders who cast their votes at the convention – to withdraw support from Mrs Clinton and back him instead. Clinton’s superdelegate support outnumbers Sanders’ by more than 10 to 1.
President Barack Obama, who bested Clinton in 2008 during her first bid for the Democratic nomination, is preparing to formally endorse her and start aggressively making the case against Trump. “Our goal is to get as many delegates as we possibly can and to make the case to superdelegates that, I believe, the evidence is fairly strong that I am the strongest candidate”, he said.
Sixth, Bill Clinton was receiving huge speaking fees and the Clinton family foundation was receiving many large contributions while Ms. Clinton was Secretary of State.
“I think the Sanders campaign would agree that the president has worked hard and gone to great lengths to be fair”, said Earnest.
Reports indicate the President Obama will soon publicly endorse Hillary Clinton and will aggressively campaign for the former Secretary of State in the coming months.
In the long race for the Democratic presidential nomination, six states vote on Tuesday. Eager to exploit his recent spike in popularity, Obama is looking to become the most active lame duck campaigner in recent presidential history.
“It is not over until it is over and tomorrow is a really important day”, Clinton told CNN’s Dan Merica in Compton, California, saying she wanted for now not to focus on the historic nature of her candidacy because she wanted to ensure everyone came out to vote.
He said officials worked until almost dawn counting results of both the presidential primary and a local primary in which voters narrowed their choice for the island’s next governor, legislators and mayors.
Earnest also shot down the possibility of a meeting with Obama and Clinton Wednesday while the president is in NY.
Mr Sanders has been an irritant to the former secretary of state throughout the campaign.
Patrick Bryant of San Francisco, who also attended the Sanders’ rally, said the decision was disappointing: “It’s what bookies do”.
“This to me is about saving the country and preventing a third progressive, liberal term, which is what a Clinton presidency would do”, House Speaker Paul Ryan told the AP last week after he finally endorsed Trump, weeks after the New Yorker clinched the GOP nomination.
“Let me just talk to you after the primary here in California, where we hope to win”, Sanders said. Clinton may lock the nomination on Tuesday but winning over the millions of passionate Bernie Sanders supporters is her summer job. “At the end of the nominating process, no candidate will have enough pledged delegates to call the campaign a victory”.
Sanders, on the other hands, trails Clinton significantly among pledged delegates, as well as in the total delegate count. But as the Vermont senator vows to continue his populist campaign through July’s Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, there’s little sign Obama has the appetite for waiting around any longer. “The only one benefiting from this is Donald Trump”.
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“According to the news, we are on the brink of a historic, historic, unprecedented moment but we still have work to do don’t we?” she said.
