Hillary Clinton has clinched the number of delegates needed to make her the presumptive Democratic nominee, becoming the first woman to ever head the ticket of a major USA political party.
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“If we can win here in California, win in South Dakota, North Dakota, Montana, New Mexico, do well in New Jersey, we’re going to go into that (Democratic Party) convention with enormous momentum”. Hillary leads right now by more than 3 million popular votes, she has a lead of nearly 300 pledged delegates, she’s won more states, and we want to continue to build on that lead going into these final contests.
The Associated Press reports that Clinton has secured the 2,383 delegates needed to be the presumptive Democratic Party’s nominee for the November 8 election, a day before the last set of primaries in the 2016 election calendar.
While superdelegates will not formally cast their votes for Mrs Clinton until the party’s July convention in Philadelphia, all those counted in her tally have unequivocally told the AP they will do so. And in an interview with MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Monday night, Clinton said she planned to reach out to Sanders on Tuesday.
He dismissed the suggestion by a reporter that he could be a “spoiler” if he remains in the race – and he also had a tense exchange separately in which he insisted that his refusal to quit was not “sexist”.
That’s based on the delegates she earned in Puerto Rico over the weekend, as well as the superdelegates who have pledged to vote for her in July.
Hillary Clinton is on the brink of history after reportedly securing enough delegate support to win the Democratic nomination.
After blowout weekend wins in the two US territories, Clinton is now 23 delegates short of the 2,383 needed to win the nomination, according to an Associated Press count.
But Bernie Sanders’ campaign condemned the media for its “rush to judgement”, saying superdelegates should not be automatically counted. But she said there was still work to be done in the six states voting on Tuesday and made little mention of her claim on the nomination.
She has also became the first spouse of a former president to win the presidential nomination in her own right.
Sanders’ spokesman Michael Briggs said the campaign’s job was to convince the superdelegates – party insiders – that the Vermont senator was “by far the strongest candidate against Donald Trump”.
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Clinton’s campaign has already begun working with the administration to coordinate the endorsement, sources told CNN. In 2008, some superdelegates flipped from Clinton to Obama after he overcame her early lead in pledged delegates.
