President Barack Obama has endorsed presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in a video posted to YouTube on Thursday. “That’s why I know Hillary will be so good at it”, Mr Obama said in a web video circulated by the Clinton campaign.
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Her rival Bernie Sanders got 43 percent and vowed to continue his campaign.
In an interview taped on Wednesday for broadcast on the NBC’s “Tonight” show on Thursday, Obama said he hoped that divisions between Democrats would start to heal in coming weeks now that Clinton has clinched the party’s nomination for the November 8 presidential election. The president said Clinton is “making history” as the first female presidential nominee of a major party, adding “I’m with her”.
Obama and Clinton will campaign together Wednesday in Green Bay, Wisconsin – a battleground state that Obama won twice.
On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton secured enough delegates to officially become the Democratic Party nominee for president.
And they’ve grown up with Clinton in their lives – a strong first lady, an effective senator from NY, a capable secretary of state negotiating on America’s behalf.
Democratic leaders hope Mr Sanders’ passionate supporters will overcome their distrust of Mrs Clinton to lend her their allegiance. Sanders is also due to meet with Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid.
Neither side dwelt much on the gaps between them, nor were Sanders’ or Clinton’s names hardly mentioned.
Obama greeted Sanders as he arrived at the White House and the two walked past the sun-bathed Rose Garden – and a pack of snapping cameras – to their private meeting.
Instead the scales tilted toward traditional Democratic voters, who have powered Clinton and her husband to repeated victories in the state over a quarter-century.
“That is not going to happen”, she said. Obama has been telling allies that he looks forward to campaigning for her in the fall, and many of his former aides are already at work on her campaign in Brooklyn.
Eight years ago, when she fell short in her first presidential campaign, Clinton famously remarked that there were 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling, referring to the number of votes she’d received.
Obama had stayed conspicuously neutral in his public comments throughout the contentious Democratic primary, although he was widely considered to view his former secretary of state as the best party standard-bearer to continue his policy legacy.
OBAMA: So then I said to Malia, “You know, I bet Trump’s taking interns during your gap year”.
Now head-to-head in the presidential race, Mrs Clinton and Mr Trump are both working to woo Mr Sanders’ supporters.
Some of Sanders most prominent supporters acknowledged that the nomination race was over.
Since vanquishing his competition in the Republican primary, Trump has upset fellow Republicans by continuing to attack party figures he considers disloyal and by his attacks on a federal judge overseeing a lawsuit against his defunct real-estate training program, Trump University.
Earnest said Sanders wasn’t surprised by Obama’s move, and praised the Vermont senator for engaging young voters and independents in the primary process.
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It may not be an easy sell for all of Sander’s supporters, who have helped catapult him from political obscurity into the national spotlight, cheering his message on income inequality, campaign finance reform and Wall Street excesses. “I did not ask the president about which box he checked on his ballot, but I’m not aware that he changed his mind at any point during the primary”, he said. “I think that’s something that the DNC does after every convention”, she said. “And indeed, the work of the foundation really speaks for itself”, Clinton said.
