Superdelegates back Clinton by a wide margin, but Sanders hopes he can get them to defect.
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Clinton, whose first quest for the Democratic nomination ended in a concession speech nearly exactly eight years ago to the day, now becomes the first woman ever to win the nomination of a major political party in the United States.
“The card we’re going to play against Trump is that he has always been for himself. We do not want to send a message that anybody’s vote doesn’t count”.
California is the biggest prize on Tuesday – the last and largest state to vote in what became a surprisingly tough Democratic primary race to pick a nominee for the November 8 presidential election.
“I believe on Tuesday I will have decisively won the popular vote and I will have decisively won the pledged delegate majority”, she told CNN from California.
Clinton rival Bernie Sanders has long protested that the superdelegate system fails to reflect the will of the voters.
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.
But voters’ focus was mostly on the island’s economic crisis.
Her campaign manager, Robby Mook, said the media call on Clinton was an “important milestone”. “Sanders has a lot at stake in this election in preventing Donald Trump from being our president”, she said, adding: “which I can barely say”.
“Clinton is not only more knowledgeable about domestic and global affairs than Sanders, but also more likely to achieve objectives they have in common”, the board said.
The 68-year-old former secretary of state is receiving a tough fight from Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who has 1,547 delegates against Clinton’s 2,323, as per the latest count of RealClearPolitics.com. But Obama had more votes and more delegates and superdelegates were rallying around the clear choice of Democratic voters.
In practise, superdelegates who have announced their intention are unlikely to change their minds.
Ahead of Puerto Rico’s nominating contest, Mrs Clinton had been just 60 delegates shy of clinching the nomination.
Sanders at first tried to call on another reporter who was raising his hand as a female reporter interjected with her question, asking what the senator would say to women who say his staying in the race “is sexist because you’re standing in the way of who could be the first female president”.
Twenty-five percent of Sanders supporters said they would not vote for Clinton in the general election if she were the nominee against Trump, according to a Quinnipiac University poll. That was down from 50 percent in April, and 52 percent in March.
“Democrats are not entirely sold on Hillary Clinton”. Clinton has the support of 12 of them.
“Then that is another point”, Sanders responded.
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Mr Sanders opened a new line of attack against Mrs Clinton, criticising donations made by foreign governments, while she was secretary of state, to the Clinton Foundation, founded by former president Bill Clinton.
