Clinton and her supporters said that a win in California is more than about delegates: She is expected to clinch the nomination Tuesday without them.
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Last month, 41 per cent of Sanders’ supporters said they would vote for the former secretary of state if she runs against Trump in the November 8 general election.
Clinton would be the country’s first female president if she defeats Donald Trump in November. The race is tight in California, where a CBS News poll released Sunday showed Bernie Sanders behind Clinton by two points.
Clinton supporters say it is time for Sanders, the self-styled democratic socialist US senator from New Hampshire, to acknowledge he has lost. Clinton, a former NY senator, is heavily favored in Tuesday’s New Jersey primary and winning a share of the state’s 142 pledged delegates would likely put her over the top. Pundits have assumed that a Clinton victory in New Jersey would be enough to announce her as the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate – when taking into account superdelegates.
“If we can win, and win big here in California and in the other states, and in Washington D.C., we are going to go into the Democratic convention with enormous momentum”, Sanders told listeners during a rally outside the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
“I believed it was the right thing to do. 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”.
President Barack Obama edged closer to a formal endorsement of Hillary Clinton as the Democratic presidential nominee Monday, suggesting the next 48 hours would be pivotal. A Democratic candidate would needs 2,383 delegates to win the nomination.
On Monday, Clinton noted the timing has symbolic weight: Tuesday marks eight years since her concession speech and endorsement of Obama after their 2008 primary showdown.
White House officials say the president is planning to be a steady and active player on the campaign trail, particularly in the fall.
“I think at the bare minimum what he can do is not try to delegitimize the process or call into question the fact that Hillary Clinton is truly the nominee after Tuesday”, Brian Fallon, Clinton’s press secretary, said on CNN. Now the presumptive nominee, she will formally accept her party’s nomination in July at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
President Obama is enjoying a current spike in popularity.
Hillary Clinton at a campaign organizing event in Salinas, California.
She has lessened her attacks on Mr Sanders in recent weeks, however, and is now focused on Mr Trump.
But Michael Briggs, Sanders’ spokesman, dismissed the AP and NBC tallies.
“The greater the African-American share of the electorate, the greater the proportion of Democratic identifiers, and the larger the number of states holding primaries on the same day, the better Clinton does”, Abramowitz wrote on the Crystal Ball blog.
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Former Obama senior adviser David Axelrod agreed that Obama would inevitably endorse Clinton shortly after the June 7 primaries, adding “the verdict is the verdict, and that point is nearly certainly Tuesday, which is what he way saying”.
