Sanders has vowed to campaign through the end of the primary season on June 14 in the District of Columbia and amass as many delegates as possible to influence the party’s platform and message.
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“Look, in politics and in democracy, sometimes you win elections, sometimes you lose elections”, said Clinton.
Dianne Feinstein warned that Bernie Sanders’ intention to take his candidacy to the Democratic convention in July could spark unrest similar to the chaotic 1968 convention in Chicago and the riots surrounding it. “Many of his disenfranchised fans are for me!” “We won, we won a great victory in the state of Washington a few months ago, we just won OR and we’re going to win California”. But right now, the party’s leaders want to avoid making the campaign so bitter that Sanders’ backers refuse to rejoin the fold.
The central target of his ire: Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz. But her inability to snuff out the Sanders challenge has underscored concerns about her skills on the campaign trail and raised questions about whether the party will unite behind Clinton when she takes on presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump in the fall.
Clinton enters Tuesday’s primaries with a commanding lead of almost 300 pledged delegates over Sanders and a dominant advantage among party officials and elected leaders called superdelegates. Harry Reid told reporters that he had spoken to Sanders and was confident that the Vermont senator would try to calm tensions. It’s a complaint Trump has put behind him now that he’s vanquished his rivals and come within reach of a nomination-clinching delegate majority. And Clinton could have an uphill battle winning over Sanders’ supporters there.
Meanwhile, Sanders was trying to continue chipping away at Clinton’s 767 delegate lead in the Democratic presidential race. He said in early general election poll match-ups he does “much better against Trump” than Clinton.
Trump has 1,161 delegates. “But if Clinton wins and she’s smart, she’ll do everything she can to embrace the movement that Sanders has channeled”.
Both Democrat candidates are now heading into the “delegate-rich” California primary next month.
But Tuesday’s elections followed a divisive weekend state party convention in Nevada in which supporters of Sanders were accused of tossing chairs and making death threats against the Nevada party chairwoman at the event in Las Vegas. In one such video, though, among the first words out of a Bernie supporter’s mouth were, “what a bitch”, while in another they were “fucking bitch”.
Clinton and Sanders could do a lot to smooth things over in the weeks between June and the convention.
If the Democratic Party is to be successful in November, it is imperative that all state parties treat our campaign supporters with fairness and the respect that they have earned. Several US networks called the Pacific northwest state for the liberal Sanders, who was leading the former secretary of state 53 percent to 47 percent.
What that means: Sanders has staked everything on staying in the race until the last votes are counted. While around four-in-10 voters say they’re independents, very few are actually swing voters.
The results bring Clinton to within 100 of the 2,383 needed to clinch the nomination. OR voters also went with Trump, the last candidate actively in the race.
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Sanders supporters began circulating a picture of Lange on the internet that included her cellphone number and encouraged others to contact her to express their unhappiness.
