Hillary Clinton stands on the cusp of having enough delegates to claim the Democratic presidential nomination, having overwhelmed Bernie Sanders in a pair of weekend elections in the Caribbean.
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Mo Elleithee, executive director of Georgetown University’s Institute of Politics and Public Service and a former Clinton campaign staffer, said her June 2008 concession to Obama in the closely fought Democratic primary that year should be a roadmap for Sanders.
Both Clinton and Sanders spent Monday in California, the biggest prize among the six states voting on Tuesday.
She said that should she become the nominee, she’ll be “reaching out” to Sanders and would do what she could to bring the party together.
“Our job from now until the convention is to convince those superdelegates that Bernie is by far the strongest candidate against Donald Trump”, the campaign said in a statement.
Though Obama has not expressed a preference for Clinton or Sanders publicly, the president said last week in IN that he expected “there’s going to be plenty of time for me to step in and campaign” ahead of the general election. That won’t happen until Tuesday, because the island’s elections officials took Monday off after counting results until dawn. When including superdelegates, her lead over Sanders is substantial – 2,323 to 1,547.
In her speech, Clinton appealed to Sanders supporters to join her and said the Democratic Party had been bolstered by his campaign for eradicating income inequality, which has commanded huge crowds and galvanized younger voters.
A major shift, in which some 400 superdelegates would need to switch allegiances to hand Sanders the nomination, is unlikely considering Clinton’s close connections throughout the Democratic establishment that Sanders lacks as a long-time independent. Last week, he declared bluntly, “it’s nearly over” and suggested he was waiting for the Tuesday contests before making his move. Primaries in Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia, and the Virgin Island caucuses round out the schedule.
Prominent Democrats say that unifying the party now is the highest priority, and that if Sanders maintains his challenge to Clinton through the July 25-28 convention, Trump will benefit. “The only one benefiting from this is Donald Trump”.
Clinton has 1,812 pledged delegates won in primaries and caucuses. But she also said she looks “forward to campaigning with the president and everybody else”.
A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday showed Clinton leads Trump by 10 percentage points nationally as they launch their general election battle, little changed from a week ago.
A Sanders campaign spokesman castigated what he said was the media’s “rush to judgement” after the Associated Press and NBC reported on Monday night that Clinton had clinched the number of delegates needed to win the nomination. Trump secured the delegates he needed to clinch the Republican nomination last month, leaving him free to focus on battering Clinton.
Sanders also said Clinton has a conflict of interest with the Clinton Foundation, which was set up by her husband, former President Bill Clinton.
On Tuesday night, he addressed a crowd of supporters in NY, welcoming Sanders supporters “with open arms” should they decide to support him and declaring a new phase of the campaign had begun.
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Asked by CBS News if Obama was looking to pick a fight with Republicans, Earnest replied, “He certainly is not going to shrink from it, I’ll tell you that”. “I wonder if the press will want to attend”, Trump said.
