Bernie Sanders continued to campaign in delegate-rich California on Monday, ahead of that state’s Democratic presidential primary Tuesday, even after The Associated Press declared Hillary Clinton the presumptive Democratic nominee.
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Under Democratic National Committee rules, most delegates to the July 25-28 convention are awarded by popular votes in state-by-state elections, and Clinton has a clear lead in those “pledged” delegates.
Superdelegates largely consist of party leaders and elected senators, members of Congress and governors.
The timing of this declaration of victory for Clinton also angered Sanders’s supporters-perhaps not the most strategic move, considering that Clinton, should she indeed be the presumptive nominee, will now have to try to unite the Democratic party against Donald Trump.
In Closter, New Jersey, an upscale suburb across the Hudson River from Manhattan, Izabela Biel voted for Donald Trump, saying his success as a businessman symbolizes the American dream for her. Biel came to the US from Poland about 25 years ago, and she offered that even though he isn’t the ideal candidate, she prefers him to the Democratic candidates who “want to make everybody equal”.
The reason NPR includes superdelegates in our count, which comes to us via the AP, either for Clinton or Sanders is because these officials have publicly pledged their support to one or the other candidate.
It is also worth nothing that the candidate and his campaign have also been so focused on winning the final Super Tuesday states that they have not turned their full attention to flipping superdelegates. He didn’t appear ready to do so Monday night after the AP found that Clinton had secured enough delegates to clinch the nomination. “We shouldn’t be acting like we are undecided when the people of America have spoken”.
Clinton’s big victories across the South and in the biggest states – such as New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas – provided her with that wide edge in raw vote and pledged delegates. California has 543 delegates and New Jersey 142. Those party insiders will not technically vote until July and could change their minds before then, switching their allegiance from Clinton to Sanders (as many switched from Clinton to Obama eight years ago).
‘Our job from now until the convention is to convince those superdelegates that Bernie is by far the strongest candidate against Donald Trump’.
“I believed it was the right thing to do”. Pelosi said Tuesday she understood why Sanders was staying in and fighting.
While she been embroiled in a sometimes-contentious battle with Sen. “In the beginning he was viewed as a fringe candidate but he consistently drew huge crowds, lots of young voters that Hillary Clinton needs to do a lot of work to appeal to now”.
They have become increasingly resistant in recent months, with fewer than half saying they would vote for her if she becomes the party’s nominee, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll in May.
“They got on the phone, as I understand it, and they started hounding superdelegates to tell them in an anonymous way who they’d be voting for”.
With the Democrats’ nomination process winding down and emotions still high, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said President Obama would be “well-positioned” to play the role of unifier for his party going forward.
Meanwhile Trump has come under hostile fire from fellow Republicans for making belligerent attacks on a judge presiding over a case against one of his business interests.
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Campaigning in San Francisco Monday, Sanders declined to speculate to reporters about what a poor showing in Tuesday’s primaries might mean to his presidential campaign. The senator has not released his May fundraising figures. So far, his campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, acknowledged they had yet to convert a single delegate. Polls show the primary to be a statistical tie.
