On Saturday evening, Hillary Clinton scored a resounding victory over Bernie Sanders in the South Carolina Democratic primary.
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“Despite what you hear, we don’t need to make America great again, America has never stopped being great”, she told cheering supporters in Columbia after the win. Sanders has been able to raise plenty of money to mount a strong campaign, taking in $96.3 million through January 31.
Hillary Clinton threw in subtle shots at Donald Trump in a victory speech amid a blowout win in the SC primary Saturday.
“Tonight, the Democratic voters of SC have rendered a significant verdict”, Clyburn said at Clinton’s victory rally in Columbia.
Sanders, expecting defeat, left the state even before voting was finished and turned his attention to states that vote in Tuesday’s delegate-rich contests.
Among Democrats, Clinton leads in the national delegate count at this early stage, having now won three of the first four nomination contests – in Iowa, narrowly, then Nevada and SC. Clinton is looking to win by large margins in Southern states with large black populations, while Sanders wants to score victories in the Midwest and Northeast and stay close to Clinton in the South to avoid a blowout in the delegate race.
The victory is her strongest yet in the 2016 primary contest. “Instead of building walls, we need to be breaking barriers”.
“SC results are very clear, absent Sanders dramatically expanding his base on Super Tuesday, the Dem nomination fight is over on Wednesday AM”, Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to Obama, tweeted shortly after Clinton’s win. “That’s good. But now it’s time to get around one candidate and wait for the Republicans”, she said.
Clinton was supported by 9 in 10 voters saying experience was the most important quality in choosing a candidate, and 8 in 10 of those saying it was most important to choose a candidate who can win in November.
“I am a 100 percent supporter and I am absolutely adamant about protecting marriage equality”, she said. She casts herself as the biggest defender of his policies and pitted Sanders, with his Medicare for All and tuition-free public college education plans, as a threat to his biggest achievements.
Clinton leaves the state with a growing delegate lead that she is increasingly unlikely to ever surrender. Sanders also won, by 25 points, voters who participated in their first Democrat primary. He campaigned Wednesday, Thursday and part of Friday in Midwestern states that hold primaries next month, including some that have primaries Tuesday.
“When you are president, the entire world listens to every word you say”, Clinton said in Birmingham, Alabama, in an apparent attack on Trump’s badgering of rival candidates and his caustic remarks about immigrants and Muslims. He was in Texas earlier Saturday and will hold an event in Minnesota this evening.
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Clinton mentioned the five mothers by name that she recognized at CNN’s Democratic town hall on Tuesday – five African-American women who have lost their children to senseless gun violence or at the hands of police.
