Hillary Clinton is predicting she will have the Democratic nomination locked up after Tuesday’s primaries, and is already seeking to fix relations with rival Bernie Sanders and his supporters – though it’s unclear if the latter are willing to reciprocate. They include more than 400 superdelegates who endorsed Secretary Clinton 10 months before the first caucuses and primaries and long before any other candidate was in the race.
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“I’m a voter in California and I have voted for Hillary Clinton for president of the United States and proud to endorse her for that position”, the Democratic superdelegate said, though adding “it’s not over until it’s over”. “We’re going to fight hard for every single vote”, she said during a rally in Long Beach.
NBC News, the Associated Press and other media organizations named Clinton as the presumptive nominee based on both her pledged and unpledged delegate counts.
She surpassed the threshold Monday after a number of super-delegates – current and former elected officials and political activists who are not bound to vote for a specific candidate – recently committed to back her candidacy, according to the AP. They are not due to formally cast their votes until the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in July.
Sen. Sanders has run a fantastic campaign, but his refusal to accept the current reality of the race is embarrassing.
Since their creation in 1982, superdelegates have rarely strayed from their original endorsements – unless there is a change in the pledged delegate tally.
“I believe on Tuesday I will have decisively won the popular vote and I will have decisively won the pledged-delegate majority”, Clinton told CNN on Sunday.
Sanders, however, does not sound willing to concede the race at this point, even if Clinton secures enough convention delegates to win the nomination after a series of primaries on Tuesday.
Clinton becoming the presumptive nominee also sets up a dramatic showdown with Donald Trump, for whom sexism has become a defining characteristic in this campaign. In 2008, some superdelegates flipped from Clinton to Obama after he overcame her early lead in pledged delegates.
There are still 694 delegates up for grabs on Tuesday.
It’s true that superdelegates haven’t officially voted yet, and they could technically still change their minds.
It is still mathematically possible that the Senator would win the delegates in the remaining states and beat Hillary Clinton in the pledged delegate count.
At key moments, Obama has offered high praise and needed defense of Clinton and little comparable support for Sanders.
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We’re flattered, @AP, but we’ve got primaries to win.
