Jim Ashley says now that Trump is the presumptive nominee, it’s time for him to unify the Republican Party and to bring other candidates that ran against him into the fold.
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A remark Clinton made at an OH town hall in March that the country would “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business” may have hurt her with voters in coal-mining states such as West Virginia. Eight years ago, West Virginia helped her in the same way it aided Sanders on Tuesday – handing her a significant victory in the primary over then-Sen.
A third of West Virginia Democratic primary voters say they identify as independents, and almost 7 in 10 of those voters supported Sanders.
The senator, long the favourite to win West Virginia, fared better than Mrs Clinton (68) among white working-class voters concerned about the economy and jobs in the state’s depressed coal industry.
But Mr Trump faces a huge task in trying to get the Republican party behind him, as doubts persist about his substance and style. Their names appear on the ballot, along with the presidential candidate they support.
At a recent campaign event in the state Clinton said she misspoke and that her comments were taken out of context.
Earlier in the day Tuesday, Cruz raised some eyebrows in Republican circles during an interview with conservative radio host Glenn Beck, suggesting that if a Trump protest vote were to bubble up in Nebraska, a state Cruz was widely expected to win before dropping out, that he would consider re-entering the race. West Virginia proportionally awarded Sanders a total of 29 delegates.
Despite Clinton’s experience as first lady, senator, and secretary of state, there is an understandable tendency of many Democratic voters to be wary of anything resembling a Clinton “coronation”.
Clinton also won a primary election Tuesday in Nebraska, although the party allocated all of its delegates to the summer nominating convention at a caucus won in March by Sanders. While that seems entirely doable, his pledged super delegate count was still very low – he has just 39 to Clinton’s 532, according to the Associated Press.
Sanders insisted on Tuesday that he could still win a majority of pledged delegates – a goal that remains mathematically possible if unlikely.
But Clinton needs just 145 delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination in order to reach the 2,383 required. “I think it ends up being a double-digit victory”.
Clinton did win the Nebraska Democratic vote on Tuesday night, but those results were non-binding.
Less than half say they would vote for either Clinton or Sanders in a general election.
She has 2,240 to Sanders’ 1,473.
Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont, was ahead with 49 percent of the vote compared to 40 percent for the former secretary of state, with 16 percent of precincts reporting, according to CBS News. Trump is viewed negatively by about 60 percent of Americans, and according to Republican pollster David Winston, he is a minimum of “50 million voters short of what he’s going to need” at this point.
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Still, her failure to win over voters deeply skeptical about the direction of the economy underscored the work she will need to do to court working-class voters in the Rust Belt, which includes key states such as OH and Pennsylvania.
