US 2016 Presidential Elections: Clinton Secures Enough Delegates for Democratic Nomination

Local Editor

Hillary Clinton has crossed the threshold of 2,383 delegates needed to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination, becoming the first woman in American history to be the presidential nominee of a major party, the Associated Press reported late Monday.

The feat, from a "a burst of last-minute support from super delegates", according to the AP, was immediately contested by the rival campaign of Bernie Sanders, which argued that Clinton had not reached the crucial target through pledged delegates alone. It also said that Sanders would continue to campaign through the Democratic convention in July.

Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs dubbed the report "a rush to judgment" that "counts superdelegates that the Democratic National Committee itself says should not be counted because they haven't voted". Speaking to MSNBC's Rachel Maddow on Monday evening, he added that the potential remained for the superdelegates to change their minds before voting on 25 July.

Clinton, who has amassed about 3 million more votes than Sanders in the nominating competition and has a lead of about 300 pledged delegates, has argued that superdelegates - senior party officials not bound to voting results in any state - would not abandon her en masse. There did not appear to be any such movement afoot.

Yet the Clinton campaign signaled it would hold back declaring victory until voting in California and five other primaries on Tuesday.

During his own appearance on the same program, Hillary Clinton's campaign manager Robby Mook said the news was "very exciting" but reiterated that she was not taking anything for granted ahead of Tuesday's primary contests.

"Hillary made a pledge at the beginning of this campaign that she's going to fight for every single vote, fight for every single delegate. I think the proof is in the results," Mook said.

"He's led a dramatic revolutionary insurgency in the party," he said of Sanders, "and we are trying our darndest to give those people the voice that they have earned and deserved in the Democratic Party process.

At an event in California, news that Clinton had clinched the nomination broke while the former secretary of state was speaking at her penultimate primary campaign rally. If she already knew that she had reached the magic number of delegates, she did not directly acknowledge it on stage - saying just that "according to the news, we are on the brink of a historic moment".

But her speech was victorious in tone. In front of a crowd of around 1,000 at Long Beach City College, Clinton said that "we still have work to do. We will fight hard for every vote especially here in California".

Clinton struck out several times at the presumptive Republican nominee for president, saying that she "cannot wait" to debate Trump. But she didn't mention Sanders once in her remarks. Instead, she called for unity in general terms, saying: "Abraham Lincoln said a house divided cannot stand, and he was right."

Clinton had said that she expected to clear the "historic" hurdle making her the first female presidential nominee of a major political party sometime on Tuesday evening, after results began to come in from Democratic contests in six states.

Clinton appears extremely likely to amass a majority of pledged delegates on Tuesday, even if she underperforms the polls. With 1,812 pledged delegates currently in her corner, she is just 214 short of the mark, with about 700 delegates to be awarded Tuesday.

The timing, for Clinton, was not ideal. The Democratic frontrunner's campaign had a choreographed plan to lay claim to the nomination, including a victory party in New York scheduled for Tuesday night.

Obama, who still holds great sway in the Democratic Party, is expected to endorse Clinton in the coming days, and surrogates have been prepared to drive home the case that Sanders should step aside to let Clinton focus on the general election campaign against Trump.

The candidate herself made her strongest indication yet that she believed Sanders should concede the fight earlier on Monday, when she drew a direct comparison with her decision to concede to Barack Obama in 2008.

"Tomorrow is eight years to the day after I withdrew and endorsed then-senator Obama," she said. "I believed it was the right thing to do. No matter what differences we had in our long campaign, they paled in comparison to the differences we had with the Republicans."

Source: News Agencies, Edited by website team