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MANILA, Philippines (3rd UPDATE) – Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has enough number of delegates to win the Democratic Party’s nomination, US media report Monday, June 6 (Tuesday, June 7 in Manila), making history as the first woman to be the presumptive nominee of a major US political party.
The Associated Press reports that Clinton has secured the 2,383 delegates needed to be the presumptive Democratic Party’s nominee for the November 8 election, a day before the last set of primaries in the 2016 election calendar.
This will ensure that she will go head-to-head with Republican real estate tycoon Donald Trump in an unprecedented showdown for the White House.
The former secretary of state reportedly reached the key number 8 years after she came up short in her nomination battle against Barack Obama.
NBC News also made a similar projection, saying her win in the Puerto Rico primaries on Sunday, June 5, put her past the 2,383 mark.
The AP counts 1,812 pledged delegates and 571 superdelegates for Clinton. Sanders stands at 1,568 delegates, more than 800 behind his rival, and there is no precedent for a massive number of super-delegates switching sides
Despite the AP count declaring her the presumptive nominee, the Clinton campaign said they are still looking ahead to the results of the June 7 contests, which include the states of California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, and South Dakota.
“This is an important milestone, but there are 6 states that are voting Tuesday, with millions of people heading to the polls, and Hillary Clinton is working to earn every vote,” campaign manager Robby Mook said in a statement.
“We look forward to Tuesday night, when Hillary Clinton will clinch not only a win in the popular vote, but also the majority of pledged delegates.”
The former secretary of state told a rally in Long Beach, California, that “according to the news, we are on the brink of a historic, historic, unprecedented moment.”
“But we still have work to do, don’t we?” she said, referring to Tuesday’s primaries.
The capital Washington rounds out the nominating contests when it votes on June 14.
Clinton has mounted a hectic 48-hour campaign push ahead of California’s high-profile primary, hoping to finish strong and end any argument for Sanders to remain in the race, as he has pledged to do until the Democratic convention.
“It’s not over until it’s over,” the former secretary of state told reporters at a community center in Compton, near Los Angeles.
Sanders, however, was not ready to throw in the towel, insisting the Democratic standardbearer will not be anointed until delegates vote at the party’s national convention in late July.
“It is unfortunate that the media, in a rush to judgement, are ignoring the Democratic National Committee’s clear statement that it is wrong to count the votes of super-delegates before they actually vote at the convention this summer,” Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said in a statement.
Sanders has said he will spend the coming weeks seeking to convince many of Clinton’s super-delegates that he is the stronger candidate to go up against Trump.
Clinton vowed Monday to “do everything I can to unify the Democratic Party,” saying she would be reaching out to Sanders.
“And I hope he’ll join me in that. We have to be unified going into and out of the convention to take on Donald Trump and to repudiate the kind of campaign he’s running.”
Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee last month. – With reports from Agence France-Presse / Rappler.com
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