Former US secretary of state and second-time presidential candidate Hillary Clinton is on the cusp of achieving what she failed to do against Barack Obama eight years ago: winning the presidential nomination for the Democratic Party.
Her victory in the Puerto Rico Democratic primary on Sunday leaves her within striking distance of the nomination. The tally of delegates counted by Associated Press puts her fewer than 30 delegates short of the 2,383 she needs to secure the party’s nomination.
Clinton has won 1,809 pledged delegates from 29 victories in primaries and caucuses in states and US territories, compared with 1,520 from 21 victories for Vermont senator Bernie Sanders, an unexpectedly dogged candidate she has been unable to put away.
When she wins, victory will come for Clinton from unpledged or super delegates: party insiders, elected officials and leaders. She has the support of 548 of them compared with 46 for the independent senator who has run her all the way to the end of the primary. This gives her a total of 2,357 to 1,566 for Sanders, according to the AP’s delegate count.
Clinton should lock up the nomination pretty early today. Six states vote on the final day of state contests, which will wrap up the primary, even though the District of Columbia holds the final primary next Tuesday.
While California is the big state voting today, with 475 pledged delegates at stake, the former US senator for New York should bag the nomination by the time votes are counted in New Jersey, which has 126 delegates. She is forecast to win the state, giving her enough delegates to reach the magic number of 2,383.
The proportionate distribution of delegates based on votes means that even if she loses New Jersey, which she is not expected to do, she can still win enough pledged delegates.
Still, Sanders has said he is intent on keeping his challenge alive by questioning the “rigged” nature of the Democratic primary, in line with his populist claims that the entire political system and campaign financing are fixed by the political establishment. “The media is in error when they lump super delegates with pledged delegates. Pledged delegates are real,” Sanders said during a campaign stop in Los Angeles, California.
He has invested everything in the Golden State over the past month with more than 30 campaign events, attempting to embarrass rather than upset Clinton with a victory in the country’s most populous state and the biggest primary.
“Hillary Clinton will not have the requisite number of pledged delegates to win the Democratic nomination at the end of the nominating process on June 14th. Won’t happen. She will be dependent on super delegates,” he said.
Based on the popular vote alone before today’s contests, Clinton should be adjudged the winner. She has won 13.3 million votes, more than three million more than Sanders.
The democratic socialist has promised a “contested convention” when Democrats meet for their national convention in Philadelphia from July 25th to 28th. He hopes to flip super delegates in his favour by making the case that he performs better than Clinton in head-to- head polls against Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
Trump last month passed the 1,237 delegates he needed to be formally named the Republican nominee at the party’s convention in Cleveland from July 18th to 21st. A pyrrhic victory in California would strengthen Sanders’s case at the Democratic convention.
“What’s at stake is what keeps the Sanders cause alive,” said Bruce Cain, a politics professor at Stanford University in California. “So if he can get a victory in California, it gives him a little more momentum for what I think he is really angling for, which is to continue to be the voice of the progressive wing and to possibly get some concessions at the convention in terms of his prominence and shifting the platform to the left.”
The challenge for Clinton after the final primary contests will be trying to bring the younger voters – millennials and those under 45 – who backed Sanders in such large numbers since the primary race began in Iowa on February 1st.
The support of President Barack Obama, who has stayed out of the primary, could help swing voters electrified by Sanders’s progressive message on education, healthcare and immigrant rights.
“His work is done and it is time for us to prepare to fight Donald Trump,” said Clinton supporter John O’Riordan, vice chair of the California Democratic Party’s Irish caucus. “If he wants to maintain his moral authority in the Democratic Party, he has to concede gracefully and work hard for Hillary. He has got to get out to the states where he won and reach out to the young people. He can play a powerful role in the campaign.”
