June 08, 2016
Hillary Rodham Clinton, the first American woman to be nominated by a major political party, began her victory speech Tuesday night where she ended her first presidential race eight years ago, as if no time had passed.
“Tonight’s victory is not about one person. It’s about generations,” she said, telling her ebullient supporters in Brooklyn, N.Y., that she and her party should commend Bernie Sanders for the competitive campaign he waged and his arguments for a government focused on ending injustice and inequality.
“We all need to keep working toward a better, fairer, stronger America,” she said. “Bridges are better than walls.”
As the former secretary of state began to speak, New Jersey’s primary contest went into her column, and she took credit for winning a majority of pledged delegates overall, and 3 million more votes than Sanders collected. New Mexico followed the Garden State as a long nominating contest came close to the end, giving Clinton well over the 2,383 delegates needed to be the nominee.
With 92 percent of the vote counted early Wednesday in delegate-rich California, Clinton held a 56 percent-43 percent lead there. She also won narrowly in New Mexico and South Dakota. Sanders took Montana and North Dakota. The results were decisive enough to complicate the Vermont senator’s ambitions to press his case into July.
He delivered a fiery speech in California, thanking supporters and acknowledging his two victories on Tuesday. But if Democrats believed the senator might be ready to suspend his campaign and if Donald Trump hoped he could woo Sanders’ coalition of young and independent voters, the senator disappointed them. He described the theme of Trump’s campaign as “bigotry,” and vowed to work to defeat him. But Sanders also said he could still defeat Clinton.
“We are going to fight hard to win the primary in Washington, D.C., and then we take our fight for social, economic, racial and environmental justice to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,” Sanders said as the placard-waving crowd roared. “I am pretty good in arithmetic, and I know that the fight in front of us is very, very steep fight, but we will continue to fight for every vote and every delegate we can get.”
Sanders said Clinton graciously telephoned him Tuesday night.
In her speech, the former first lady reprised arguments she’s made against the GOP’s presumptive nominee for weeks, asserting that he and the Republican Party would take the nation backward economically, divide Americans along racial, ethnic and gender lines, and undermine alliances and international achievements that make Americans more secure.
“Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit,” Clinton said as the roar of the crowd drowned out the end of her sentence.
The former New York senator became emotional while saluting her late mother, Dorothy. “She taught me to not back down from a bully, which turned out to be pretty good advice,” she said to cheers.
She made a passing reference to her husband, who appeared on stage at the end of her speech to give her a hug and congratulations.
Clinton urged Americans to join her campaign, help her organize, donate and band together to defeat Trump, who earlier in the evening said he would deliver a speech next week, possibly Monday, critical of Bill and Hillary Clinton and what he described as their activities “selling favors” over the years.
The Democratic nominee expects President Obama to endorse her candidacy within days. Obama called Clinton and Sanders Tuesday to congratulate his former Cabinet member and to thank Sanders “for energizing millions of Americans” with an agenda focused on economic inequality.
Obama and Sanders will meet at the White House Thursday, at the senator’s request. And the determined Oval Office aspirant will meet with Democratic congressional leaders that day also.
The president on Sunday spoke by phone with Sanders, who has vowed to try to get superdelegates to back him at the July convention. Obama’s preference is to see the Democratic Party unite and coordinate its efforts to defeat the Republican ticket. Obama has repudiated Trump on numerous occasions, and hopes to bolster his party’s chances to hold the White House and perhaps install a Democratic majority in the Senate in 2017.
Sanders’ campaign team on Tuesday scheduled a rally Thursday in Washington, the location of the final Democratic primary on the calendar, on June 14.
“Every vote and every delegate is a declaration of support for the values that we share, which is why we're asking you to commit to vote for Bernie,” his campaign told supporters Tuesday night.
On June 13, Clinton will campaign against Trump in Cleveland, Ohio, and on June 14 she will hold an event in the Pittsburgh area to work for support in Pennsylvania, where the New York businessman says he can compete for working-class voters.
Clinton’s choices point to the importance of the two swing states in November. In a month, she will accept her party’s nomination at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
In New York Tuesday, Clinton supporter Kate Missett told RealClearPolitics she believes Sanders should end his bid gracefully.
“I think he should endorse her and step out,” she said.
Missett, a 64-year-old Brooklyn teacher who voted for Clinton in 2008, exulted in witnessing history being made for women in America. “I never thought in my lifetime I would see this,” she said. “It’s awesome.”
Clinton supporter George Yates, a resource coordinator for Harlem schools and a member of the United Federation of Teachers, said he is confident his party’s nominee can defeat Trump, but first, he said, Sanders should end his campaign after the D.C. contest and then endorse Clinton.
“Let him have that,” he said.
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We have to give credit to Hillary Clinton for punching back and unmasking the ugly truth about the republicans and their candidate.
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