Hillary
Clinton said on Thursday that the outcome of the Democratic
presidential nomination is certain and that she will prevail.
“I will be the nominee for my party,” she said during an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo. “That is already done, in effect. There is no way that I won’t be.”
Vermont
Sen. Bernie Sanders has pledged he will continue to challenge Clinton
for the nomination, though the math requires him to secure increasingly
improbable landslides in the remaining contests to overtake the former
secretary of state among pledged delegates. He then hopes to convince
superdelegates to switch their allegiance, another difficult task.
Despite
these daunting odds, Sanders insists he will soldier on through the
June 7 primary races, which include big, Clinton-friendly states such
as California and New Jersey. On Tuesday, after Sanders won the primary in Oregon, he vowed to fight on until “the last ballot is cast.”
“I am absolutely committed to doing my part — more than my part — but Sen. Sanders has to do his part,” she said.
Clinton recalled her own unsuccessful 2008 primary race against then-Sen. Barack Obama.
At
the time, Clinton — who was then closer to Obama in delegates than
Sanders now is to her — forged on into the late primaries despite also
facing improbable odds. But she noted to Cuomo that she later worked to
rally her supporters behind Obama’s candidacy.
“That’s
why the lesson of 2008, which was a hard-fought primary as you
remember, is so pertinent here,” she said. “Because I did my part. But
so did Sen. Obama. He made it clear he welcomed people who had supported
me. He made it very clear.”
She
continued: “We went to Unity, N.H., together, appeared together, spoke
together and made it absolutely obvious that I was supporting him. He
was grateful for that support. I was reaching out to my supporters.”
Later in the day Thursday, the Sanders campaign fired off a statement disputing Clinton’s assessment of the primary.
“In
the past three weeks voters in Indiana, West Virginia and Oregon
respectfully disagreed with Secretary Clinton. We expect voters in the
remaining eight contests also will disagree,” Sanders spokesman Michael
Briggs said.
“And
with almost every national and state poll showing Sen. Sanders doing
much, much better than Secretary Clinton against Donald Trump,” he
added. “it is clear that millions of Americans have growing doubts about
the Clinton campaign.”
Watch part of Clinton’s interview below.
— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) May 19, 2016
Jawad Ameer ©2016, copyright @ jawad ameer
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