WASHINGTON —
Hillary Rodham Clinton clinched the Democratic presidential nomination Monday
night with timely help from Democratic Party insiders, shattering a glass
ceiling to become the first woman in American history to top a major party
ticket.
“This is an
important milestone,” said Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook in a statement.
The campaign of
Bernie Sanders did not concede and the Vermont senator signaled his intention
to continue contesting the nomination. But it is now a virtual certainty that
Clinton will face presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump in November —
another historic candidate because of his nonpolitical background. The contest
is shaping up to be one of the nastiest campaigns in a generation.
Clinton reached the
2,383-delegate figure needed to be the Democratic nominee after winning
contests in both Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands over the weekend and after
previously undeclared “superdelegates’’ — party officials who are not bound by
voting in individual states and territories — told the Associated Press for the
first time Monday that they’d back Clinton.
Her tally includes
the 1,812 pledged delegates she won in primaries and caucuses along with the
support of 571 superdelegates, according to an AP count.
The superdelegates
will not cast their official votes until the party’s convention in July, but they’ve
repeatedly reaffirmed their intended support for Clinton to the AP in the news
agency’s surveys. When Barack Obama was declared the presumptive nominee in
2008 he also relied on the pledges of support from superdelegates to get to the
magic number.
Clinton has won 29
states and territories to Sanders’ 21, with 300 more pledged delegates. She has
13 million overall votes to Sanders’ 10 million.
The news comes
hours before voting is set to begin in California and five other states that
cast ballots on Tuesday, the last balloting besides the District of Columbia,
which caps the primary season next week.
“There are six
states that are voting Tuesday, with millions of people heading to the polls,
and Hillary Clinton is working to earn every vote,” Mook said.
Most expected that
Clinton would cross the finish line Tuesday evening when returns from New
Jersey arrived. Instead, it came a day earlier.
In a San Francisco
rally, Sanders made no mention of Clinton’s victory. His campaign, however,
struck a defiant note, issuing a statement about an hour after Clinton’s news
broke saying he does not accept her delegate tally as final.
“Secretary Clinton
does not have and will not have the requisite number of pledged delegates to
secure the nomination,” said Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs in a statement.
“She will be
dependent on superdelegates who do not vote until July 25 and who can change
their minds between now and then. They include more than 400 superdelegates who
endorsed Secretary Clinton 10 months before the first caucuses and primaries
and long before any other candidate was in the race.
“Our job from now
until the convention is to convince those superdelegates that Bernie is by far
the strongest candidate against Donald Trump,” he said.
Sanders has been
hoping that a win in California would give him fresh ammunition to persuade
Clinton’s superdelegates to switch their vote. He’s held rallies in more than
30 cities in the state, with tens of thousands of people coming out to hear his
message of political revolution.
It has been clear
for weeks that Sanders’ path to the nomination had all but evaporated, but
Clinton’s team has been hesitant to pressure him out of the race. Her campaign
doesn’t want to offend his millions of supporters whose votes she will need in
November.
Still, his
iconoclastic campaign has had a huge effect on the race, forcing Clinton to
move to the left on issues including trade, the environment, and the minimum
wage. The tens of millions of dollars that he raised online from small donors
showed that it is possible to mount a credible presidential level campaign
without the backing of the party’s monied elite.
Trump did not
respond publicly to Clinton’s big moment. But he did slam her in one of his
tweets: “A former Secret Service Agent for President Clinton excoriates Crooked
Hillary describing her as ERRATIC & VIOLENT. Bad temperament for pres.’’
Making history is
not new for Clinton. She carved out a highly public and policy-oriented role as
first lady. Then she became the first former first lady to win a Senate seat.
Her path to the
nomination has lasted at least a decade — with some advisers plotting her
presidential run as soon as she won reelection to her New York Senate seat in
2006.
She was favored to
win the nomination when she first tried in 2007, but was outmatched by Obama’s
campaign of hope and change.
Clinton stayed in
the contest well after it was clear that she would lose the primary and finally
conceded the race on June 7, 2008, during a speech in Washington.
“Although we weren’t
able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you,
it’s got about 18 million cracks in it,” Clinton said in one of the most
memorable speeches of that campaign. “And the light is shining through like
never before, filling us all with the hope and the sure knowledge that the path
will be a little easier next time.”
Clinton then
returned to her post in the Senate. She said that she was surprised when Obama
asked if she wanted to be his secretary of state.
The role gave her a
lifeline back to national prominence and her popularity soared as she
crisscrossed the world, visiting 112 countries. Her fluency in international
affairs is admired widely.
However, her time
at Foggy Bottom produced some of the headaches for the campaign.
She decided to use
a private e-mail server — set up in her home — instead of the State Department
system. The unorthodox arrangement has prompted several investigations.
And, while Clinton
led the Department of State, the Clinton family foundation received millions of
dollars in new donations from foreign governments — at times without disclosing
the gifts. Clinton had pledged repeatedly during her confirmation hearings that
potential conflicts would be disclosed. In at least one case, the State Department
helped facilitate a project that was a priority of the family’s charity.
She also was on
duty on Sept. 11, 2012, when four Americans, including US Ambassador J.
Christopher Stevens, died in attacks on a diplomatic compound in Benghazi,
Libya.
A House select
committee formed to investigate what went wrong on that day is expected to
release a report soon.
Source: Bostonglobe
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