LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Hillary Clinton called for party unity yesterday, suggesting it was time for Bernie Sanders to abandon his hard-fought challenge, as six states hold nominating contests today when she expects to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination.
Clinton told reporters in California that today marked eight years from the day she withdrew from the 2008 White House race, endorsing Barack Obama after a bitter rivalry. Her supporters have said Sanders should look at that as a road map for his own exit from this year’s race.
After staying above the campaign fray for months, Obama could endorse his former secretary of state as early as this week, the New York Times and CNN reported. White House press secretary Josh Earnest told reporters the president was waiting for New Jersey and California to vote today before weighing in.
Today’s voting is expected to clinch the Democratic nomination for Clinton, 68, which would make her the first woman nominated for president by a major US political party.
Her campaign hopes an expected victory in New Jersey will give her enough delegates to effectively lock up the nomination early in the evening, before the results come in from California, the biggest electoral prize and likely the last to report results today.
Although she has won more votes and earned the support of more delegates to the Democratic National Convention in July, she has shied away from calling on Sanders to drop out of the contest. Yesterday, she pointed to her 2008 decision to unite the party and said Democrats needed to do the same to take on presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.
“I believed it was the right thing to do. No matter what differences we had in our long campaign, they paled in comparison to the differences we had with the Republicans, and that is actually even more true today,” Clinton said.
“Anyone who has supported me, anyone who has supported Senator Sanders has a lot at stake in this election in preventing Donald Trump from being our president,” she said.
Clinton has long been the front-runner to be the Democratic nominee in the November 8 election but has faced an unexpectedly tough fight against Sanders, 74, a US senator from Vermont, and his attacks on her from the left.
An Obama endorsement would come as a welcome boost to Clinton and to Democrats concerned the party needs to turn its attention to campaigning against Trump. While he has made remarks indicating a preference for Clinton, Obama has so far avoided a clear endorsement.
Obama remains popular with many voters. His job approval was over 50 per cent in a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll and has been on the rise in 2016.
Still, although Sanders lags well behind in delegates needed to win the nomination, he said yesterday he would make his case to so-called superdelegates who are not required to vote for a particular candidate at the convention.
“Our goal is to get as many delegates as we possibly can and to make the case to superdelegates that, I believe, the evidence is fairly strong that I am the strongest candidate,” he said. Superdelegates largely consist of party leaders and elected senators, members of Congress and governors.
Clinton has 2,357 delegates going into today’s contests, just 26 short of the 2,383 she needs to clinch the nomination at next month’s convention in Philadelphia.
Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and New Mexico also hold nominating contests today, but most attention will focus on California. Clinton once held a sizable lead there over Sanders, but opinion polls in recent days showed them in a dead heat.
While Clinton expects to become the presumptive nominee regardless of the California result, a Sanders victory could embolden his supporters to urge him to wage a fractious convention fight. It could also help Trump, 69, who clinched the Republican nomination last month, argue that she is a weak candidate.
“It’s going to make her ability to seal the deal with disaffected Democrats all that much harder, which is unfortunate given the fact that the Republicans for better or for worse already have their candidate,” said Jim Manley, a Democratic strategist who supports Clinton. “The only one benefiting from this is Donald Trump.”
Sanders’ campaign appeared to burn through cash to get to the final nominating contests, ending April with just $5.8 million on hand, compared with Clinton’s $30 million. The senator has not released his May fundraising figures. Spokesman Michael Briggs said in an email the campaign was “doing fine.”
Clinton heads into today’s contests after a victory over the weekend in Puerto Rico’s primary. She is also expected to win in Washington, DC, which holds the final primary of the year on June 14.
Trump, a real estate developer, has regularly stirred up controversy on the campaign trail. In recent days, his comments about a judge he believes to be biased against him because he is Mexican-American have drawn criticism.
Yesterday, Trump insisted his concerns were valid.
The latest Reuters/Ipsos tracking poll showed Clinton with an 11-percentage-point edge over Trump, 46 per cent to 35 per cent, a marked change from just 10 days ago, when fewer than 4 points separated the two.
