Hillary Clinton First Woman Presidential Candidate of a Major Party
There are many laudatory titles that could have been chosen here. Here’s another. Former First Lady, Senator, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has convincingly achieved the Democratic nomination for the Presidency of the United States. She did this both with superdelegates, and also considering pledged delegates alone. She also did this with a policy based campaign, and without personal attacks against her primary opponent Senator Sanders, thus preserving party unity.
On Super Tuesday June 7, Clinton convincingly won both the largest state of California, by 56% to 43%, and the large state of New Jersey, overwhelmingly by 63% to 37%.
In California, Clinton won 269 pledged delegates, to Sanders’ 206, out of the total of 475 pledged delegates. Sanders had campaigned for two weeks to make California his last stand, and Clinton gained 63 delegates on him there.
In New Jersey, next to her home state of New York, Clinton won 79 pledged delegates to Sanders’ 47, gaining another 32 delegates over Sanders.
Clinton won New Mexico, 51.5% to 48.5%, receiving 18 delegates to Sanders 16, gaining a small edge of 2.
Clinton won South Dakota, 51.0% to 49.0%, and they each received 10 delegates.
As usual, I am amazed by such close races, and have no way to explain them.
Sanders won the Montana primary by 51.1% to 44.6%, and received 11 delegates to Clinton’s 10, a relative gain of 1.
As usual, Sanders won the North Dakota caucus, by 64% to 26%, winning 13 delegates to Clinton’s 5, for a relative gain of 8.
So Clinton’s relative gain of pledged delegates for the night is 63+32+2 = 97. Sanders’ relative gain was 9. This super Tuesday had to be a severe disappointment to Sanders, his campaign managers and workers, and to his supporters, since he fell further back by a net 88 delegates.
Clinton now has 2,203 pledged delegates to Sanders’ 1,828, a lead of 375 pledged delegates.
Although Sanders said to fight on to the only primary left, D.C. on Tuesday, June 14, there are only 20 pledged delegates available there. Clinton should have a big lead there.
Sanders and others have made the claim that since superdelegates are not democratically elected, they shouldn’t be counted. That argument doesn’t work anymore, if we look at only pledged delegates. There are 4,051 pledged delegates, of the 4,765 total. Half of the pledged delegates is 2,026. Clinton now has 2,203 pledged delegates, and is over the required number by 177, or by 8.7%.
Sanders’ only hope now is to get many more superdelegates than Clinton has, that is, to convince them to switch.
Sanders’ only argument now, that he does better against Trump than Clinton, is only due to the fact that part of Trump’s strategy has been not to attack Sanders, to force a split among Democrats. Should Sanders become the candidate, it is unknown how much support Sanders would lose to a merciless daily Trump attack.
