The Associated Press and NBC News have declared Hillary Clinton the winner of the Democratic presidential primary, based on pledged delegates and public commitments from superdelegates.
The Clinton campaign, however, is waiting until California and five other states cast ballots on Tuesday to declare victory.
“We look forward to Tuesday night, when Hillary Clinton will clinch not only a win in the popular vote, but also a majority of the pledged delegates,” campaign manager Robby Mook said in a statement.
Clinton was widely expected to reach the 2,383 delegates needed to claim the Democratic nomination in Tuesday’s contests. But the AP, which has been running its own delegate count, determined that she has reached that threshold with super delegates and with her blowout win in Puerto Rico on Sunday.
Bernie Sanders’ campaign issued a statement on the “establishment media,” claiming that they have taken to a “rush to judgement.”
“It is unfortunate that the media, in a rush to judgement, are ignoring the Democratic National Committee’s clear statement that it is wrong to count the votes of super delegates before they actually vote at the convention this summer,” says the statement from Sanders spokesperson Michael Briggs.
“Secretary Clinton does not have and will not have the requisite number of pledged delegates to secure the nomination. She will be dependent on super delegates who do not vote until July 25 and who can change their minds between now and then. They include more than 400 super delegates who endorsed Secretary Clinton 10 months before the first caucuses and primaries and long before any other candidate was in the race,” it goes on. “Our job from now until the convention is to convince those super delegates that Bernie is by far the strongest candidate against Donald Trump.”
In San Francisco, where Sanders was holding a rally and concert with musician Dave Matthews, one of Sanders’ political surrogates, Nina Turner, insisted that the race should go all the way to the convention.
Clinton’s campaign was holding their own concert at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles. Early in the evening, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti mentioned the AP call to cheers from the crowd, but he said that the race wasn’t over yet and urged supporters to get out the vote in Tuesday’s primary. It reflected some consternation among supporters that the AP call could depress turnout.
