By Brandon Moseley
Alabama Political Reporter
Just when it appeared that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was firmly ensconced as the Democratic Party nominee for President of the United States, US Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) scored major victories in the Democratic caucuses in Washington, Hawaii and Alaska on Saturday. The Independent Senator from Vermont who has spoken at length about the benefits of socialism and raising taxes on the rich, coasted to easy wins in the three western states.
Sen. Sanders said in an email to his supporters, before the Hawaii results were in: “Our campaign was just declared the winner of two more states: Washington State with 101 delegates, and Alaska with 16 delegates. These are our fourth and fifth wins out of the last six results, and there’s still another caucus today where we expect to do very well. We’ll be in touch with the results from Hawaii, but this is shaping up to be a tremendous day for our campaign.”
Senator Sanders meanwhile is already campaigning in Wisconsin where he said at a rally, “We knew things would begin to improve when we moved west…Don’t let anybody tell you we can’t win the nomination or win the general election. We’re going to do both those things.”
As of press time, Clinton leads in the delegate count with 1234 delegates to Sanders’ 956; but Clinton strongest constituency is Black voters who make up most primary voters in the southern states……and the southern states have already voted. Sanders could still catch Clinton in the race for delegates if the remaining states fall in his direction. Sec. Clinton however maintains an enormous lead with already pledged super delegates with 469 to just 29 for Sanders. Sen. Sanders team point out that super delegates can change their minds and likely would rather than steal the nomination from Sanders if he comes to the convention with the most won delegates. It takes 2,283 delegates to win the nomination at the Democratic convention.
Sen. Sanders has now won five of the last six Democratic contests and has won almost 2/3s of the delegates over that period. In Washington state, Sanders won an incredible 72.7 percent of the vote. In Alaska Sen. Sander had 81.6 percent of the caucus votes cast.
Hillary Clinton won the Alabama Democratic Primary in a landslide on Super Tuesday.
On the Republican side there was no GOP primary or caucus this week. Recent polling shows either Sanders or Clinton easily besting Republican frontrunner Donald Trump in a head to head contest.
Original reporting by the New York Times and Washington Post contributed to this article.
