By Brandon Moseley
Alabama Political reporter
On Tuesday, June 8, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won the New Mexico, New Jersey, and South Dakota Democratic Primaries. A jubilant Sec. Clinton announced that she is the presumptive Democratic nominee and looks forward to facing Donald Trump in the November election.
Sec. Clinton said, “For the first time in our country’s history, a woman will be a major party’s nominee for President of the United States. Tonight, we can say with pride that no matter who you are, where you come from, what you look like, or yes, what gender you are in America, there is no barrier too great and no ceiling too high to break.”
US Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) won the North Dakota Caucus and the Montana Primary. As of press time, Sec. Clinton appeared to be winning a decisive victory in the California Primary leading Sanders by 60.8 percent to 38.1 with 38 percent of the votes cast. The wins gave Sec. Clinton the necessary delegates to easily win the nomination on the first ballot at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
The 68 years old Clinton has won more pledged delegates, has more super delegates, has won more states, and has amassed more actual popular votes than has Sen. Sanders. Alabama’s Democrats decisively chose Secretary Clinton in the March 1, Alabama Presidential Primary. Sanders did very well with White men, but never really connected consistently with minority voters.
The only remaining Democratic Primary remaining is in Washington D.C. on Tuesday, June 14.
President Obama will meet with Sen. Bernie Sanders on Thursday, presumably to ask the 74 years old Sanders to stand down and unify the Democrats behind Secretary Clinton.
Sen. Sanders told supporters at a rally in Santa Monica that he will fight on to the convention, “We are going to fight hard to win the primary in Washington, DC, and then we take our fight for social, economic, racial and environmental justice to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.”
Sanders said, “I am pretty good at arithmetic and I know the fight in front of us is a very, very steep fight, but we’ll continue to fight for every delegate.”
Mrs. Clinton, through her marriage to Bill Clinton, is a former First Lady, from 1993 to 2001, and a former First Lady of the State of Arkansas. She was elected to two terms in the US Senate before becoming Secretary of State in the first Obama Administration. Clinton is an attorney and was a counsel for Senate Democrats in the Watergate investigation that brought down President Richard Nixon (R) in the 1970s.
Sec. Clinton is the subject of an FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) probe into how she handled classified information while she was Secretary of State. It is not known whether the US Department of Justice will seek to indict the former Secretary of State or not. A recent poll shows that most Democrats believe that Mrs. Clinton should run for President even if she is under indictment. The media is also investigating allegations that the Clinton Foundation took money from foreign governments while Mrs. Clinton was Secretary of State.
Clinton ran for President in 2008, but came up second to the US Senator from Illinois and eventual winner, Barack H. Obama.
(Original reporting by Fox News, CNN, and ‘The Hill’ contributed to this report)
