It was another superb Super Tuesday for Hillary Clinton. She took four of the five states and the delegates up for grabs, leaving Sen. Bernie Sanders only tiny Rhode Island to crow about.
The Democratic race is, with each primary, beginning to look more and more like a Clinton conquest. And she seems to be looking to the horizon where Donald Trump looms after his sweep Tuesday, rather than contending with Sanders.
Clinton’s recent dominance, placing Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and Connecticut in her basket, adds to her delegate accumulation. According to the Associated Press, Clinton has 1,632 pledged delegates and 519 super delegates for a total of 2,151. She needs only 232 more delegates to reach the goal of 2,383.
Sanders has 1,299 pledged delegates and 39 super delegates for a total of 1,338, leaving him with the task of acquiring 1,045 to get the nomination. Mathematically, he’s all but eliminated, but Sanders has promised to plow on until the convention in Philadelphia in July.
“I applaud Sen. Sanders and his millions of supporters for challenging us to get accountable money out of our politics and giving greater emphasis to closing the gap of inequality,” Clinton said in her victory speech from her headquarters in Philadelphia. “And I know together we will get that done. Because whether you support Sen. Sander or you support me, there’s much more that unites us than divides us.”
The key words, “we will get it done,” were not only an olive branch extended to Sanders but also part of the staging ground against the presumed campaign against Trump.
That appeal to Sanders may not be enough for him to fully commit to backing Clinton should he lose the nomination. Already he has declared to be in Philadelphia to be a participant in the Democratic platform, making sure some of his pet issues are among the planks.
In response to Sanders determination to have a say in forging the platform, Clinton said she had not made such demands after losing to Barack Obama in 2008.
But that was a whisper compared with the shout that is mounting against Trump, particularly after his comment that all she has to offer is the “woman’s card.”
“I think the only card she has is the woman’s card,” Trump said recently from his headquarters in New York City. “She’s got nothing else going. And frankly, if Hillary Clinton were a man, I don’t think she’d get 5 percent of the vote. The only thing she’s got going is the woman’s card, and the beautiful thing is women don’t like her.”
“Mr. Trump accused me of playing the, quote, woman card,” Clinton countered. “Well, if fighting for women’s health care and paid family leave and equal pay is playing the woman card, then deal me in!”
The results of the recent primaries show that Clinton beat Trump in each one of the five states. In looking at the two top states, Clinton received more votes than Trump in Pennsylvania and Maryland, and the margin was almost doubled in the latter state.
Even so, each candidate seems to be suffering from major problems in their ranks. Several polls show that 40 percent of Republicans will not vote for Trump, and a similar number of Democrats are not that excited about Clinton. Are we talking about Clinton then as the lesser of two evils?
Whatever the case, the contest between Trump and Clinton is going to be a donnybrook, and we can expect Trump become even more vituperative as the race heats up.