There are still six primaries and one caucus left to go in the Democratic primary race, six of which will take place today, but multiple news outlets are already reporting that Hillary Clinton has secured enough delegates to win the Democratic nomination over Bernie Sanders, pending official confirmation at the Democratic National Convention in late July. The AP first reported last night that, according to its count of pledged delegates and insider knowledge of superdelegates, Clinton has the support of the 2,383 delegates required to be the presumptive nominee; not long after, a number of other networks declared that, per their own surveys of superdelegates, the AP's report is correct.
Sanders, who has been consistently critical of superdelegates and argued that they point to a corrupt and undemocratic primary system (an argument he's also made in reference to New York's closed primary), was quick to refute these reports: in a statement posted to his campaign website last night, a spokesperson said that "it is unfortunate that the media, in a rush to judgment, are ignoring the Democratic National Committee's clear statement that it is wrong to count the votes of superdelegates before they actually vote at the convention this summer." Pointing out that superdelegates who've endorsed Clinton can nonetheless change their minds before the convention, he said that "our job from now until the convention is to convince those superdelegates that Bernie is by far the strongest candidate against Donald Trump."
The AP says that since it began surveying superdelegates toward the end of 2015, none has switched his or her support from Clinton to Sanders. 95 of the 714 superdelegates reportedly remain publicly uncommitted.
The timing of this declaration of victory for Clinton also angered Sanders's supporters—perhaps not the most strategic move, considering that Clinton, should she indeed be the presumptive nominee, will now have to try to unite the Democratic party against Donald Trump. Some supporters, such as Grizzly Bear frontman Ed Droste, who headlined a Prospect Park rally for Sanders in April, argued that the timing of the networks' announcements could suppress voter turnout in today's primaries in California, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, and South Dakota, and the caucus in North Dakota.
Clinton hasn't yet publicly declared herself as the presumptive nominee—at a rally last night in California, she said that she was on the brink of a "historic, unprecedented moment," and is "going to fight hard for every single vote" in the races today and in D.C. on June 14th. But should these early reports be accurate, Clinton will be making history as the first woman to be the nominee for either of the U.S.'s two major parties, shattering what she referred to in 2008 as "that highest, hardest glass ceiling."
Meanwhile on the Dark Side, Trump is expected to hold a news conference in New York today marking the end of the Republican primaries. As the New York Times notes, Republican concern about Trump is running high: in the past week, he's continued his pattern of racism and been accused of corruption and fraud. Former Trump challenger Senator Lindsey Graham recently appeared to go so far as to nearly endorse Clinton, arguing that "If anybody was looking for an off-ramp, this is probably it...There'll come a time when the love of country will trump hatred of Hillary."
