Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) struck a defiant tone against Hillary Clinton on Tuesday night as he defeated the former secretary of State in Oregon and split the delegates with her in a Kentucky photo finish.
Sanders took away 28 delegates from his 54.8 percent-42.5 percent win in Oregon, and each candidate got 27 delegates in Kentucky where Clinton won by 0.5 percent. But with her 524 superdelegates, Clinton is only 92 delegates away from clinching the Democratic Party nomination.
The senator was rallying with thousands of supporters including Danny Glover at Cal State Dominquez Hills in Carson, Calif., when he learned of his Oregon victory.
“We just won Oregon and we’re going to win California. I’m getting to like the West Coast,” Sanders declared.
“I think we have a real shot to win primaries in a number of states coming up,” he said. “And don’t tell Secretary Clinton — she might get nervous — but I think we’re going to win here in California.”
On June 7, 475 delegates are up for grabs in California for Sanders and Clinton.
Clinton did not speak last night, but put out a press release this morning about Donald Trump’s “dangerous” foreign policy.
Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus declared that “while Republicans move toward unifying the party for the general election, Hillary Clinton remains bogged down in a nasty, protracted primary fight and will have to rely on a rigged system of superdelegates to get across the finish line in Philadelphia.”
“Hillary Clinton’s seemingly pathological need to mislead voters, her reckless conduct as secretary of state now under FBI investigation, and cronyism at her family foundation have alienated large swathes of voters, including many in her own party,” Priebus added. “Too much is at stake in our country to turn the White House over to Hillary Clinton and her corrupt cronies.”
The Dems are also dealing with fallout from last weekend’s contentious Nevada convention, as Bernie and many of his supporters dig in their heels to move their campaign forward.
Sanders’ campaign manager, Jeff Weaver, told CNN on Tuesday that “not any kind of violence or threats, that’s unacceptable, bad language, that’s unacceptable.”
“But we are not going to allow the millions of people who supported Bernie Sanders to be sort of rolled over in places like Nevada by the way, they handled that convention,” Weaver added.
Responding to chairs being thrown at the convention and threats directed at the state party chairwoman, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) said Tuesday that “the Sanders campaign and Senator Sanders himself should not only outright condemn that specific conduct, but they also need to take steps to prevent it and make sure that their supporters understand that the most important and correct way to respond to any frustration they have over process is to be civil and orderly.”
“We have communicated through our senior staff, and that is — I sent a statement and Senator Reid and others have spoken directly with Senator Sanders,” she said. “I think it should be pretty clear to anybody that violence and intimidation is never acceptable under any circumstances and it should be condemned. And there are no if’s, and’s, or but’s about it.”
“…Unfortunately, the senator’s response was anything but acceptable. It certainly did not condemn his supporters for acting violently or engaging in intimidation tactics and instead added more fuel to the fire… It is never OK for violence and intimidation to be the response to that frustration. That’s what happens with the Trump campaign. We can never resort to the tactics that they — that they engage in.”
Sanders condemned threats that avowed supporters of his made in connection with last weekend’s Nevada Democratic Convention — but stressed that violence has also been directed at his campaign and his supporters have not been treated “with fairness and the respect that they have earned.”
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