Hillary Clinton is still not quite the Democratic candidate for President of the United States. She kinds of is but not officially of technically. Ah right, that clear things up doesn’t it.
Clinton has reached the required number of delegated to get the nomination. A count has put her on 2,383 which makes her the presumptive nominee. It’s likely that she will become the first female presidential nominee for a major American political party in 227 years!
However, there’s a snag. Her rival, Bernie Sanders, has pointed out that Clinton’s nomination is reliant on people known as ‘superdelegates’ (party insiders who can pledge their support for a candidate ahead of the convention but do not formally vote for them until the convention itself) who won’t actually cast their votes until the party’s get together next month.
In theory Sanders could leave the ring, take himself out of the race and let Hillary take the nomination. This is what she did for Obama back in 2007. He’s said no to this and vowed to stay in the race until the convention next month. Bernie Sanders, it seems, is still very much in it to win it. That said, Clinton is leading by 2,383 delegates to Sanders’s 1,569.
Earlier this week Clinton made it clear that she thinks Sanders should bow out. Speaking to journalists in Compton she pointed out that it would be exactly ‘eight years to the day’ since she withdrew her candidacy and endorsed Barack Obama in his campaign to become president.
It’s no certainty but it’s looking increasingly likely that the competition for the Whitehouse will now be between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. This is a critical contest now, with many commentators saying that Sanders needs to drop out and back Clinton so that the opposition against Trump is a united one.
At the beginning of this race the media reported on Trump's decision to run for president in a lolzy way, as though it was nothing more than jokes entertainment news. Now he's basically become the Republican party's nominee by a long way and nobody's really sure whether anything or anyone can change that. It's more important than ever that the opposition unites against him because, otherwise, in theory he could be the next leader of the free world.
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This article originally appeared on The Debrief.