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Today’s Hillary News & Views begins with Clinton’s victory speech in West Palm Beach, Florida, given after her Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio wins were called, but before her victories in Illinois and Missouri.
Vox transcribes:
Oh, thank you so much! Thank you! Thank you all so very much.
Well, I'll tell you, this is another Super Tuesday for our campaign.
Thank you, Florida, thank you, North Carolina, thank you, Ohio. We know we will add to our delegate lead to roughly 300, with over two million more votes nationwide. We are moving closer to securing the Democratic Party nomination and closer to winning this election in November.
And our supporters across the country, our campaign has won more votes than any other candidate, Democrat or Republican. And I want to congratulate Senator Sanders for the vigorous campaign he's waging.
Now today, all of you in the states where contests were held voted to break down the barriers that hold us all back, so every one of us can share in the promise of America. You voted. You voted for our tomorrow to be better than our yesterday. Tomorrow where all of us do our part and everyone has a chance to live up to his or her god given potential. Because that's how America can live up to its potential too.
Now we need you to keep working, keep volunteering. Keep contributing at Hillary clinton.com. Please, please join the 950,000 supporters who already have contributed, most less than $100 because our campaign depends on small donations for the majority of our support. We can't do this without you. So if you have been waiting for the right moment, now is the time to come join us.
Tonight it's clearer than ever that this may be one of the most consequential campaigns of our lifetimes, the next president will walk into the Oval Office in January and sit down in at that desk and start making decisions that will affect the lives and the livelihoods of everyone in this country, indeed, everyone on this planet.
Now I know that easy decisions don't make it to the president's desk. Only the hardest choices and the trickiest problems. I saw president Obama wrestle with the Navy SEALs after Osama bin Laden, to fight for the Affordable Care Act and so many more.
And so our next president needs to be ready to face three big tasks. First can you make positive differences in people's lives? Second, can you keep us safe? Third, can you bring our country together again?
Now making differences in people's lives comes first because Americans everywhere are hungry for solutions. They want to break down the barriers holding them back. So we can all rise together. Ask any parent, you'll hear nothing is more important than making sure their kids have a good school and a good teacher, no matter what zip code they live in. They deserve a president who understands that when we invest in our children's education, we're investing in all of our futures.
And young people across America struggling under the weight of student debt find it difficult to imagine the futures they want. And they deserve a president who will help relieve them of that burden and help future generations go to college without borrowing a dime for tuition.
And grandparents who worry about retirement deserve a president who will protect and then expand social security for those who need it most, not cut or privatize it.
Families deserve a president who will fight for the things that are our priorities at home but too often aren't priorities in Washington: affordable child care, paid family leave, and, something we have waited for long enough, equal pay for equal work for women.
And above all, above all, hard working Americans across our country deserve a president with both the ideas and the know how to create good jobs with rising incomes right here in our country. And I am absolutely convinced that we have the tools to do that.
That's why I have laid out a program to do what can be done: More good jobs in infrastructure, more good jobs in manufacturing, more good jobs in small businesses, More good jobs and clean renewable energy. Good paying jobs are the ticket to the middle class and we're going to stand up for the American middle class again.
We're going to stand up for American workers, and make sure no one takes advantage of us, not China, not Wall Street and not overpaid corporate executives. Now look, of course every candidate makes promises like this, but every candidate owes it to you to be clear and direct about what our plans will cost and how we are going to make them work – that's the difference between running for president and being president.
And I'll tell you, let me tell you the second big test for our next president is keeping us safe. We live in a complex and, yes, a dangerous world. Protecting America's national security can never be an after thought.
Our commander in chief has to be able to defend our country, not embarrass it, engage our allies, not alienate them, defeat our adversaries not embolden them. When we have a candidate for president call for rounding up 12 million immigrants, banning all Muslims from entering United States, when he embraces torture, that doesn't make him strong, it makes him wrong.
And, yes, our next president has to bring our country together. So we can all share in the promise of America. We should be breaking down barriers, not building walls. We're not going to succeed by dividing this country between us and them. You know, to be great, we can't be small. We can't lose what made America great in the first place. And this isn't just about trump, all of us have to do our part. We can't just talk about economic inequality, we have to take on all forms of inequality.
Together we have to defend all of our rights: civil rights and voting rights, workers rights and women's rights, LGBT rights and rights for people with disabilities. And that starts by standing with President Obama when he nominates a justice to the Supreme Court. Our next president will face all these challenges and more.
You know, running for president is hard, but being president is harder. It is the hardest, most important job in the world. And no one person can succeed at the job without seeking and finding common ground to solve the problems we face.
If we work together, we can make a real difference in people's lives. If we reach out to treat each other with respect, kindness and even love, instead of bluster and bigotry, if we lift each other up, instead of tearing each other down, there's nothing we can't accomplish together. So please, join me in this campaign, every vote counts, every volunteer hour counts, every contribution counts.
Eight years ago on the night of the Ohio primary, I said I was running for everyone who's ever been counted out, but refused to be knocked out. For everyone who has stumbled but stood right back up. For everyone who works hard and never gives up. Well, that is still true.
Our campaign is for the steelworker I met in Ohio on Sunday night, who's laid off but hoping to get back to work. It's for the mother I met in Miami whose five children haven't seen their father since he was deported. She dreams of a day when deportations end and families are reunited on a path to citizenship. And it is for the mothers I stood with in Chicago yesterday, who have lost children to gun violence.
They're turning their sorrow into a strategy and their mourning into a movement. Let's stand with people who have courage, who have resilience.
Let's stand with everyone who believes America's best days are ahead of us. For all of our challenges, I have never had more faith in our future and if we work together, if we go forward in this campaign, if we win in November, I know our future will be brighter, tomorrow than yesterday.
Thank you all so very much.
And here is some coverage of her excellent night.
New York Times reports:
Hillary Clinton swept major primaries in Florida, North Carolina and Ohio on Tuesday, rebounding from her upset loss to Bernie Sanders in Michigan a week earlier and securing a political and psychological victory for her campaign.
The results were a significant setback for Mr. Sanders, who was counting on his fiery arguments against free trade to help him prevail across the industrial Midwest. He spent heavily trying to win Ohio, as well as Tuesday’s contests in Illinois and Missouri, but he came away with his presidential bid looking increasingly hopeless, since Mrs. Clinton is far ahead in amassing delegates needed to win the nomination.
For Mrs. Clinton, Tuesday’s double-digit victories netted her so many delegates that her lead over Mr. Sanders is now about three times what Barack Obama’s was over her in 2008. On a personal level, too, she and her advisers were reassured that regardless of her Michigan defeat, her political arguments about jobs and the economy had potency in states that will be major battlegrounds in November.
The Huffington Post reports:
With the wins Tuesday, Clinton's lead in delegates over Sanders could approach 300 -- which would be more than double Obama's largest lead in 2008.
"Hillary Clinton's wins tonight effectively ended the Democratic nomination for president," predicted Brad Woodhouse, president of the pro-Clinton super PAC Correct The Record. "It is all but mathematically impossible for Bernie Sanders to overtake her lead."
The map ahead does, indeed, look tough for Sanders. After Tuesday, there are just five states left with more than 100 delegates to award. One of them is New York, which Clinton represented in the Senate (although Sanders' campaign has said they plan to compete there, citing the senator's Brooklyn roots). And only one of them, Washington, is a caucus state, which Sanders has tended to dominate.
The Washington Post reports:
The Democratic party moved a lot closer to choosing its nominee on Tuesday night. The Republican party moved a little closer to chaos.
Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton has won at least four of the five states where Democrats voted on Tuesday, with victories in Florida, Illinois, Ohio and North Carolina. The race in Missouri against Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) remains too close to call. Clinton’s staff said they expected to increase their lead in the race for Democratic convention delegates by about 300 — requiring Sanders to stage a near-miraculous comeback in the coming states.
Clinton has been eager to pivot her campaign to confront Trump more directly. But asked Tuesday if she was concerned that a protracted primary fight with Sanders would impede Democrats’ ability to wage a general-election fight against the GOP nominee, she declined to encourage Sanders to leave the race.
“He has a right to run his campaign in any way that he chooses, and I’m proud of the campaign we’ve run,” Clinton said.
Also Tuesday, Clinton announced that she has been endorsed by the mother of Michael Brown, the teenager whose 2014 shooting by police in Ferguson, Mo., brought more attention to officer-involved slayings of unarmed black men.
The endorsement came as Clinton has appeared to lose ground to Sanders in Missouri, with the most recent poll showing an effective tie.
“When I lost my son, I lost my world. ‘Big Mike’ was a big boy, but he was my baby boy, my only child, and his life was brutally taken from me,” Lezley McSpadden wrote in her endorsement statement.
Slate reports:
The first Super Tuesday wasn’t quite as super as Hillary Clinton hoped, but the sequel couldn’t have turned out much better for the former secretary of state. Clinton won at least four the night’s five contests—notching big wins in Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio, and a smaller one in Illinois. Hillary came into the night as the dinged-up cautious favorite; she’ll leave it as the presumptive nominee.
Based on the latest Associated Press estimates—which don’t yet include the results in Missouri and Illinois—Clinton now has 1,488 delegates to her name, nearly two-thirds of the number she needs to win the nomination and more than double Sanders’ 704. Yes, nearly a third of Hillary’s total are superdelegates, who could, theoretically, change their mind—but given her massive lead and their general front-loving nature, it’s hard to imagine them finding a reason to switch teams now. And given that they are, by definition, part of the Democratic establishment, they won’t be looking for one either.
Add it all up and Clinton now needs to win only about a third of the outstanding delegates to secure the majority she’ll ultimately need at this summer’s convention—an incredibly low bar for any candidate, let alone one with Clinton’s built-in advantages. The next several weeks of the primary calendar could give Bernie a chance to post a few more wins of his own, but, unlike their GOP counterparts, Democrats don’t hold winner-take-all contests. Barring a truly catastrophic collapse from the front-runner, Hillary will be standing on a stage in Philadelphia when the balloons come down this summer. There’s no longer anything Bernie can realistically do to stop her.
Politico reports:
The 2016 Democratic primary effectively ended Tuesday night, with Hillary Clinton as the all-but-certain winner but Bernie Sanders barely acknowledging it.
For Clinton, a narrow win in Illinois and double-digit victories across the battleground states of Florida, North Carolina and Ohio provided deliverance from a humbling loss in Michigan a week earlier and finally gave her the space to begin her pivot to Donald Trump and the general election. That left the Vermont senator to deliver his standard 60-minute stemwinder in Phoenix without mentioning a single defeat.
Clinton on Tuesday night crushed Sanders in Florida -- where there are more eligible voters in South Florida than in all four early nominating states combined -- with a 31-point victory. And she won North Carolina by a hefty 16-point margin, despite a $1 million Sanders ad blitz over the past week that tripled her spending there.
But if Florida was a bonanza that widened the delegate gap between them, Ohio was the wild card win that allowed Clinton to shift her gaze forward -- her 13-point victory represented a staggering blow to Sanders, who was not able to translate his economic message and opposition to foreign trade deals into success in Ohio and Illinois. In the other industrial Midwestern states to vote Tuesday, Clinton held a slight lead in Missouri with 99 percent of the vote in.
Florida Democrats credited the big win to the state’s diverse population, as well as the deep connection the Clintons have with the state. Bill Clinton campaigned relentlessly in Florida for President Obama in 2012.
“They’ve been down here tirelessly every election cycle,” said Walker. “They’re familiar faces down here for the average voter.” And part of Sanders appeal in other states -- his laser focus on economic inequality -- hurt him in an ethnically and geographically diverse state. “Our state is really eight or nine different states,” said Walker. “Clinton’s work on such a broad range of issues put her in a good position to garner support with all the different groups.”
The Hill reports:
Clinton entered election day with a lead of about 200 delegates, and will leave with a lead of about 300.
As of 1:10 a.m. EDT on Wednesday morning, Clinton had 1,094 pledged delegates, compared to 774 for Sanders, according to The Associated Press. These are the delegates earned at the ballot box.
With the addition of superdelegates, party leaders who can support any candidate, Clinton’s total grows to 1,561 to Sanders's 800.
Democrats need 2,383 to secure the nomination, putting Clinton about 65 percent of the way there.
With just over 2,000 pledged delegates still up for grabs, Clinton would only need to win about 40 percent of the remaining delegates to secure the nomination, even if she doesn’t gain another superdelegate.
She has won 60 percent of the pledged delegates allocated so far
Clinton entered Tuesday with 768 pledged delegates compared to 554 for Sanders.
As of early Wednesday, Clinton had won an additional 326 delegates, and Sanders added 220. There were still 145 delegates yet to be allocated from Tuesday’s contests.
Clinton is likely to gain further on Sanders when these are distributed, as some of those outstanding came from Florida, Ohio and North Carolina, where she won big.
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Crossposted at HillaryHQ, an independent, progressive blog committed to the electing Hillary Clinton as the next President of the United States.