After months of primary voting and intense debates, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton has clinched enough delegates to become the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee. She is hailed as the first woman to win a major political party’s nomination.
“Thanks to you, we’ve reached a milestone,” Clinton said to a crowd in Brooklyn, New York—a state that served as the birthplace of American women’s rights during the Seneca Falls Convention and where she was later elected senator.
“Tonight caps an amazing journey—a long, long journey,” said Clinton. It really has been a long journey for both Hillary Clinton and women everywhere. According to The New York Times, Clinton went from her job of successful lawyer to being a loyal wife and first lady. She then became the senator of New York, followed by becoming the secretary of state. Now, in 2016 and at the age of 68, she claims the title of the first woman to win a major party’s nomination for president.
Women only won the right to the vote in the United States in 1920, less than a century ago. Almost 100 years later, women still only make up 20 percent of the 114th Congress. Finally there is a viable chance that a woman could be elected to the highest seat in the nation—the President of the United States. Fittingly, this time comes at the end of the second term of the country’s first black president, Barack Obama.
Don’t let anyone tell you that great things can’t happen in America. pic.twitter.com/dtgjwmcfMm
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) June 8, 2016
After the last round of Super Tuesday primaries, Clinton emerged with victories in California, New Jersey and New Mexico, adding up to nearly 350 delegates. In terms of pledged delegates, Clinton is within 200 of officially clinching the nomination. However, she also secured nearly 600 superdelegates (as compared to the 48 supporting Sanders). That’s more than enough to ensure that when it comes time for the Democratic convention to vote on a candidate in July, Hillary will be nominated on the first ballot.
Unfortunately for Bernie Sanders, a loss in delegate-rich California meant that his path to a nomination was almost entirely sealed off, the BBC reports. Even so, the Vermont senator refused to admit defeat, promising his supporters a “very, very steep fight” to the last primary contest in Washington D.C. next week and to the Democratic convention next month.
“It never feels good…to come up short,” said Clinton in her speech of Sanders’ loss, according to the Los Angeles Times. In 2008, Clinton lost against Barack Obama in an even tighter nomination race—she knows how it feels to get this close to becoming the nominee. That’s why she invited Bernie to join her campaign in order to unite the party against Donald Trump.
“Sen. Sanders, his campaign and the vigorous debate that we’ve had about how to raise incomes, reduce inequality, increase upward mobility, have been very good for the Democratic Party and for America,” Clinton said, according to the LA Times.
After more than a century of fighting for women’s rights, a battle that continues even today, Hillary Clinton has made history and all but secured the Democratic nomination. Now, it’s time to move onto the bigger competition—Trump v. Clinton for the President of the United States.