The Democratic Party establishment's long, awkward, and occasionally frightening nightmare is over — or at least just about.
Hillary Clinton was declared the winner of the final primary in the Democratic Party's presidential nominating process Tuesday night, just as she sat down for a highly anticipated summit with rival Bernie Sanders.
The carefully choreographed meeting ran for nearly two hours at the neutral territory of the Capital Hilton in Washington, D.C.
Afterwards, both candidates released nearly identical statements calling the meeting "positive" and saying they had agreed to work together to defeat Donald Trump.
"The two discussed a variety of progressive issues where they share common goals like raising wages for working families, eliminating undisclosed money in politics and reducing the cost of college for students and their families," a Clinton official said, echoing the same policy items listed in Sanders' statement.
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As the sun set over the capital city, which had the unpleasant distinction of voting after every other state and territory in the country, it was easy to forget how close the 2016 presidential contest came to going sideways for Democratic Party elders.
They had so carefully cleared the way for Clinton to be their next leader. But if a few votes had gone differently in Iowa's exceptionally tight caucus, or if Bernie Sanders had run a more effective campaign in Nevada, the insurgent could have given Clinton a real run for her money.
Instead, the forever front-runner ended up taking 34 states to Sanders' 23, including the biggest prizes, and winning millions more votes and hundreds more pledged delegates.
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders met privately at a hotel in Washington D.C. Tuesday night to hash out some of the enduring differences from a long contentious year, capping off the night of the final contest in the Democratic primary.
The meeting at Washington’s Capitol Hilton, just blocks from the White House, comes hours after Clinton defeated Sanders in the Washington D.C. primary, the last matchup between the two candidates.
Sanders congratulated Clinton on her primary victory and Clinton congratulated Sanders on his campaign, according to statements from both camps prepared by aides. They discussed issues on the Democratic Party platform ranging from raising the minimum wage, campaign finance reform, universal healthcare and college affordability.
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The meeting was a key test for the two candidates, each with a different set of interests. Clinton wants to quickly unify the Democratic Party to prepare for a general election campaign against Donald Trump. Sanders, meanwhile, wants to realign the Democratic Party and have it commit to a raft of liberal policy proscriptions.
With a crowd of tourists awaiting the candidates near the bar in the Hilton’s lobby, Clinton entered and exited through a back door while Sanders marched out the front of the hotel.
Also attending the meeting were Clinton campaign chair John Podesta, Clinton campaign manger Robby Mook, Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver and Bernie’s wife, Jane Sanders. Mook and Weaver have been the most frequent points of contact between the two campaigns. Sanders and Clinton met for around an hour-and-a-half.
“Sanders and Clinton agreed to continue working to develop a progressive agenda that addresses the needs of working families and the middle class and adopting a progressive platform for the Democratic National Convention,” said Sanders’ campaign spokesman, Michael Briggs.
The chemistry between the two candidates was strained, in part, because Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders had not had any real chances to air grievances or blow off steam with each other away from the television cameras during their 14-month fight for the nomination.
Mrs. Clinton had a few such moments with Barack Obama in 2008 before they sat down for their own post-nomination tête-à-tête, which made it a little easier for them to come together, unite the Democratic Party and win that November.
In a sign that they are still adjusting to each other, Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Sanders were joined in their meeting by Jane Sanders, Mr. Sanders’s wife; Jeff Weaver, his campaign manager; John D. Podesta, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman; and Robby Mook, her campaign manager.
Two advisers to Mr. Sanders described him as concerned that Mrs. Clinton might say all the right things now but embrace more politically moderate positions later if she thinks it necessary to win states like Florida, Ohio and Virginia.
The advisers, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the campaign had not authorized them to speak, said Mr. Sanders felt no pressure to endorse Mrs. Clinton quickly. He wants her to take steps to win his confidence in the five and a half weeks before the Democratic convention, where his voters and delegates expect him to speak and Clinton advisers hope he will give a full-throated speech backing her.
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Whether Mr. Sanders endorses her enthusiastically and campaigns for her, or recognizes her as the nominee but otherwise withholds his blessing, is a significant concern for some Clinton advisers. Others in her campaign think that Democrats will ultimately unite because the possibility of a Trump victory is too great to ignore.
Setting the stage for their meeting, Mr. Sanders used a news conference here Tuesday afternoon to call for replacing the leaders of the Democratic National Committee, eliminating the role of superdelegates in the party’s nomination process, and allowing independents and last-minute registrants to vote in all Democratic primaries. His campaign has long viewed the head of the committee, Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, as a Clinton ally who orchestrated the debate schedule and made other decisions to benefit Mrs. Clinton.
“I think the time is now — in fact, the time is long overdue — for a fundamental transformation of the Democratic Party,” Mr. Sanders said at the news conference. “We need a party which is prepared to stand up for the disappearing middle class, for the 47 million people in this country who are living in poverty, and take on the greed of the powerful special interests that are doing so much harm to this country.
Sen. Bernie Sanders called Tuesday for new leadership at the Democratic National Committee and said the party's national convention in July needs to make it "crystal clear" Democrats stand with working people and the poor.
He also called for open primaries -- in which independents could vote for Democratic candidates -- and for doing away with superdelegates, the party officials and leaders who are free to vote for the candidate of their choice at the convention. And he argued for same-day voter registration.
Sanders made his comments outside his Washington campaign headquarters after meeting behind closed doors with Senate Democratic colleagues. Washington held its primary Tuesday, the final nominating contest of the Democratic presidential campaign season.
Sanders plans to meet later Tuesday with presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton in Washington.
Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware, who attended the meeting between Sanders and other Senate Democrats, said Sanders told colleagues he plans to play an active role in crafting the party's platform.
“He mentioned he has every intention of being involved in the platform process and making sure his 2,000 delegates have the opportunity to have their voices heard,” at the party's convention, Carper said.
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Briggs said Sanders will speak via live video "directly to grassroots supporters from Burlington (Vt.) on Thursday night about how the revolution continues."
"I expect that he will be a candidate through the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, as he has said before," Briggs said.
Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz pushed back Tuesday against Sen. Bernie Sanders' continued calls for her to be replaced.
Wasserman Schultz told MSNBC unequivocally that she will not resign her position ahead of the Democratic National Convention or the general election despite Sanders' demands. Sanders made the demand earlier Tuesday during a press conference in Washington, D.C., where he called also for the DNC's entire leadership to be replaced.
"Do you feel your job is part of this negotiation between Clinton and Sanders?" host Chuck Todd asked the DNC chair.
"No," Wasserman Schultz said before pivoting to discuss the convention and Donald Trump. Todd, however, continued to press her over her status as chairwoman, with him even praising her ability to dodge questioning about her future.
"Will you say definitively — you're not leaving this job before the end of November, period?"
"No. I am going to continue to be focused on making sure that we can elect a Democratic president," Wasserman Schultz said. "That's we've been doing at the DNC. I am going to continue to be focused on making sure that we can elect a Democratic president. That's what we've been doing at the DNC."
Lucy Flores, a Nevada congressional candidate, is one of dozens of “Sanders Democrats” running in down-ballot races this year. She endorsed him early, championed the policies they shared, and received direct help from Bernie Sanders himself. Her candidate is close to exiting the presidential race as the last primary, in Washington, D.C., unfolds. But for Flores and other down-ballot candidates running in his image, there is still a chance for victory. A win for Flores, a former state assemblywoman who is competing in the fourth congressional district’s Democratic primary, would be significant to Sanders’s community at large: It’s the first real test of the revolution the senator promised and could give clues as to whether his legacy will live on past his presidential candidacy.
Flores wasn’t the only down-ballot candidate to receive help from Sanders, but she was one of the few. The Vermont senator was criticized earlier this year for doing little to help candidates who were supporting him. Sanders’s exceptional fundraising operation hadn’t been deployed to their benefit, and the candidate himself offered no personal endorsements. His fundraising contrasted that of Hillary Clinton, who by that time had raised money for state parties.
That all changed by mid-spring, with Sanders identifying three congressional candidates to support: Zephyr Teachout in New York, Pramila Jayapal in Washington, and Flores, whom he once called “exactly the kind of person I’m going to need in Congress when I am president.” MSNBC’s Steve Benen argued in April that Sanders was following a pattern: He chose liberal candidates who had not gotten the backing of the Democratic establishment. More endorsements eventually came, including for Tim Canova, who’s challenging Sanders’s nemesis in Florida, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
Flores says Sanders’s role in her campaign was helpful. She told me earlier this year that Sanders did a service by “connect[ing] progressive issues with candidates” and getting people to “believe that they can make a difference by electing people who are running on these progressive agendas.” Political endorsements have questionable value when it comes to swaying voters, but Sanders’s campaign raised the prominence of policy issues that resonated with millions of Americans, including many in Nevada. Down-ballot candidates who share his values, regardless of whether he endorsed them, could get more attention from voters for echoing his point of view.
The last ballots of the 2016 Democratic presidential primaries will be cast in Washington, D.C., today. The last ballots to be counted were cast more than a week ago, by Californians who've become the final arbiters of the Clinton-Sanders delegate count — and the focus of some inevitable, conspiracy-minded hand-wringing.
Like the rest of the Pacific coast states, California has moved toward mail-in balloting and built a system that encourages turnout but takes weeks to fully count. On election night, when Hillary Clinton was declared the winner of the state's primary, just 3.5 million ballots had been counted in the Democratic race and just 1.5 million had been counted in the basically uncontested GOP race. But according to Alex Padilla, California's Democratic secretary of state, as many as 8.9 million ballots were cast. Millions of provisional ballots and absentee ballots, which could have been postmarked any time on Election Day, remained outstanding in a race decided by about 440,000 votes.
That's sparked hope among some Sanders supporters that the primary could still be won — a result that wouldn't take away Clinton's delegate majority, but would strike a final blow against a biased media. Sanders himself seemed to encourage the sentiment at his only rally in D.C., telling supporters that "we are standing after having won 22 states, and the results have not yet come in from California."
So far, the molasses-slow count of these ballots has found Sanders improving on his margin from Election Day, while still losing the race. The Associated Press count of votes ended with Clinton at 1,940,580 and Sanders at 1,502,043. Since then, the state has counted 270,561 additional ballots for Clinton and 232,274 for Sanders. That's 53.8 to 46.2 margin for Clinton — tighter than Election Day, tight enough to shrink her overall margin. (And for comparison, just 123,994 people voted in the 2008 D.C. primary for president, a number unlikely to be surpassed today.)
Bernie Sanders on Tuesday lashed out at those who blame Islam for the shooting at a gay nightclub in Orlando.
Speaking at an impromptu press conference outside his campaign headquarters, Sanders, a Democratic presidential candidate, said the gunman’s motives are complicated and remain largely unknown.
“Was he motivated by the ideology of some fanatic Islamic organization which believes it is somehow heroic to mow down innocent and defenseless men and women?” Sanders asked.
“Was he motivated by homophobia and hatred of the gay community? Was he motivated by some kind of hatred of Latinos? Was he suicidal and wanted to end his life by taking others with him? We may never know the answer to those questions.”
Sanders noted that the attacker was one person, not an entire people or a religion.
“The Muslim people did not commit this act. A man named Omar Mateen did. To blame an entire religion for the acts of a single individual is nothing less than bigotry, and that is not what this country is supposed to be about.”
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Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has responded by calling on the nation to crack down on legal and illegal immigration and to warn of the threat of “radical Islam.”
Sanders slammed Trump’s response.
“Our goal must not be to allow politicians, Donald Trump or anyone else to divide us up based on where our family came from, the color of our skin or our religion,” he said.
The Democratic presidential race is effectively over, but Bernie Sanders picked up another superdelegate over the weekend.
Jean Lemire Dahlman, a Montana Democratic National Committeewoman, plans to support Sanders as a superdelegate at the Democratic National Convention this summer in Philadelphia, both the Sanders campaign and Montana Democratic Party confirmed on Monday.
Dahlman had been waiting until Montana's June 7 primary to pick a candidate. Sanders defeated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton 51 percent to 44 percent in the Montana primary.
Dahlman is the only one of six Montana superdelegates to back a candidate. The others, including Gov. Steve Bullock and Sen. Jon Tester, have opted to stay neutral.
Dahlman's support won't make a huge difference. Clinton has beaten Sanders to the required number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination. According to the Associated Press delegate tracker, Clinton has a total of 2,784 delegates overall — a figure which includes 581 superdelegates — while Sanders has 48 superdelegates among his total of 1,877 delegates.
Sanders has argued that the more delegates and superdelegates he gets going forward, the stronger his hand at the convention.
If one issue has caused Bernie Sanders supporters to claim that the Democratic primary has been rigged in favor of Hillary Clinton, it's the role played by superdelegates, the elite party members who can vote for whichever candidate they want at the party's convention next month. The superdelegates backing Sanders are themselves calling for reform of the system that will empower them at the convention—but the real changes aren't likely to come until after November.
The Democratic Party created superdelegates in 1982 to give party insiders more control of the nominating process, which they feared could be overtaken by activist voters who would choose candidates with little chance of winning the presidency. They include members of Congress, governors, state party leaders, and more than 200 members of the Democratic National Committee who were elected by fellow state party officials. In total, there are 714 of them this year, about 15 percent of all delegates to the party's convention in Philadelphia. According to the Associated Press delegate tracker, Clinton has the public support of 581 superdelegates so far, while 49 back Sanders.
Mother Jones spoke with some of the superdelegates supporting Sanders ahead of today's primary in Washington, DC, the final contest of the Clinton-Sanders race. These superdelegates are looking beyond Sanders' almost-certain defeat to the changes they're hoping to implement at the convention and afterward. Near the top of their agenda is the very superdelegate system that will give them a voice at the convention.
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Sanders supporters are sure to raise the issue of superdelegates at the convention, but without a majority of delegates there, they are unlikely to pass sweeping reforms to the process in Philadelphia. Instead, they are more likely to succeed at the committee level, where the Standing Committee on Rules or the Standing Committee on Credentials could call for a commission after the November election. A majority of all delegates would have to approve that measure—but setting up a commission is far less sweeping than changing the process at the convention. It's simply a promise to look at the issue.
"We probably need to have another one of those commissions that they have had off and on over the decades," says Nancy Jacobson, a superdelegate from Florida who supports Sanders. "Typically this is something that's been done by having a commission afterwards with public hearings and public deliberation."
Like most Bernie Sanders supporters, I still believe he can -- and should be -- the Democratic Party nominee. Anything short of that will be a colossal missed opportunity for the country.
We, Sanders supporters, are motivated not by animosity toward Hillary Clinton but by a sophisticated analysis and belief that the system is irreparably broken and compromised. Eye-rolling, impatience and condescension by other Democrats toward #BernieorBust sentiment is a reaction by privileged people who have actually benefited from the status quo. We are not impressed, or persuaded, by either endorsements or the simplistic finger-wagging to get in line to fight Donald Trump.
That said, it is not contradictory to confidently declare that we have won the debate over the future of the party and that a political revolution is urgently needed, while also simply noting that Trump is a uniquely dangerous, racist person who must be stopped. Trump represents everything Sanders has fought against his entire adult life.
As a proud member of a union, I believe it matters who serves as chair of the National Labor Relations Board. Any Democrat’s choice will be an organized labor-supported person who will support the fair right to a union. A Trump appointee, put forth by anti-union forces, will mean four years of relentless assault on the labor movement, and its further weakening. While we work on the next steps of the Sanders political revolution, which could include seizing control of the Democratic Party, we must do all we can to support economic security for workers
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Where progress is made, Sanders supporters will react well. Where progress is blocked, those issues will be rallying cries for the political revolution in this election and beyond