Tuesday was
always supposed to be one of the most important nights in the Democratic
presidential primary race, but for Hillary Clinton, it was even bigger than she
and her team expected.
Clinton’s
victories in Ohio, Florida, Illinois and North Carolina put her firmly on
course to defeat her primary rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. As the
results were announced on Tuesday evening, she took the stage before a
boisterous crowd of supporters here and seemed to pivot towards the Republican
frontrunner, Donald Trump, who also won in Florida.
“We are moving
closer to securing the Democratic Party nomination and winning this election in
November!” Clinton declared.
Clinton came into
the presidential race as the overwhelming frontrunner for her party’s
nomination. After faltering in the early states, she began to pull ahead, with
a massive victory in South Carolina on Feb. 27. She followed that win with a
string of victories on Super Tuesday, March 1. Those wins had a campaign source
predicting to Yahoo News that Clinton’s delegate lead over Sanders would be “effectively
insurmountable” once this evening’s votes were counted.
Sanders’ team also knew this evening’s numbers would be crucial, and in early
strategy sessions, they cited March 15 as a turning point, after which they
would know whether or not his underdog bid was truly viable.
It looked as if
Sanders might prove the Clinton campaign’s bullish prediction wrong after he
won a stunning upset in Michigan on March 8, but Clinton’s victories on Tuesday
helped her stop Sanders’ momentum and establish a seemingly unbeatable lead.
Though Clinton
was expected to win the primaries in North Carolina and Florida on Tuesday,
polls showed her potentially losing in Ohio, Arizona, Missouri and Illinois.
Even if Sanders had won all of the states that were in play on Tuesday, he
would still have faced an uphill battle. However, by taking Ohio and Illinois,
Clinton definitively pulled ahead.
Though the
results in Arizona, Missouri and Illinois still had not been projected at the
time she spoke, Clinton pointed out that her trio of victories had allowed her
campaign to “add to our delegate lead to roughly 300.”
“I’ll tell you,
this is another Super Tuesday!” Clinton said.
Her lead only
grew as the night wore on.
After
congratulating Sanders “for the vigorous campaign he’s waging,” Clinton turned
to Trump, framing the election as “one of the most consequential campaigns of
our lifetimes.” She specifically criticized several key aspects of his
platform, including his positions on immigration and waterboarding.
“When we hear a
candidate for president call for rounding up 12 million immigrants, banning all
Muslims from entering the United States, and he embraces torture, that doesn’t
make him strong, it makes him wrong!” Clinton said. “We should be breaking down
barriers, not building walls.”
Clinton went on
to directly invoke Trump and take a shot at his campaign slogan, “Make American
Great Again.”
“To be great, we
can’t be small, we can’t lose what made America great in the first place,“ said
Clinton, adding, “And this isn’t just about Donald Trump, all of us have to do
our part.”
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