 "I will be Democratic presidential nominee: Hillary Clinton")
Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton has asserted that she would secure her party's nomination even as the former Secretary of State is yet to reach the magic number of 2,383 delegates.
"I will be the nominee for my party. That is already done in effect. There is no way that I won't be," Clinton told CNN in an interview yesterday.
Clinton however is yet to reach the coveted figure of 2383 delegates required to become the nominee of the Democratic Party for the November presidential election and face Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.
She currently has 2,293 delegates, while her sole primary rival Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont has 1533 delegates.
Sanders, however, has refused to leave the race and says that he would fight till the last vote in the primary election is cast till early June.
But political pundits believe that Clinton is on her way to become the first women to be nominated as a presidential candidate of a major US party.
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The Sanders campaign was quick to criticise Clinton for claiming to becoming the nominee even as she has not got enough delegates.
"In the past three weeks voters in Indiana, West Virginia and Oregon, respectfully disagreed with Secretary Clinton. We expect that the voters in remaining eight contests will also disagree," said Michael Briggs, spokesman of the Sanders' Campaign.
"And with almost every national and state poll showing Senator Sanders doing much, much better than Secretary Clinton against Donald Trump, it is clear that millions of Americans have growing doubts about the Clinton campaign," Briggs said.
But, in her interview to the CNN, Clinton exuded confidence that she would be the nominee of the party as the numbers and the math are on her side.
"I am confident. Well, in part from my own experience, you know?" she said on being asked where from she was getting the confidence.
"I went all the way to the end against then Senator Obama. I won nine out of the last 12 contests. Back in 2008, I won Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia, so I know the intense feelings that arise, particularly among your supporters as you go toward the end.
"But, we both were following the same rules, just as both Senator Sanders and I are following the same rules," she explained.
"I'm three million votes ahead of him, and I have an insurmountable lead in pledged delegates, and I am confident that just as I did with Senator Obama, where I said, you know what? It was really much closer than it is between me and Senator Sanders right," she asserted.
"I worked really hard to make the case, as I'm sure Senator Sanders will, that whatever differences we might have, they pale in comparison to the presumptive nominee of the Republican party. Name an issue you care about, domestic or international, and clearly we are much closer - Senator Sanders supporters and mine, than either of us is with Donald Trump," Clinton said.