Defying some predictions and puncturing the hopes of the Bernie Sanders campaign for an eleventh-hour upset, Hillary Clinton has now swept across the line as the winner of the Democratic party’s presidential nomination. Her wins in the two final big primaries in New Jersey and California were each decisive, more so than her campaign may have dared to hope in recent days. They take Mrs Clinton to a majority of delegates to the Democratic convention. The race is now, to all intents, settled. The 2016 presidential contest will be between Mrs Clinton and Donald Trump.
With only the Washington DC primary next week now remaining, the Democratic arithmetic seems to face only one way. Mrs Clinton has a lead of nearly 400 among pledged delegates and an undislodgable grip among the unpledged ones. She won a majority of contests over her rival and she leads him by nearly 4 million in the popular vote. By conventional standards it is a decisive win. And yet, 12 months ago, a victory in these terms would have seemed more like a failure and, to a degree, it still does today. Mrs Clinton began the race battle-ready and unchallengeable. Mr Sanders has run her far harder than almost anyone ever dreamed possible. The consequences and lessons of his challenge cannot be switched off as easily as some of Mrs Clinton’s backers may hope.
As a result, while the arithmetic may be clear, the immediate politics are less simply predicted. Many, and probably most, of those who voted for Mr Sanders this year will now be minded to switch support to Mrs Clinton against Mr Trump. But that is not true of all of them, even in the face of such a polarising figure. Mr Sanders leads an insurgency with a different political mentality and culture. It is far less ready to compromise in the interests of party unity than Mrs Clinton herself was when she faced similar arithmetical facts in her contest against Barack Obama in 2008. Mr Sanders therefore faces a tricky few days as he assesses his next moves and as party chiefs, Mr Obama in Washington prime among them, try to persuade him to make an honourable concession of the sort that Mrs Clinton memorably made eight years ago.
Mr Sanders has forced the Democratic party, of which he is not a member, to think much more fundamentally about itself than it would have done without him. He has posed questions about capital and labour, housing, jobs and the environment that might not have been seriously addressed without him. He has energised the Democratic party’s left in a way it has not known for 70 years. He has brought millions of young people into politics. He has tested Mrs Clinton’s politics in ways even Mr Obama did not do in 2008.
Mr Sanders is thus entitled to a modest period of reflection now that he has lost the race. No one should expect him to simply fall on his sword. But practical decisions will need to be made soon. Mr Obama proved in 2012 that a candidate who can define his opponent early on will carry an advantage into the autumn. Mr Trump is already trying to do that, and with some effect. Mrs Clinton quickly needs to harness the energy, passion and strength that Mr Sanders’s supporters can bring to her cause.
The realities of the 2016 election are both subtly complex and, in other perspectives, devastatingly simple. The whole world has an interest in the outcome, not just Americans. Seen from beyond the domestic battlefield, it is simply not true that a Clinton v Trump battle matches one unacceptable face of American politics against another. Mrs Clinton’s foreign policy speech in San Diego last week was a tour de force to which the world listened. It warned about the dangers posed by a Republican nominee who supports nuclear proliferation, a ban on US entry by Muslims, a wall on the US-Mexico border and the reintroduction of torture for terrorist suspects because, as he puts it, “they deserve it”. Beyond America’s shores, the choice seems a no-brainer. But it is Americans who will decide.
Yet the day belongs indisputably to Mrs Clinton. She has won the Democratic nomination. She is the first woman to do so in one of the major parties. It is beyond question a milestone in the march of political equality, as resonant and significant for gender equality as Mr Obama’s victory eight years ago was for race. Mrs Clinton is without doubt one of the most thoroughly prepared presidential candidates in US history. For some, her long life in the heart of politics is what disturbs them. For many others, this woman’s victory is a source of wonder and delight, and has been far too long delayed.
