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Democratic rivals Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders met in Washington, D.C., Tuesday evening after the primary race that saw a final win for Clinton and wrapped up the battle for the nomination ahead of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia next month where the former Secretary of State is set to becoming the party’s presidential candidate.
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Sanders advisors reportedly told the New York Times that the Vermont Senator did not feel pressured to rush to endorse the presumptive nominee, but rather wants her to prove her liberal progressive commitments in the coming weeks to see if she will win over his support.
Both sides of the conversation were reportedly tense going into the meeting, according to the New York Times, but both the Clinton and Sanders camps described the outcome as “positive” given their stated common ground of working to stop Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump from become the next U.S. president.
Clinton is looking to secure a nomination form Sanders, who won about 12 million votes in primaries across the country compared to the frontrunner’s 16 million.
Sanders, on the other hand, has resisted pressure from the party establishment to bow out of the race and wants to plan his next steps based on the details of Clinton’s platform going forward to the November election.
The Vermont Senator told NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday that he will be able to make “other decisions” after confirming whether or not the Democratic party will have “a strong and progressive platform” with Clinton as the presidential candidate.
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Clinton won the D.C. primary with 78.7 percent of the vote, taking 16 of the 20 delegates up for grabs, with Sanders picking up the remaining four. Republicans also held a primary, but there are no candidates to contest presumptive nominee Donald Trump.
Although Clinton secured an insurmountable lead over rival Bernie Sanders after winning the California, South Dakota, and New Mexico primaries last week, the Vermont Senator vowed to fight for “every vote and every delegate” in D.C.
With the final win, Clinton’s total count of pledged delegates rose to 2,219, which means that she will still have to rely on the support of controversial super delegates at the Convention to boost her over the winning threshold of 2,383 delegates. Sanders finishes the race with 1,832 pleged delegates.
Sanders has long maintained that he will take his campaign all the way to Convention in Philadelphia, scheduled for the July 25 to 28, but he has recently started negotiating with Clinton in light of her insurmountable lead.
Sanders has said that his main goal is to ensure that Trump is not elected.
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