Pivotal ‘Super Tuesday’ could elevate Trump, Clinton
FAIRFAX, US: Americans vote yesterday in what is deemed the most pivotal day in the presidential nominating process, with frontrunners Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump hoping to finish off their challengers.
Voters in a dozen states will take part in ‘Super Tuesday’ — a series of primaries and caucuses in a dozen states ranging from Alaska to Virginia.
If Democrat Clinton and Republican Trump — an outspoken billionaire political neophyte who has unexpectedly tapped into a reservoir of conservative rage at conventional politics — win big, it could spell doom for their challengers.
With just hours to go before polls open, the duo made last- ditch appeals to supporters ahead of a day like few others on the calendar leading to the November election for the White House.
Trump’s Republican rivals, Senators Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, were trying frantically to halt the real estate magnate’s march toward the nomination, seeking to unite the party against the man they see as a nonconservative political interloper.
Clinton meanwhile was riding high after thrashing rival Bernie Sanders in South Carolina over the weekend, securing an astronomical 86 per cent of the African-American vote in her third win in four contests.
Should she win black voters by similar margins in places like Alabama, Georgia and Virginia, she should dominate there to become once again the inevitable candidate.
That was her status at the start of the campaign — before the rise of Sanders, a self- described democratic socialist.
She was leaving nothing to chance, travelling to multiple states Monday to urge a strong turnout.
Clinton also took aim at the increasingly hostile campaign rhetoric on the Republican side led by the brash real estate mogul Trump.
“I really regret the language being used by Republicans. Scapegoating people, fi ngerpointing, blaming. That is not how we should behave toward one another,” she told hundreds at a university in Fairfax, Virginia.
“We’re going to demonstrate, starting tomorrow on Super Tuesday, there’s a different path that Americans ought to take.”
Trump’s incendiary campaign has infuriated Republican rivals, including mainstream favourite Rubio who has intensified his personal attacks and stressed Trump would have trouble in a general election.
The Florida senator warned supporters in Tennessee that US media and Democratic groups will jump on Trump ‘like the hounds of hell’ if he wins the nomination.
But Trump is clearly in the driver’s seat. He is leading in polling in at least eight of the 11 Super Tuesday states.
And a new CNN/ORC poll shows the billionaire expanding his lead nationally, earning a stunning 49 per cent support compared to second place Rubio at 16 per cent.
Cruz of Texas is third, at 15 per cent, followed by retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson at 10 per cent and Ohio Governor John Kasich at six per cent. — AFP
I really regret the language being used by Republicans. Scapegoating people, fingerpointing, blaming. That is not how we should behave toward one another.
Hillary Clinton, Democrat presidential candidate