The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
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Wins in Fla., Ohio, N. Carolina add to delegate lead.
Hillary Clinton won a major political and psychological victory in the Ohio primary on Tuesday night, rebounding from her upset loss to Bernie Sanders in Michigan a week earlier, while also scoring landslides in Florida and North Carolina.
The results were a significant setback for Sanders, who was counting on his fiery arguments against free trade to help him prevail across the industrial Midwest. He spent heavily trying to win Ohio, Illinois and Missouri, but he came away looking increasingly like a spoiler to Clinton, since she is far ahead in amassing delegates needed to win the nomination.
For Clinton, Tuesday’s primaries netted her so many delegates that her lead over Sanders is now about three times what Barack Obama’s was over her in 2008. On a personal level, too, she and her advisers were reassured that regardless of her Michigan defeat, her political arguments about jobs and the economy had potency in states that will be major battlegrounds in the general election.
The top issue for Ohio Democratic primary voters was the economy, and most of them favored Clinton. A majority of voters also said that trade with other nations takes away American jobs, and more than half of them supported Clinton. In Michigan, Sanders captured this group by double digits.
Clinton was bullish and beaming at her victory party in West Palm Beach, Fla., after the three states were called in her favor.
“We are moving closer to securing the Democratic Party nomination and winning this election in November,” she said to cheers from a rowdy crowd of 1,300 people.
More than in any other primary night speech, Clinton aimed her remarks in South Florida at the leading Republican candidate, Donald Trump, who boasted of his own victory just miles away.
“When we hear a candidate for president call for rounding up 12 million immigrants, banning all Muslims from entering the United States, when he embraces torture, that doesn’t make him strong — it makes him wrong,” Clinton said, as she called on all Americans to fight against “bluster and bigotry.”
Sanders, speaking at a campaign event in Arizona, which holds its contest next week, stuck to his scathing assessment of the American economic system and promised to overhaul campaign finance rules. He criticized Wal-Mart as not paying its workers living wages, but also repeated his creed against global trade that has particularly hit the Midwestern industrial belt.
“I say to corporate America, you want us to buy your products, start manufacturing those products here in America, not in China,” Sanders said.
Sanders also used the evening to criticize Clinton for having a super PAC and relying on large donations.
“She has received money from the drug companies and the fossil fuel industry,” he said to loud hisses and boos from the crowd of 7,200 people.