Clinton begins day in super position
She shifts fire away from Sanders to GOP
FAIRFAX, VA. Hillary Clinton’s main target is Sen. Bernie Sanders no more.
Fresh off a resounding victory in the South Carolina primary, the former secretary of State is lambasting the Republican primary field on everything from health care to the economy as she prepares for a series of Tuesday contests expected to help tighten her grip on the Democratic presidential nomination.
Massachusetts to the north and Georgia to the south demonstrate the diverse combination of primary races she’s favored to win on Super Tuesday.
She’s also leading in larger, delegate-rich states that come later in the month, including Florida. Given the favorable landscape, Clinton appears to have turned her fire on Republicans.
“Republicans want to sell the same snake oil. They want to go back to trickle-down economics,” Clinton said during a rally at George Mason University in Fairfax, blasting the GOP for loosening regulations on Wall Street and turning an eye from the mortgage market.
During an earlier appearance in Massachusetts, Clinton criticized Republicans on Social Security (they want to privatize it and “give the trust fund to Wall Street,” she said); resistance to investments such as manufacturing, infrastructure and green energy; opposition to increasing the minimum wage; and their plan to end Obamacare.
She’ll spend Super Tuesday night in Florida, which hosts a pivotal contest on March 15.
Sanders spent his last day of pre-Super Tuesday campaigning in Minneapolis and Milton, Mass., then headed to his home state, Vermont, on Monday night.
Since Saturday, the 74-year-old democratic socialist has visited Texas, Minnesota, Oklahoma and Colorado, as he aims to amass delegates and pick up wins in the 11 states that hold Democratic contests Tuesday. “My request to you is, let us make history tomorrow,” he said in Minneapolis.
Much is at stake for Sanders, whose crushing defeat in South Carolina’s primary on Saturday, where African Americans backed Clinton overwhelmingly, put him 26 pledged delegates behind Clinton. She holds a much larger lead among superdelegates in the race to the 2,382 needed to clinch the Democratic nomination.
“Without at least 60% of the delegates awarded on Super Tuesday, it will be difficult for Sanders to have a path to the nomination,” said David Caputo, a political science professor at New York’s Pace University.