Hillary Clinton clinches the nomination

The Associated Press reported and it is now confirmed that Secretary Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in the California Democratic Primary by a significant margin. Clinton received 1,852,639 votes while her opponent, Senator Bernie Sanders, received 1,428,467. That’s a difference of 424,172 votes, or about 56 to 41 percent, when adding in the small number of votes cast for other candidates vying for the Democratic nomination.

Clinton will receive 257 delegates from California and Sanders gets the remaining 188.

She also won the U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico over the weekend, getting 43 delegates there (Sanders received 20 from Puerto Rico) and on Tuesday Clinton won New Jersey, getting 73 of the 120 delegates, New Mexico netting 17 of the 31 delegates and South Dakota, splitting the 20 delegates evenly with Sanders.

As of this morning, Hillary Clinton has enough pledged and “super” delegates to clinch the nomination of the Democratic Party: 2,184 pledged delegates and 571 super delegates for a total of 2,755.

This is a historic election for the United States. For the first time in its 240-year history a woman has won the presidential nomination of a major party to be a candidate for president. Just like eight years ago when then-Senator Barack Obama was nominated to be the Democratic candidate for president, this historic moment cannot be ignored, regardless of what her critics might say.

She has high negatives right now, after years of being one of the most admired women in American politics, so her supporters are hoping her approval ratings go up, now that the primary elections are all but over (Washington, D.C. hold its primary June 14).

In these past few weeks Clinton has turned her sights on the general election and her probable Republican opponent, Donald Trump. If Clinton’ negative ratings are high, Trump’s are astronomical. With his latest round of racist comments concerning the judge overseeing the lawsuit against Trump University — and the number of Republicans openly denouncing Trump and his comments — Hillary Clinton’s road to the White House appears to be getting smoother.

But the general election is still five months away and anything could happen. There is still the ongoing investigation into her email server issue and that continues to trail Clinton as she goes through this campaign season. The Republicans will no doubt use it in the campaign …

But then they will have to defend Donald Trump, a man who openly suggests we apply a religious test to any immigrants coming to America (a violation of the First Amendment), that we spend the trillions of dollars it would cost to find approximately 11 million undocumented people and deport them to their native countries; a candidate who suggests more countries should have nuclear weapons, thinks we ought to get into a trade war with our biggest trading partners — insults the prime minister of our closest ally — claims he has foreign policy experience because he hosted a beauty pageant in Russia (seriously), says a judge is not qualified to adjudicate a lawsuit because of his ethnic heritage, calls women pigs (and worse) and during his official announcement to run for president said the Mexicans coming to the U.S. were rapists and drug dealers … but he did say, “And some, I assume, are good people.”

Well there you go: not a racist.

Trump has provided a laundry list of statements the Democratic Party can use in ads against Trump for the next five months, not to mention the crazy things he’s said and done in the past, like leading the birther movement that tried to convince Americans President Obama wasn’t born in the United States.

Then there are all his failed businesses; the bankruptcies — how does a casino owner go broke and file for bankruptcy? He doesn’t own a steak company, or a wine company, or any of those other businesses he claimed to own when he did his press conference in April to brag about them.

One of the most cringe-worthy moments came in 2006 when he told Star Jones on The View that if Ivanka Trump weren’t his daughter he would be dating her. Jones asked him how he would feel if Ivanka posed for Playboy (Trump was on the cover of the March 1990 issue).

Trump said Ivanka would never do that, but added, “…she does have a very nice figure. I’ve said that if Ivanka weren’t my daughter, perhaps, I would be dating her.”

It’s one thing to have three wives and be a serial cheater, but to fantasize — in front of television cameras — “dating” your own daughter?

Yet that is who the Republicans want to be their presidential nominee … well, most Republicans. Illinois Senator Mark Kirk un-endorsed Trump on Tuesday. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham has been urging his fellow Republicans to un-endorse Trump. He told the New York Times, “This is the most un-American thing from a politician since Joe McCarthy. If anybody was looking for an off-ramp, this is probably it.” He then added the almost unthinkable for any self-respecting Republican: “There’ll come a time when the love of country will trump hatred of Hillary.”

Equally important as his denunciation of Trump is that he admitted there is hatred by the GOP towards Hillary Clinton. “Hatred” is a strong word and for a major figure in one of the major political parties to admit his party is filled with hatred is, at the very least, jaw dropping.

The hatred has been obvious for the past 23 years, but for a senior GOP Senator to actually make that admission publicly is unprecedented.

That is whom the GOP is running for president: Donald Trump — his own party is turning against him.

For Hillary Clinton, she won’t have the party truly united until the Democratic National Convention in July. Her primary opponent, Senator Sanders, has mounted a great campaign, coming from next to nothing 11 months ago to capturing 1,804 pledged delegates and 48 super delegates for a total of 1,852. But it is not enough to win the nomination.

Sanders though has vowed to carry his campaign into the convention and his supporters believe that is a chance all those super delegates that plan to cast their votes for Clinton will reverse their decisions and vote for Senator Sanders. They dream of the super delegates going against the popular vote to put their guy at the top of the ticket.

Sanders supporters want us to believe the mainstream media — they learned well, at the feet of the GOP — are in league with the DNC and Clinton campaigns blindsiding the American public. How? By reporting on how successful Sanders’ campaign has become?

The media is “… insidious, hostile, manipulative, and downright oblivious.”

Why? Because it reported on the times your guy showed up to interviews unprepared to answer questions about his policies and processes required to get those things done in Washington?

They love to claim the New York primary was “hijacked” by the DNC and the Clinton Campaign and as many as ten primaries were stolen — and the press is in on it! My oh my, I haven’t read or heard so many lunatic conspiracy theories since Bill Clinton won the White House in 1992.

Not to mention the over-the-top melodrama. On Saturday, June 4, a Sanders volunteer called to convince me to vote his guy. I politely told him I was voting for Clinton.

When I gave him fact, like Clinton had nearly 3 million more votes than Sanders, he came back with some nonsensical answer about voters not knowing who Sanders was and he deserves a do-over, or at least the very un-democratic act of the DNC thwarting the will of the voters and picking the second place finisher over the winner.

The worst thing said by Sanders supporters has to be this: saying Hillary Clinton winning the Democratic Party nomination is nearly the equal of Nazis marching Jews into gas chambers.

It isn’t shocking and it is far more than ridiculous — it is as offensive as anything Donald Trump has spewed out of his shit-covered mouth.

There is nothing that happened in this campaign — on either side of the aisle — that even remotely compares to the genocide of millions of people, based on their ethnic and religious backgrounds.

The Sanders camp conspiracy theories — none of which the Sanders Campaign has endorsed — have been for the most part entertaining, as heavily laden as they are with childish melodrama. But to say a political party, along with the press, is engaged in something akin to genocide is beyond the pale.

Your guy lost, he isn’t going to get the nomination. I understand your disappointment. My guy didn’t win in 2004, 2008 or this year. It happens. Get over it, get over yourselves.

You Sanders supporters need to put your big boy and girl pants on and grow up.