Ahead of California, Sanders Warns Media Against Preemptive Coronation of Clinton

[portlander23]

Ahead of California, Sanders Warns Media Against Preemptive Coronation of Clinton
Jon Queally
Common Dreams

Addressing concerns that the media may preemptively announce his rival Hillary Clinton as the "presumptive Democratic Party nominee" even before she has won the requisite numbers of pledge delegates, Bernie Sanders over the weekend indicated that such reporting would be both wrong and irresponsible and held to his commitment to take his campaign all the way to the national convention when so-called superdelegates will finally—and for the first time, in fact—be able to cast their vote for who they believe will make the best nominee.

"It is extremely unlikely that Secretary Clinton will have the requisite number of pledged delegates to claim victory on Tuesday night," Sanders said at a press conference in California on Saturday. "Now I have heard reports that Secretary Clinton has said it’s all going to be over on Tuesday night. I have reports that the media, after the New Jersey results come in, are going to declare that it is all over. That simply is not accurate."

What that means, he added, is that he will continue to campaign until the last votes are cast in Washington, D.C.'s primary on June 14 and will then bring his message to July's Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. "[It] will be a contested convention," he said.

Citing the consistent trends of both national and state polls showing him performing better against the billionaire reality tv star than Clinton, Sanders declared: "I hope that the delegates going to the Democratic National Convention understand that in virtually every state poll we do much better against Donald Trump than Secretary Clinton. If the delegates at the Democratic National Convention want to make sure we defeat Trump and defeat him badly we are the candidate to do that."

And as New York Daily News columnist Shaun King recently reported, even top staff at the DNC have gone out of their way to explicitly condemn the way many cable outlets and news agencies have reported on the delegate numbers.

For the record, and as Sanders also argued on Saturday, King concluded that "Anyone who 'calls the election' on June 7th, be it the Clinton campaign or television networks, is knowingly and deliberately going against the very rules of the party."

[RandySF]

1. Or what?

They'll get angry tweets?

[tonyt53]

2. My thoughts exactly.

[riversedge]

5. He will huff and puff and blow your house down!

[RandySF]

6. Or throw a chair at it.

[SFnomad]

3. BS and his cheerleaders are the ones looking for a coronation .. via Superdelegates stealing

the election for him

[riversedge]

4. Bernie warning the media. LOL

[MyNameGoesHere]

7. I will stand in the yard and shake my fists if you do!

Isn't he a dear old man? So cute.

[dana_b]

8. unless they changed the rules and the Supers can now vote on June 7th

he is exactly right.

[Trenzalore]

9. Nobody votes till the convention

With Hillary's lead, even if something bad happened to her personally, as long as she releases her delegates to one alternative Bernie still doesn't get the nomination.