Hillary Clinton cements her status as the first woman in U.S. history to become presumptive nominee of a major party

Hunter Walker

National Correspondent

June 8, 2016

BROOKLYN, N.Y. — Hillary Clinton further cemented her status as the first woman to presumptively win the nomination of a major American political party on Tuesday night, when the Associated Press projected her the winner in New Jersey’s presidential primary.
Clinton’s victory in the Garden State ensures she will have more pledged delegates, unbound superdelegates and overall voters than her rival, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
The former first lady, senator and secretary of state technically earned her status on Monday, after the AP and multiple other media outlets projected that she earned firm commitments from enough Democratic superdelegates to secure the nomination at the party’s convention next month. However, the AP call was criticized as a  “rush to judgment” by the Sanders campaign. Even Clinton’s own team argued that the real “milestone” would come after she secured a majority of the pledged delegates and primary voters.
In addition to New Jersey, voters also headed to the polls in California, New Mexico, Montana, North Dakota and South Dakota on Tuesday. Results in those states have yet to be declared, but even a Sanders sweep would not affect the overall outcome of the race.
Clinton’s victory came just three days after the 97th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote in 1920. It was also eight years to the day after Clinton conceded the 2008 Democratic presidential primary to Barack Obama, with a speech in which she famously declared that her supporters helped her put “18 million cracks” in the “glass ceiling.”
She is scheduled to speak later this evening at a rally at the Brooklyn Navy Yard in New York City. A crowd of cheering supporters is awaiting her arrival. The boisterous audience counted down to the polls closing in New Jersey.
Clinton’s speech will clearly reference the historic nature of her candidacy. Earlier in the evening, her team released the video that will play as an introduction to her remarks. It included footage from the women’s suffrage movement, interspersed with footage of female politicians and Clinton supporters. It concluded with a call to “keep making history.”
Sanders is also scheduled to speak on Tuesday evening at an event in California, where polls showed a tight race between him and Clinton. Though it was clear before any results were announced on Tuesday that it would be almost impossible for Sanders to earn more delegates than Clinton, he has pointed to national polls that show he would perform better against presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump. Sanders urged superdelegates who support Clinton to switch sides before the Democratic National Convention next month.
At a news conference Monday, Sanders said he would continue “campaigning” in the District of Columbia’s primary, which will be held on June 14.