NEW YORK — Hillary Clinton’s campaign spent the day after Super Tuesday telling anyone who would listen that Bernie Sanders’ path to the nomination is vanishing. And she sought to prove it Wednesday evening with a high-energy rally in the Democratic Party’s capital city.

The idea was a show of political and organizing force here in the city’s cavernous Javits Center, looking to project the message that the electoral winds are at her back — and also that, like Sanders, she could generate Feel The Bern-style electricity when necessary.


The masses of union workers who were lined up for hours outside the venue — plastered with massive American flags and labor group paraphernalia — were happy to oblige. So were Mayor Bill de Blasio, Gov. Andrew Cuomo and much of the rest of New York City’s leadership, who made surprise appearances ahead of Clinton’s celebratory fundraising concert with Katy Perry and Elton John at Radio City Music Hall later in the night. The 5,400 gathered New Yorkers were primed for the moment, going so far as to interrupt the candidate with chants of “Hillary! Hillary!” at one point in her short speech.

“We set this event for the day after Super Tuesday, and boy am I glad it worked out so well,” said Clinton just one day after sweeping wins across the South and in strategically important Massachusetts. “Yesterday was one for the history books. Our campaign went nationwide.”

It wasn’t quite the much-awaited, full pivot to the furiously anti-Donald Trump general election. But Wednesday instead provided a chance to begin the gradual wind-down, the effort to slowly bring Sanders supporters into the fold with the former secretary of state’s new message of unity against a Trump-led GOP. It wasn’t lost on many attendees that Clinton’s first major political event in Manhattan since she kicked off her campaign here in June came the day after a victory that gave her an almost insurmountable lead in the nominating battle.

While the event was something short of a victory rally, no speaker entirely ignored the ongoing primary. Still, in a reflection of her commanding position, there was little discussion of the remaining contests — including the five still to come within the week.

“I’ve been around the country, and it is very scary because the stakes in this election are very high,” said American Federation of Teachers president Randi Weingarten, a close Clinton ally and one of her legions of introducers on Wednesday. “It is really a debate about some people — one in particular, who’s running for president, who says he’s from Queens — who want to build walls to keep people out versus another one who was our senator, who has been first lady, and has been secretary of state, who wants to tear down barriers so that people can have opportunity."

“The Republican Party is scared to death of Hillary Clinton,” added de Blasio shortly thereafter, in a speech that was just as much about Trump as it was about his preferred presidential candidate and former boss.

“I am so excited Hillary Clinton is going to be the Democratic nominee,” added Cuomo, up next. “You can feel it! It is coming!”

One name went unmentioned by Weingarten, de Blasio, Cuomo or any of the other speakers on the main stage: Sanders, whose campaign on Wednesday morning yet again pledged to stay in the race through the July convention in Philadelphia after capturing four states on Super Tuesday.

The choice to keep the spotlight on Clinton, rather than the contests to come or the rival who spent his own day rallying his faithful in Maine, mirrored the front-runner’s recent public events, at which she’s continued to position herself as her party’s unquestioned — and unquestionably energized — leader, surrounded by middle-class laborers and flapping American flags.

There’s some risk attached to that above-the-fray positioning. She must avoid offending Sanders’ many committed backers by looking past him entirely. And that’s no simple task as the Vermont senator has ramped up his anti-Clinton rhetoric in recent days. His campaign staff suggested on Tuesday and Wednesday that their barbs would get onlysharper in the coming weeks — then proved it by announcing a Michigan news conference for Thursday designed to shine an unfavorable light on the former secretary of state’s stances on trade.

Despite coming out of Tuesday feeling newly confident about her standing with white liberals after a win in Massachusetts — Elizabeth Warren country — Clinton’s team recognizes the need to begin closing its deep deficit among young voters, the bloc that continues to fuel Sanders’ campaign.

But that was a task for another day. Here, in the city where the Clinton campaign kicked off and where it has its headquarters, it was time to signal that the Democratic primary is coming to a close — and the likely nominee was beginning to look to November.

“The stakes in this election have never been higher and the rhetoric on the other side has never been lower, so we’ve got work to do, my friends,” she said, in her new counter-Trump refrain. “But not to make America great again. America never stopped being great. We have to make America whole.”

“There’s a lot of finger-pointing and insulting going on in their primary,” she later added. “They may think it’s entertaining. But let me tell you: This is serious.”

