Clinton predicts she'll be campaigning with Obama soon

Hillary Clinton is looking forward to campaigning with President Barack Obama, she said Monday, offering up a bold statement on the eve of a six-state voting day during which she is expected to clinch the number of delegates necessary to claim the nomination.

Amid speculation that Obama will endorse Clinton this week, Clinton declined to speculate how soon it could come. The timing of Obama’s endorsement, she said, is up to him.


“I’m going to be, as I said, working hard all day today. We’re going to continue to do everything we can to get people out to vote in the upcoming contests tomorrow,” Clinton told reporters on Monday during a stop in Compton, California. “I’ll have something to say tomorrow night, but I look forward to campaigning with the president and everyone else.”

According to The Associated Press, Clinton is just 23 delegates shy of the 2,383 delegate mark — the magic number she would need to clinch the Democratic nomination. The total, however, includes Clinton’s 500-plus advantage in superdelegates, elected officials and party leaders who aren’t bound to support any particular candidate at the convention.

Winning the nomination would propel the former secretary of state one step closer to becoming the first female president of the country, a historic election that would follow the country’s first black president.

Clinton hailed her supporters as passionate, committed people who have voted for her “in great numbers” across the country for a number of reasons, including the statement it would make.

“Among those reasons is their belief that having a woman president will make a great statement, a historic statement about what kind of country we are, what we stand for,” Clinton said. “It's really emotional. And I am someone who has been very touched and really encouraged by this extraordinary conviction that people have.”

“It's predominantly women and girls but not exclusively,” she continued, adding that fathers bring their daughters to meet her and have told her that they’re backing her campaign because of their daughters. “And I do think it will make a very big difference for a father or a mother to be able to look at their daughter just like they can look at their son and say you can be anything you wanna be in this country, including president of the United States.”

Clinton said she would take stock of where her campaign is Tuesday but pledged to do whatever she can to unify the Democratic Party, including outreach to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has vowed to campaign through the Democratic National Convention next month.

“I certainly am going to be reaching out to Sen. Sanders and hope he will join me in that, because we've got to be unified going into the convention and coming out of the convention to take on Donald Trump and to repudiate the kind of campaign he is running and make it very clear that's not the kind of president or commander-in-chief we want,” she said.

“I will not let somebody who traffics in bigotry and bullying become president of the United States,” she added. “That will not happen.”