Hillary Clinton claimed victory over Bernie Sanders on Tuesday night in Kentucky, with fewer than two thousand votes separating the two Democratic primary contenders, while Sanders won Oregon less than an hour after the polls closed.

Even so, Clinton used it as an opportunity to call for unity.


"We just won Kentucky!" Clinton's official account tweeted. "Thanks to everyone who turned out. We’re always stronger united." The Associated Press, however, as of midnight still had the Kentucky race as too close to call. With all but a handful of precincts reporting, Clinton led Sanders by a razor-thin margin — 46.8 percent to 46.3 percent. In Oregon, Sanders led Clinton 53.5 percent to 46.5 percent, with 64 percent of precincts reporting.

The lack of a big win in Kentucky — combined with the defeat in Oregon — is a major irritant for Clinton, who has already launched the early stages of an all-out assault on Donald Trump, despite not being able to shake a dogged Sanders.

Sanders made note of his narrow defeat in Kentucky at the outset of a speech before supporters in Carson, California.

The close defeat came in a “closed primary,” Sanders said, remarking that he is “not all that enthusiastic about” independents not being able to vote in such contests. The crowd booed. “Where Secretary Clinton defeated Barack Obama by 250,000 votes in 2008, it appears tonight that we're going to end up with about half of the delegates from Kentucky,” he said, to cheers.

“No one can predict the future, but I think we have a real shot to win primaries in a number of the states that will be coming up. And don't tell Secretary Clinton because she might get nervous,” he said. “I think we're going to win here in California.”

As Sanders spoke, NBC News and the AP called Oregon in his favor. "We just won Oregon, and we're going to win California. I am getting to like the West Coast," the Brooklyn native declared.



While Clinton has a strong lead in the delegate race, Sanders is showing no signs of backing down or laying off the attacks that Trump has already said will be a playbook for his own battle against Clinton.



Earlier Tuesday, the senator again questioned the former secretary of state’s “judgment,” this time for floating her husband's name as a top economic adviser.

"Put Bill Clinton in charge of the economy? Well, uh, I mean that’s her judgment," Sanders told reporters in Puerto Rico, in the Democratic candidate's latest insinuation that his opponent does not have the proper judgment to lead the nation.

"My judgment is that if elected president, we’re going to put people in charge of the economy who do not come from Wall Street, who understand that we’ve got to reverse the decline of the American middle class," Sanders said.

In another defiant move, he refused to apologize for the chaos that ensued at the Nevada Democratic Party’s state convention over the weekend, when Sanders’ supporters reacted harshly to the notion that he was being unfairly denied delegates. The party’s chairwoman, Roberta Lange, said she’s been overwhelmed by death threats from his angry supporters.

Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz on Tuesday called on both campaigns to condemn the threats, but Sanders lashed out at party leadership for being dismissive of the movement he sparked.

“It is imperative that the Democratic leadership, both nationally and in the states, understand that the political world is changing and that millions of Americans are outraged at establishment politics and establishment economics,” he said in a statement. “The Democratic Party has a choice. It can open its doors and welcome into the party people who are prepared to fight for real economic and social change…Or the party can choose to maintain its status quo, remain dependent on big-money campaign contributions and be a party with limited participation and limited energy.”

The ultimatum presents the challenge before Clinton — how to minimize the damage being exacted by Sanders and eventually win over enough of his supporters to beat Trump in November.

The challenge is growing the longer that Sanders stays in the race and the more riled up his supporters become.

The Vermont senator and his upstart campaign have racked up recent victories in Indiana and West Virginia, but Sanders’ only hope of clinching the nomination relies upon swaying a large number of superdelegates his way.

Clinton entered Tuesday night with 1,716 pledged delegates to Sanders’ 1,473 in the quest to get the 2,383 delegates needed to win the nomination outright.

On the superdelegate front, Clinton has support from more than 400 of those unbound party members, while Sanders only has roughly 40. His climb became a bit tougher after a superdelegate from the U.S. Virgin Islands decided to flip his allegiance to Clinton from Sanders — the first to publicly do so.

However, Sanders has vowed to take his fight all the way until the June 14 voting in the District of Columbia and beyond to the July convention in Philadelphia.

His camp is expecting to get a fresh burst of momentum from his win in Oregon, which awards its 61 pledged delegates on the proportional basis. He faced more of a long-shot in Kentucky, where Clinton won eight years ago and where she boasts strong ties to the Democratic infrastructure.

Sanders spent the last weekend in Kentucky before flying south to Puerto Rico, where he showed no sign of letting up on his attacks on Wall Street in general and Clinton in particular.

“What vulture funds on Wall Street are demanding is that Puerto Rico fire teachers, close schools, cut pensions and abolish the minimum wage so that they can reap huge profits off the suffering and misery of the children and the people of Puerto Rico,” Sanders said Monday in San Juan.

Former President Bill Clinton also hit the trail for his wife in Puerto Rico on Tuesday, after visiting supporters in the U.S. Virgin Islands on Monday, in St. Croix. The 42nd president campaigned on her behalf in three Kentucky cities last Thursday as well.

Even as Sanders looked for another trophy to add to his growing case for superdelegates in Philadelphia, Clinton and her allies were laser-focused on what comes next.

A pro-Clinton super PAC released a pair of ads late Monday attacking Trump for the insults he’s thrown at women, which will begin airing Wednesday in Ohio, Florida, Virginia and Nevada.

Clinton herself went after Trump on campaign trail in Bowling Green, Kentucky, on Monday, saying the real estate mogul is all talk.

“Now some people might say, oh you know, all anybody wants to hear is just ‘I’m gonna do it, but I’m not tellin’ you what I’m gonna do.’ See, I don’t believe that,” Clinton said. “Maybe in the preliminaries in the Republican primary that’s all they wanted to hear, but Americans take their vote for president seriously. And they’re going to be looking at their TV screen and saying, ‘He still doesn’t have anything to tell us? Wait a minute.’ I think we know a little bit how to create jobs. I think my husband did a heck of a job back in the ‘90s.”