Clinton ready to break one glass ceiling

She would be the first woman to be candidate of a major party to run for presidential post

Hillary Clinton has reached the number of delegates needed to capture the Democratic US presidential nomination, according to tallies by two US media outlets, as she and rival Bernie Sanders face off on Tuesday in contests in six states.

A former senator and US secretary of state, Clinton would be the first woman to ever be the presidential candidate of a major political party in the country's history.

But Sanders has vowed to keep up the fight in what has been a long and antagonistic Democratic primary race.

Sanders, a US senator from Vermont who calls himself a Democratic socialist, has commanded huge crowds spilling out of parks and stadiums, galvanizing younger voters with his promises to address economic inequality.

'Rush to judgment'

But Clinton has continued to edge out Sanders, particularly among older voters with longer ties to the Democratic party. Her less lofty promises focus on improving upon the policies of her fellow Democrat and former boss, President Barack Obama.

After The Associated Press and NBC on Monday night said Clinton had clinched the number of delegates needed to win her party's nomination, a Sanders campaign spokesman castigated what he said was the media's "rush to judgment".

Under Democratic National Committee rules, most delegates to the party's July 25-28 convention are awarded by popular votes in state-by-state elections.

But the delegate count also includes "superdelegates" - party leaders and elected senators, members of Congress and governors - who can change their mind at any time.

For that reason, the DNC has echoed the Sanders campaign, saying the superdelegates should not be counted until they actually vote at the Philadelphia convention.

But that has not deterred the news media. The AP and NBC reported that Clinton reached the 2,383 delegates needed to become the presumptive Democratic nominee with a decisive weekend victory in Puerto Rico, a US territory, and a burst of last-minute support from superdelegates.

"We are on the brink of a historic, historic, unprecedented moment," Clinton told a rally in Long Beach, California.

"But we still have work to do, don't we? We're going to fight hard for every single vote, especially right here in California."

But Michael Briggs, Sanders' spokesman, dismissed the AP and NBC tallies.

"Our job from now until the convention is to convince those superdelegates that Bernie is by far the strongest candidate against Donald Trump," he said.

On Tuesday, voters went to the polls in California, New Jersey, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota and New Mexico as the states held the last major primaries of the race.

Trump campaign 'is wasting time'

Donald Trump is wasting precious time, some Republican critics argue.

By now, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee was supposed to have stationed senior staff in battleground states, moderated his fiery message to attract new supporters and begun raking in big money.

Instead, he's spending more time right now picking fights and settling scores than delivering a message that might help draw voters.

Five long weeks since he defeated his last remaining GOP rival, Republicans fear the New York billionaire has squandered his head start. As Democrat Hillary Clinton eyes her party's nomination, Trump's campaign has been roiled by infighting, his battleground strategy is lagging.

"I am getting bad marks from certain pundits because I have a small campaign staff. But small is good, flexible, save money and number one!" Trump said on Monday.

Some Republican supporters also fear his unwillingness to budge from a flame-throwing formula targeting immigrants and Muslims that worked so well in the GOP primary.

Case in point: Trump's recent comments about the Mexican heritage of the judge presiding over a case against his now-defunct Trump University. The Republican businessman has refused to back down from his claim that the judge's ethnic background creates a conflict of interest, drawing scorn from across the GOP as well as the legal community.

Republican South Dakota Senator John Thune said on Monday "it's not a good place to be" for Republicans to have to repeatedly explain their presumptive nominee's statements. "There are I think conversations going on with the campaign, and hopefully that message is being clearly conveyed," Thune said. "But he's going to have to adapt. This is not working for him. They were inappropriate comments."

Trump also has been slow to adapt to other contours of an expansive general election. Since Texas Senator Ted Cruz dropped out of the race last month, he has spent precious little time in the states that will likely decide the election.

He has ignored Florida and Ohio, preferring to spend the bulk of the past two weeks in California - a state that hasn't supported a Republican presidential candidate in nearly three decades.

(China Daily 06/08/2016 page12)