Emphatically winning their party primaries in the state of New York, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Donald Trump fortified their frontrunner positions after a string of setbacks over recent weeks.
On the Democratic side, Tuesday’s outcome could also mark the beginning of the end of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’s campaign for presidency.
Among the Republican candidates, Mr. Trump left his rivals — Ted Cruz and John Kasich — miles behind as he won almost all of the delegates in New York.
End of the road for Sanders?
The decisive victory of Hillary Clinton in the New York State primary could mark the beginning of the end of a dream that had energised millions of America’s youth—Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders’s campaign for presidency.
The 74-year-old self-declared democratic socialist’s bid has brought to the fore the subterranean turmoil in the country’s society and economy.
The scale and the sweeping nature of Ms. Clinton’s victory in New York underscored the endurance of the Clinton-Democratic establishment and its ability to assemble diverse social and interest groups ranging from minority communities to women and blue-collar workers to Wall Street donors. “The race for the Democratic nomination is in the home stretch and victory is in sight,” Ms. Clinton said after the New York win.
If New York was a triumph of the establishment on the Democratic side, on the Republican side, it indicated the total collapse of the party elite in the face of the unswerving insurgency named Donald Trump. In the coming weeks, as several States on the east coast that are his strongholds vote, Mr. Trump will move steadily close to winning the nomination before the party convention.
Mr. Trump left his rivals — Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich — miles behind as he won almost all the delegates in New York, and him winning the 1,237 delegates required to be the nominee is a statistical possibility.
Stopping him in his tracks, as the Republican establishment wants to, will take a lot a manoeuvring. “We don’t have much of a race any more,” Mr. Trump said. “[I]t’s impossible to catch us.”
Assuming that New York has indeed made the nomination races irreversible, Democrats will have a popular runner-up who resonates with a substantial segment of their base, to be cajoled and won over. Republicans will have a winner who could also be a liability among large sections of voters.
“To all the people who support Sen. Sanders, I believe there is much more that unites us than divides us,” Ms. Clinton said. But Mr. Sanders is not hanging up his boots yet. “Thank you to all those who came out tonight in New York! Onward to five more States voting next week,” Mr. Sanders tweeted.
“We remain in a position to take the pledged delegate lead when almost 700 delegates are up for grabs on June 7,”ý Mr. Sanders had said earlier. Mr. Sanders’s strategy is to demonstrate bigger support than Ms. Clinton among the elected delegates and in turn nudge the super delegates — party officials who are automatically voters in the convention — to support him.
Mr. Trump has recently said he would turn “presidential” after vanquishing two more rivals left in the field. Whatever others may think, Mr. Trump thinks that time has come. For the first time in months, he referred to his key rival, whom he used to call “Lyi’n Ted”, as “Senator Cruz”.
