Ed Rendell: Hillary Trying To End Sanders Campaign In California Primary
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) - Ed Rendell addressed Hillary Clinton's cancellation of campaign events in New Jersey to focus on winning Tuesday's primary in California as a sign that she is focused on locking up the Democratic nomination in her fight with Bernie Sanders as soon as possible, without letting any drama remain for the nominating convention this summer in Philadelphia.
Rendell told Rich Zeoli on Talk Radio 1210 WPHT that Hillary's decision to leave New Jersey means she wants to close the deal with a win in California.
"She not only cancelled an event in New Jersey, she cancelled two fundraisers here in Philadelphia and saved me a lot of money. She is likely going to win on Saturday in the Virgin Islands, Sunday in Puerto Rico, which has a lot of delegates in our convention and then she'll win New Jersey and if she wins California, that ends the argument that this is close enough that the superdelegates can swing to Bernie."
However, he said a Sanders win in California would keep the door open and present and legitimate argument to the Democratic superdelegates, who are not bound to any candidate.
"If Bernie wins in California, that will keep a little bit of momentum going for them because they're going to win in the two or three smaller states, North Dakota, South Dakota and Montana, so they'll have some momentum and they can continue their argument to the superdelegates."
Rendell also explained that if anything happens to the former Secretary of State after winning the nomination, like an indictment regarding her handling of classified emails or an illness, delegates of the Democratic National Committee would choose her successor.
"Let's say Hillary Clinton won the roll call and was nominated and something happened, let me preface it by saying nothing is going to happen, if any charges were brought against her, they'd have to bring charges against Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell, they did the same thing...then it would go back to the DNC. The DNC, the 443 delegates who make up the DNC would select the substitute nominee. It could be that they would choose whoever had been nominated for Vice-President or they could choose somebody new or they could do, pretty much at that point, anything they wanted."