U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders on Tuesday was declared the winner of the Democratic Party primary in Oregon. And in Kentucky, The Associated Press said the outcome was too close to call.
“This is the beginning of the final push to win California,” Sanders told a rally of 11,168 supporters at California State University, Dominguez Hills.
“There are a lot of people out there who say Bernie Sanders should drop out, the people of California should not have the right to determine who the next president will be,” he said. “We are in this until the last ballot is counted … and then we’re going to take that fight to Philadelphia,” he added.
With the outcome in Oregon, the senator from Vermont won his third victory in three weeks and put 20 states in Sanders’ column.
“We have a possibility – it will be a steep climb I recognize that – but we have the possibility of going to Philadelphia with a majority of the pledged delegates,” Sanders said.
In the year since he launched a long-shot campaign, Sanders has taken on the Democratic Party establishment and won more than 45 percent of the pledged delegates to this July’s Democratic National Convention.
Speaking to his supporters in Southern California, Sanders had a blunt message for top party officials. “I say to the leadership of the Democratic Party: Open the doors. Let the people in. “The other option for the Democratic Party, a sad and tragic option, is to maintain its status quo structure and be a party with limited participation and limited energy,” Sanders said.
With Donald Trump the likely Republican Party nominee, Sanders said he is better position to win in November than Hillary Clinton.
Democrats “incredibly” have allowed a right-wing Republican to capture a majority of the votes of the working-class Americans, Sanders said. “I’ll be damned,” he added. “if we will allow the Republican Party, whose job is to represent the rich and the powerful, to win the votes of working-class Americans.”
The largest state with 475 pledged delegates at stake, California Democrats got to the polls on June 7.
Sanders spoke after the polls closed in Oregon and after Clinton ended up with a razor-thin edge in the unofficial vote tally there. The Sanders campaign said it would decide on Wednesday whether to seek a recount.
