Hillary Clinton has scraped out a narrow victory in Kentucky's Democratic primary, but rival Bernie Sanders scored a win in Oregon, dragging down her race for the White House. The mixed outcomes of Tuesday's primaries highlighted Clinton's difficulties in uniting her party's left wing, even as she prepares to do battle in the general election with presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump.
The tensions between the two Democratic camps boiled over at a state convention last weekend in Nevada where a row over delegate selection turned ugly, with chairs thrown and threats reportedly made against the state chairwoman. The New York Times reported Wednesday that angry Sanders supporters were threatening to disrupt the party's convention in Philadelphia in July. Resisting calls to rein in his supporters, the 74-year-old Sanders has rejected accusations that his followers have a "penchant for violence" and warned that room must be made for them.
"If the Democratic Party is to be successful in November, it is imperative that all state parties treat our campaign supporters with fairness and the respect that they have earned," he said in a statement on Tuesday. "Unfortunately, that was not the case at the Nevada convention. At that convention the Democratic leadership used its power to prevent a fair and transparent process from taking place," he said.
With Clinton well ahead in the delegate count, the Vermont senator, a self-described democratic socialist, has virtually no chance of capturing the Democratic nomination, barring a mass defection by super delegates already committed to the former secretary of state. But he remains a factor to be reckoned with, winning primary after primary with an anti-Wall Street, anti-establishment message that has resonated with the young and with white, male working class voters.
In the north-western state of Oregon, US networks projected Sanders the winner, 53 to 47 percent, half an hour after the polls closed. "We just won Oregon, and we're going to win California," Sanders told thousands of supporters in Carson, California as he predicted victory in the nation's largest state, which votes on June 7. Sanders' win put a damper on Clinton's close victory in Kentucky, where she was declared the unofficial winner by the state's secretary of state. With 99.8 percent of precincts reporting, Clinton led Sanders by 46.8 percent to 46.3 percent - a margin of less than 2,000 votes.
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