Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton swept the five-state primaries in the north-eastern corridor on Tuesday to establish a firm lock on their respective party nomination and stay on track for a presidential election face-off in November. Their opponents refused to bow out even though they are all but eliminated in the race.
Trump declared himself the "presumptive nominee" of the Republican Party after he won a self-described "'massive landslide", polling more than 50% of the votes in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware, Rhode Island and Connecticut. More importantly , he swept at least 105 of the 118 bound delegates available to get up to 950 of the 1,237 delegates he needs to secure nomination. "As far as I am concerned, it's over," Trump declared in a victory speech at the Trump Towers. "The best way to beat the system is to have evenings like this."
But his opponents Ted Cruz and John Kasich, whom he decried as spoilers and sore losers, have pledged to soldier on to Indiana and California, the next states to hold primaries, in hope of engineering a coup at the party convention in Cleveland in July.
Clinton won four of the same five states that also had the Democratic primaries, leaving only Rhode Island for Bernie Sanders. The win brings Clinton to 2,141delegates, within a whisker of the 2,383 she needs to clinch the Democratic nomination.
Sanders trails far behind with 1,321 delegates and with about 1,300 remaining in play, he will have to win 90% of the remaining delegates.
But the presumptive losers in both parties have pledged to hang in, as it sometimes happens for a variety of reasons. Often, it is to push their (and their supporters') agenda into the winners' platform; at other times, to seek influence or sinecure. Sanders, for instance, still has a groundswell of popular support for his position and is still drawing millions in small donations from his supporters.
While the prospective winners typically hold out an olive branch at this point, as Clinton as done towards Sanders, no such niceties are visible on the Republican side, where Trump continued to trash his opponents and girdled up for what he sees as the big battle against Clinton.
"The only thing she's got going is the woman's card," Trump said, adding, "And the beautiful thing is: Women don't like her." Hillary struck back, saying, "If fighting for women's health care and paid family leave and equal pay is playing the woman card, then deal me in." Responding back, Trump said, "I call her crooked Hillary . She'll be a horrible president. She does not has the strength and stamina to be US president but can successfully handle countries like China, Japan and Mexico." "If Clinton were a man, I don't think she'd get 5% of the vote."