President Bill Clinton told vocal Bernie Sanders supporters at a campaign rally Sunday in Los Angeles that they would be “toast” on Tuesday.
“I don’t want to pick a fight but if I were them I’d be screaming, too, ’cause if you figured this out, they’re toast for Election Day,” Clinton said to cheers from the crowd. “So have a good time.”
Clinton has kept a busy schedule stumping for his wife all around Los Angeles since Friday — as polls show a tight Democratic primary race in the state.
Hillary Clinton is closing in on a historic nomination as the first female presidential nominee with one more round of states — California, New Jersey, New Mexico, South Dakota and Montana — set to vote Tuesday. Her nomination would become official during the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.
Generally, Clinton has kept a low profile on the trail, commenting on how he didn’t want to “make news,” and keep the focus on his wife. But Sunday his comments were a noticeable change from the careful language Hillary Clinton has used in reference to the race.
“I believe on Tuesday I will have decisively won the popular vote and I will have decisively won the pledged delegate majority,” she told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Friday.
At the former president’s Sunday rally, in the Boyle Heights neighborhood of Los Angeles, the few Sanders supporters were a small but vocal part of the crowd and the “Bernie” shouts started up almost as soon as Clinton started talking.
“There are more of us then there are of you but there’s no point in having a shouting match,” Clinton said as the crowd drowned them out with shouts of “Hillary! Hillary!”
Clinton made his case that Hillary Clinton was the true candidate of the working class and minority voters, not her opponent. He talked about his wife’s work with children, and advocacy for minority communities before she ran for Congress.
“The reason they are screaming is cause, is here’s the point, she got 73% of the vote in South Carolina with the white working class, as well as with African-Americans because they know what she did there,” Clinton said to cheers.
“They can shout all they want, those are the facts, and she has bent over backwards to be positive in this campaign,” Clinton said as Sanders’ supporters continued to shout.
Clinton said he had some facts for the protesters, saying: “they basically just repeat half the time the Republican talking points” and listed the support his wife has gained from progressive groups like the Human Rights Campaign and Planned Parenthood.
“You know the only thing that bothers me about it is? They say that everybody that disagrees with them is part of some nefarious establishment. It’s a pretty big establishment. It includes the United Farm Workers, because she voted for immigration reform when he didn’t,” Clinton said to cheers.
However, Clinton was careful to strike a positive tone throughout the interruptions.
“I don’t have anything bad to say about the people that are shouting against Hillary. I think at least we’ve had the right debate in the Democratic primary,” Clinton said.