Hillary Clinton Begins Push for Republicans and Independents Worried About Donald Trump
Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton on Wednesday began her play for Republican and independent voters, after Ted Cruz and John Kasich dropped out of the race, making Donald Trump the presumptive Republican nominee. "Let's get on the American team," Clinton said during a CNN interview, after she mentioned Republicans and independents whom she's met on the campaign trail. "Let's got off the red or the blue, let's get on the American team.", She called Trump a "blustering, bullying guy" and a "loose cannon," referencing his comments about women, Muslims and nuclear weapons. "I think it's a risk," she said. "I think he is a loose cannon and loose cannons tend to misfire.", Clinton said she is prepared for the kind of attacks Trump routinely leveled at his primary opponents, who she said weren't able to effectively take him on "because they actually agreed with him" on issues such as the minimum wage and climate change. "If he wants to go back to the playbook of the 1990s, if he wants to follow in the footsteps of those who have tried to knock me down and take me out of the political arena, I'm more than ready for him to do that," she said. Trump, for his part, has said Clinton would be "poor president" and that he looks forward to turning his attention to taking her on in the general election. On Wednesday, Clinton also drew comparisons between the campaign of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanderswho won the Indiana primary Tuesdayand her 2008 run, noting that, like Sanders, she stayed in the race until the end but still lost the nomination. "I won Indiana, I won West Virginia, I won a lot of states," she said. "But I couldn't close the gap in pledged delegates.", Clinton is currently leading Sanders with 1,701 delegates to his 1,411. She is also leading in super delegates, with 522 to Sanders' 39, according to the New York Times.