Hillary Clinton: ‘I will be the nominee’

Hillary Clinton said on Thursday that the outcome of the Democratic presidential nomination is certain and that she will prevail.

“I will be the nominee for my party,” she said during an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo. “That is already done, in effect. There is no way that I won’t be.”

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders has pledged he will continue to challenge Clinton for the nomination, though the math requires him to secure increasingly improbable landslides in the remaining contests to overtake the former secretary of state among pledged delegates. He then hopes to convince superdelegates to switch their allegiance, another difficult task.

Despite these daunting odds, Sanders insists he will soldier on through the June 7 primary races, which include big, Clinton-friendly states such as California and New Jersey. On Tuesday, after Sanders won the primary in Oregon, he vowed to fight on until “the last ballot is cast.”

Clinton told Cuomo on Thursday that Sanders will ultimately have to step up and help unify Democrats going into the general election.

“I am absolutely committed to doing my part — more than my part — but Sen. Sanders has to do his part,” she said.

Clinton recalled her own unsuccessful 2008 primary race against then-Sen. Barack Obama.

At the time, Clinton — who was then closer to Obama in delegates than Sanders now is to her — forged on into the late primaries despite also facing improbable odds. But she noted to Cuomo that she later worked to rally her supporters behind Obama’s candidacy.

“That’s why the lesson of 2008, which was a hard-fought primary as you remember, is so pertinent here,” she said. “Because I did my part. But so did Sen. Obama. He made it clear he welcomed people who had supported me. He made it very clear.”

She continued: “We went to Unity, N.H., together, appeared together, spoke together and made it absolutely obvious that I was supporting him. He was grateful for that support. I was reaching out to my supporters.”

Later in the day Thursday, the Sanders campaign fired off a statement disputing Clinton’s assessment of the primary.

“In the past three weeks voters in Indiana, West Virginia and Oregon respectfully disagreed with Secretary Clinton. We expect voters in the remaining eight contests also will disagree,” Sanders spokesman Michael Briggs said.

“And with almost every national and state poll showing Sen. Sanders doing much, much better than Secretary Clinton against Donald Trump,” he added. “it is clear that millions of Americans have growing doubts about the Clinton campaign.”

Watch part of Clinton’s interview below.