Hillary Clinton Declares 'Milestone' Victory; Bernie Sanders Remains in the Race

Clasping hands to heart as she met a jubilant crowd, Hillary Rodham Clinton declared a history-making victory in Brooklyn Tuesday.

"It may be hard to see tonight, but we are all standing under a glass ceiling right now," she told a packed Navy Yard crowd, who in turn chanted, "Madam President!"

The former first lady, U.S. senator and secretary of state closed in on a definitive pledged delegate majority Tuesday, finishing her long slog toward history as the first female presidential nominee of a major political party.

Clinton Wins California: Latest Results and Analysis

Multiple outlets, including the Associated Press, CNN, and NBC, project Clinton now has the delegates that she needs to formally clinch the nomination, following wins in at least three more state primaries Tuesday.

The news follows an unexpectedly prolonged and challenging campaign against previously little-known competitor Bernie Sanders. It comes a day after the Associated Press labeled her "presumptive nominee," based on a survey of superdelegates.

Near midnight, the White House announced President Barack Obama had called both candidates, congratulating Clinton "on securing the delegates necessary to clinch the Democratic Nomination for President," according to a statement from the White House.

Sanders, however, has no intention of conceding, and the president did not make an official endorsement.

"We understand that our mission is more than just defeating (Donald) Trump - it is transforming our country," the Vermont senator said in a speech late Tuesday in Santa Monica.

"Next Tuesday, we continue the fight in the last primary, in Washington, D.C.," he said to ecstatic cheers.

This despite a near-impossibility of victory (Sanders calls it, as before, "a steep climb") and reports that he plans to lay off more than half his campaign staff Wednesday. Sanders faces intense pressure to clear the field for the impending fight against Republicans' presumptive nominee.

Donald Trump piled on to that title Tuesday with wins of his own in New Jersey, Montana, California, New Mexico and South Dakota. The night's victories followed a day spent battered by his own party over statements called the "textbook definition of a racist comment" by one Republican leader.

Clinton won handily Tuesday in delegate-rich New Jersey, commanding more than 63 percent of the vote as of midnight. With those numbers, she needed to win only about 20 percent of California voters' support to clinch a pledged delegate victory, according to the election-trackers at FiveThirtyEight.

Five other states (below) also cast their ballots Tuesday. The counting continues in California.

• Live: Follow Clinton, Sanders Race to the Finish in California
• Sanders Takes Montana Primary
• North Dakota Democratic Caucus Results: Sanders Wins
• Clinton Wins New Mexico Primary
• N.J. Primary Results: Hillary Clinton Wins
• South Dakota Democratic Primary Results: Another Clinton Victory

Making sure the historic nature of Clinton's victory was lost on no one, before their candidate took the stage at the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the campaign played a video montage and used historic quotes connecting her to the history of women's suffrage in the United States, The crowd replied with screams.

"Thanks to you, we've reached a milestone. It's the first time in our nation's history that a woman will be a major party's nominee," Clinton said.

She opened by invoking the first women's rights convention, held in 1848 in Seneca Falls, New York. Clinton also thanked Sanders for a "vigorous debate" she said has made the party stronger, and gave him credit for exciting "millions of people, especially young people."

Clinton then turned her attention to a new pet topic - Trump.

"When he says, 'Let's make American great again,' it's code for, 'Let's take America backwards,'" she told a booing crowd. "To be great we can't be small. We have to be as big as the values that define America."

• Live Blog: Hillary Clinton Addresses Nation From Brooklyn Navy Yard

Clinton was born in Chicago on October 26, 1947. She led a politically active life growing up, and went on to attend Wellesley College and Yale Law School, later serving as staff attorney for the Children's Defense Fund. She met Bill Clinton at Yale in 1971, whom she would later marry and eventually follow first to Fayetteville, Arkansas where he served as governor, to the White House. She survived her husband's scandal and impeachment to successfully run for one of New York's U.S. Senate seats. She emerged from her 2008 primary election loss against Obama to become secretary of state. Her candidacy in 2016 has been a given in political circles since the day she stepped out of that office in 2013.

Nonetheless, the title of "nominee" did not come easy.

Fueled by the residual angst of a Great Recession that gave rise to the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street movements, the 2016 cycle has exposed edifices of the electoral process, rifts between voting blocks and stark frustration with the political establishment sufficient to elevate two unlikely candidates.

Trump and, to a lesser degree, Sanders stole the spotlight. Clinton, often described as a lackluster campaigner, was largely eclipsed.

Amber Barnett, a 27-year-old from Murrieta, California, summed up Clinton's strengths.

"I think it is exciting to have the first female presidential nominee be someone who is very qualified," she told Patch Tuesday. "She is the most qualified candidate in a very long time. I think her policies are very well thought-out and the most practical of all the candidates, regardless of party."

But in an election where "practical" translates to "boring" and "qualified" denotes "establishment," Clinton faced an uphill battle. Those inherent challenges were compounded by ongoing concerns related to a private email server she used while secretary of state, Clinton's refusal to release the transcripts of speeches delivered on Wall Street and a guarded public persona and long political history that fed opponents' "untrustworthy" narrative.

It didn't help that Sanders, a self-identified democratic socialist previously unknown to much of the country, saw unprecedented grassroots fundraising success and surprising wins in several states. His endurance dismantled the notion that Democrats would essentially crown Clinton nominee.

In his phone call to Sanders Tuesday night, the president thanked him for energizing voters and made plans to meet with Sanders Thursday, at the senator's request, to further discuss the campaign's key issues, according to the White House statement. In his speech, Sanders said he'd received "extremely gracious" calls from both the president and Clinton.

Sanders supporters in Santa Monica aggressively booed at the mention of Clinton. Sanders did not stop them.

The prolonged fight has clearly tarnished Clinton's image within the party's progressive wing, even as she approaches what Trump's candidacy assures will be a rhetorically brutal general election.

Already, in his victory speech Tuesday, Trump sought to tie Clinton to her husband's record, presenting the couple as a package deal of political ineffectiveness.

"The Clintons have turned the politics of personal enrichment into an art form," he said, promising a speech next week on "all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons."

"I wonder if the press will want to attend?" he intoned, raising his eyebrows sarcastically as the crowd laughed and jeered.

Elsewhere in his speech, Trump, reading for a teleprompter in a rare move, seemed subdued and scripted - an unusual tact by the brash New York businessman rendered somewhat less surprising in the wake of round-the-clock condemnation from party leaders.

• Read More: Paul Ryan: Donald Trump's A Racist But Better Than Hillary Clinton

Clinton threw some shade in return when her campaign tweeted a photo of Clinton prepping her victory speech - back turned on video of Trump speaking behind her.

Together, Clinton and Trump are considered the least-liked candidates to ever run in a general election, both with historically high unfavorability ratings.

The prospective matchup leaves many voters cast adrift, unwilling to support either candidate.

"I think it's a sad state of affairs when Clinton and Trump are the best candidates the major parties have to offer," Dave Condit, of Riverside County, California, told Patch Tuesday. "I voted Libertarian because I don't want to be responsible in any way for putting either of those two schmucks into office."

He is far from alone, a fact that Clinton's campaign is no doubt painfully aware of.

Her task will be to coalesce support from her own party before November, including Sanders supporters, after Democrats' nominating convention in Philadelphia this summer. Additionally, her campaign has already embarked on an effort to smear Trump largely by using his own words, as well as highlighting dissatisfaction within Republican ranks.

"This election is not about the same old fight between Democrats and Republicans. This is about who we are as a nation. ... about saying, 'We are better than this. We won't let this happen in America,'" Clinton said Tuesday, calling on Democrats, Republicans and Independents to rally to her side.

"What I care about most is the history that our country has yet to write," she said. "The end of the primaries is only the beginning of the work we are called to do."

The final Democratic primary is next Tuesday in Washington, D.C., before the party meets in Philadelphia next month to formally select its candidate. Based on projected pledged delegate totals and barring an abrupt change of heart among superdelegates, that nominee will be Clinton.

>> Photo via Clinton Campaign; Alexander Nguyen, Patch staff; Gage Skidmore, via Flickr/Creative Commons

>> Updated 6:57 a.m. ET