COLUMBIA, S.C., (Reuters) – Riding high after a landslide victory in Saturday’s South Carolina primary, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton has set sights on a possible face-off in the Nov. 8 presidential election with Donald Trump, the favorite for the Republican nomination.
“Despite what you hear, we don’t need to make America great again. America has never stopped being great,” she told supporters in her victory speech in South Carolina, declining to mention Trump by name, but taking a jab at his campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again.”
Clinton said she was not taking anything for granted after crushing Democratic rival Bernie Sanders on Saturday by 48 percentage points, likely setting herself up for a good “Super Tuesday” night on March 1, a key date in the nomination battle.
But if Clinton and Trump win big on Tuesday as opinion polls suggest, the chance of a general election matchup between them increases, adding another twist to a presidential campaign that has defied convention as U.S. voters vent frustration over economic uncertainty, illegal immigration and national security threats.
Some Clinton backers, emboldened by the heightened chance of a Trump nomination, have reaffirmed their support for the former secretary of state, saying that it is she, not Sanders, who is best equipped to take down Trump in a head-to-head showdown in November.
Rosilyne Scott, 58, of Texas, cast her vote early for Clinton ahead of Texas’s upcoming Tuesday nominating contest, calling the prospect of a Trump presidency “frightening.”
“I just think she has more support, and she’s been doing it a lot longer,” she said.
“If you get someone like Donald Trump in, I don’t know. … I think he’s a joke, a bigot, a racist.”
