Clinton frames her historic win as a victory for women’s rights

Hillary Clinton cemented her status as the first woman to become presumptive presidential nominee of a major American political party on Tuesday night, when the Associated Press projected her the winner in New Jersey’s Democratic primary.

Clinton’s victory in the Garden State ensures she will have more pledged delegates, unbound superdelegates and overall voters than her rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. She declared victory at a New York City rally in the Brooklyn Navy Yard.

“Thanks to you, we’ve reached a milestone: the first time in our nation’s history that a woman will be a major party’s nominee,” Clinton told her supporters. “Tonight’s victory is not about one person. It belongs to generations of women and men who struggled and sacrificed and made this moment possible.”

Clinton’s victory came just three days after the 97th anniversary of the passage of the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote the following year in 1920. Clinton said in her speech that her mother was born on the same day as the amendment’s passage. Her win was also eight years to the day after she conceded the 2008 Democratic presidential primary to Barack Obama, with a speech in which Clinton famously declared that her supporters helped put “18 million cracks” in the “glass ceiling.” She recalled that concession speech Tuesday evening.