Hillary Clinton is on the cusp of securing the Democratic nomination, making her the first woman ever to be nominated to run for president by any major political party in the United States. Despite a formidable challenge from Sen. Bernie Sanders, Clinton is significantly ahead in delegates, and has more votes than any other candidate in the race from any party – more than 13 million votes in all. Why, then, do journalists and pundits persist in asserting a lack of enthusiasm for Clinton, claiming that she does not inspire?

It would be one thing if the data actually supported this narrative. But polling data belies this enthusiasm gap. For example, a Gallup poll conducted in late March found that 54 percent of Democrats and Democratic leaners are enthusiastic about Clinton, compared to 44 percent for Bernie Sanders. There are numerous other examples as well, from young girls awed by Secretary Clinton, to older women hoping to see a woman president in their lifetime, to bereaved mothers, to former staffers telling stories that illustrate why they admire her, to critics explaining how she won them over, to Democratic fathers of young daughters who support her candidacy.

Collect personalized information that you can utilize during closing time. (For example: are they a single parent of three children that may need money for food?)

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders said in an interview airing Sunday that voters will need to take a "hard look" at the State Department audit criticizing Clinton for her use of a private email server, but stopped short of going after her directly for it.

"The Inspector General just came out with a report, it was not a good report for Secretary Clinton. That is something that the American people, Democrats and delegates are going to have to take a hard look at," he said. "But for me right now, I continue to focus on how we can rebuild a disappearing middle class, deal with poverty, guarantee health care to all of our people as a right."

Back in the fall, at the first Democratic debate, Sanders famously said he was "sick and tired of hearing about [her] damn emails," and it's not an issue the Vermont senator has used against Clinton on the campaign trail.

Meanwhile, perhaps the moment has come when Donald Trump, blustering rape accuser, should respond to the rape accusations lodged against him by his estranged first wife Ivana – in a sworn deposition — during their bitter 1990 divorce, which a New York court eventually granted her on grounds of “cruel and inhuman treatment” by Trump. Journalist Harry Hurt III first recounted the ugly details of Trump’s allegedly very violent assault on Ivana –which involved ripping out her patches of her hair as well as sexually violating her – in his book The Last Tycoon.

Although Ivana sought to withdraw her accusation after the Daily Beast reported it last year, Hurt told me there is much more to be learned from the Trump divorce papers, which are under seal. So here is a suggestion for Trump, who still refuses to release his tax returns as American presidential candidates have done routinely for decades.

If he wants to accuse other people of rape and intimidation, Trump should unseal his divorce papers and let voters assess his standing to make those charges. The evidence gathered about Bill Clinton by the independent counsel’s sex probe is public record. If Trump has nothing to hide, he should let the public view the evidence of what he did to his first wife – and then they can judge him accordingly. If he doesn’t have the guts to disclose those scathing documents, then maybe he should shut up about the Clintons’ marriage, which endures.

It’s a complicated issue that John Weir gets into in detail here. But what isn’t complicated is that a group of America’s top HIV activists sat down with Bernie Sanders and told him unequivocally that they opposed this initiative. Sanders turned around and lied about them, and their alleged support for this initiative, ostensibly to endear himself to key organizations in California that can help him in the upcoming primary race in that state.

The thing is, the activists left the meeting pleased with Sanders, thinking things had gone well. Here’s Peter Staley:

We were all set to spin this meeting quite positively, but this press release is very misleading. Please see my post from last night — there were no attacks against the Senator in my first post on the meeting. We’ll still be reporting some of the positive stuff that came out of it. But his press team really scr*wed us.

It’s bad enough that Sanders blew off the AIDS community last month, and that up until a month or so ago Sanders didn’t even mention AIDS on the rather-short-on-substance LGBT page on his campaign site (the page was only beef upped after I publicly complained about its paucity). But for Sanders to take a community that’s already ticked at him, that he’s already dissed, and then use his meeting with them to curry favor with key political allies in a primary state is the height of the very Machiavellian politics that Sanders claims to eschew.