Obama captures Oregon, holds a majority of pledged delegates
Resolute Clinton wins handily in Ky.
WASHINGTON - Senator Barack Obama last night passed a key, though symbolic, milestone in his historic quest for the White House - winning a majority of all pledged delegates at stake in primaries and caucuses - and declared himself "within reach" of the Democratic nomination.
Even though Senator Hillary Clinton trounced him in the Kentucky primary, Obama still picked up a portion of the delegates there, and he also won yesterday's other primary, in Oregon. That gave him more than half of the 3,253 delegates being chosen by voters in the long season of primaries and caucuses - and left him within about 70 delegates of clinching the nomination.
Returning to Iowa, whose January caucuses catapulted the untested freshman senator to the front of his party's presidential race, Obama recalled how political analysts dismissed his candidacy last year, and declared that voters nationwide had answered his call for change.
"Tonight, Iowa, in the fullness of spring, with the help of those who stood up from Portland to Louisville, we have returned to Iowa with a majority of delegates elected by the American people, and you have put us within reach of the Democratic nomination for president of the United States of America," he said.
But Clinton's resounding win in Kentucky gave her justification to keep challenging him through the last contests on June 3 and perhaps raised further doubts about Obama's reach to white working-class voters, a constituency crucial to Democrats' hopes in the fall.
With all precincts reporting in Kentucky, Clinton had 65.5 per cent of the vote to Obama's 30 percent.
In her victory speech, Clinton praised Obama, but also delivered a message to her party: The odds against her are long, but she's not giving up because she firmly believes she would be the stronger nominee.
"Our party will have a tough choice to make: Who is ready to lead our party at the top of the ticket? Who is ready to defeat Senator McCain in swing states and among swing voters?"
Obama, however, was declared the winner in Oregon. With 55 percent of the precincts reporting, he had 58 percent to Clinton's 42 percent. The Illinois senator was careful to laud Clinton even as he neared the nomination.
"We have had our disagreements during this campaign, but we all admire her courage, her commitment, and her perseverance," he told a huge outdoor rally in Des Moines. "No matter how this primary ends, Senator Clinton has shattered myths and broken barriers and changed the America in which my daughters and your daughters will come of age, and for that we are grateful to her."
But he still devoted most of his speech to the fall campaign against John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.
McCain, Obama said, "arrived in Washington nearly three decades ago as a Vietnam War hero and earned an admirable reputation for straight talk and occasional independence from his party. But this year's Republican primary was a contest to see which candidate could out-Bush the other, and that is the contest John McCain won."
Obama criticized McCain's health plan, scolded him for hiring lobbyists to run his campaign, and said the Arizona senator would continue President Bush's aggressive foreign policy "that has left this country more isolated and less secure than at any time in recent history."
Though Obama positioned himself as the likely nominee, political analysts agree that neither he nor Clinton can clinch the nomination without the votes of superdelegates - the nearly 800 elected officials and party officers who can decide on their own whom to support.
The only way Clinton can defeat Obama is if the superdelegates side with her and if the party names her the winner of disputed primaries in Florida and Michigan. But Obama's campaign believes that the superdelegates will not go against the will of the voters who granted him the pledged delegate majority.
Clinton was undaunted. Calling her win "an overwhelming vote of confidence," Clinton told cheering supporters in Louisville, Ky., she is "more determined than ever" to make sure "every vote is cast and every vote is counted."
"Why do millions keep turning out to vote in the face of naysayers and skeptics? Because you know that our political process is more than candidates running, or the pundits chattering, or the ads blaring. It is about the path we choose as a nation and whether or not we will solve our toughest problems. . . . That's why I'm going to keep making our case until we have a nominee - whoever she may be," Clinton said.
Yesterday's results underscored what many say is Obama's political Kryptonite: his struggle to attract blue-collar Democrats.
Kentucky's electorate - mostly white, more rural, and less educated than the nation as a whole - is in many ways similar to West Virginia, which Clinton won last week by 41 percentage points, and to portions of Pennsylvania and Ohio, both of which she won decisively.
Clinton supporters point to her landslide wins in white, working-class states like Kentucky, and they say it's evidence that she is the stronger candidate among a core Democratic constituency. The woman-of-the-people message seemed to resonate with voters in those states, where residents struggle as quality hourly-wage jobs vanish.
Emphasizing her middle-class roots, Clinton played up her support for the working class, downing shots in local taverns, calling for a gas tax holiday, and portraying Obama as out of touch with the everyday struggles of the average American.
In Oregon - the largest remaining prize in the race - analysts saw Clinton's last and best chance to knock Obama off course.
Casting herself as the underdog, the New York senator tried to appeal to Oregon's blue-collar voters, most in the eastern and southwestern parts of the state. In those sparsely populated regions, residents earn their livings from the land as farmers and ranchers as well as in the lumber and fishing industries.
But Obama had a clear advantage in the state's more urban, upscale corner - home to the state's two largest cities, Portland and Eugene, and high-tech manufacturers such as
The blue-collar vote "could be a real problem for him," said William Lunch, a senior political analyst at the University of Oregon. "We don't know fully how he'll respond to that. One answer to that may be encapsulated in the decisions he makes regarding the vice presidential nomination."
Though the bruising Democratic nomination fight is nearly complete and Clinton has mostly avoided direct attacks on Obama in recent days, she chose yesterday to lodge her strongest complaints of the campaign that she has been the victim of sexist coverage in the media.
"I think that both gender and race have been obviously a part of it because of who we are, and every poll I've seen shows more people would be reluctant to vote for a woman to vote for an African-American, which rarely gets reported on either," Clinton told The
While racism should be equally rejected "when and if it ever raises its ugly head," Clinton said, she believes "the press at least is not as bothered by the incredible vitriol that has been engendered by comments and reactions of people who are nothing but misogynists."
Obama - who himself is making history as the first AfricanAmerican with a legitimate shot at the presidency - told ABC News that Clinton faces "certain burdens" as a woman and front-runner "in the same way I've got to deal with some issues as an AfricanAmerican . . . That is part of the groundbreaking nature of her campaign."
Obama also continues to lead in the money race.
His campaign announced last night that it raised $31.3 million last month and added 200,000 donors, bringing the total to nearly 1.5 million. His campaign, which raised about $40 million in March, also said it had $37 million to spend at the end of April.
The Clinton campaign said she raised about $22 million last month, compared with about $18 million in March.
