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Home >> Oregon & Kentucky Primaries
Oregon & Kentucky Primaries
By: Ernie Fitzpatrick
The rhetoric has been flying in a special way these past few days leading up to the Oregon and Kentucky primaries. Obama is set to say that he now as a majority oif nthe pledged delegates (though shy of the needed 2,025 for the nomination). Hillary is saying that Obama can declare anything but it means nothing as she has spent all of her time in Kentucky trying to run up the popular vote.
Barack Obama will reach for a symbolic tipping point in the Oregon and Kentucky primaries Tuesday - a majority of pledged delegates offered in the Democratic presidential contest. Hillary Rodham Clinton vowed there was "no way that this is going to end anytime soon" as she campaigned Monday across Kentucky, a state she was expected to win. She wants to go OUT with CLOUT!
Obama was favored in Oregon, where supporters delivered the largest crowd of his campaign on Sunday. A record-setting 75,000 people attended the biggest rally of this election cycle. Regardless of who prevails in those states, Obama is on track to secure the largest share of delegates who could be won in the long slog of primaries and caucuses since the snows of January.
After these two primaries, theare only three left and they are small fish comaprted to the 103 delegates at stake in today's two primaries. Now it is on to persuading the remaining uncommitted superdelegates - the party insiders who are not tied to primary or caucus results - to pick up the pace of their endorsements. Enough of them have done so already to transform Clinton's hopes for the nomination from improbable in recent weeks to worse.
Still, the New York senator soldiered on through event after event, ending her night Monday in Louisville before a crowd of several hundred, her voice raspy from the stage. "There are a lot of people who wanted to end this election before you had a chance to vote," she said, husband and former President Clinton at her side. "I'm ready to go to bat for you if you'll come out and vote for me." She argued at one stop that she is the "more progressive candidate" and dismissed Obama's large crowds, like the record rally by an estimated 75,000 in Portland on Sunday.
Obama planned to spend the latest primary day in Iowa, the state of his opening electoral success. This, after he campaigned Monday in Montana, where voters will join those from South Dakota on June 3 in dropping the curtain on the 2008 primary and caucus season. The Illinois senator rarely mentions Clinton now, and neither does the press corps. Hillary who?
Counting aligned superdelegates, Obama has a total of 1,915 and Clinton had 1,721, according to the latest Associated Press count. That placed Obama just more than 100 delegates short of the 2,026 needed to clinch the nomination.
After Tuesday, enough super delegates should get behind Obama to make the last three primaries (Montana, South Dakota, and Puerto Rico) non-events.
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