Milestone for Obama

As the presidential primary season enters its final 3 weeks, Sen. Barack Obama is closing in on a very important milestone. The New York Times reports that he is expected to capture a majority of the pledged delegates after the Kentucky and Oregon primaries today.

Sen. Hillary Clinton was last seen vigorously campaigning in Kentucky in an attempt to shore up her sizable lead in the polls, while Obama spent the last couple of days on the west coast making sure he maintained his lead in Oregon. It is pretty much understood that the with Obama taking Oregon and Clinton taking Kentucky, and since both states have close to the same number of delegates in play, the result will be a wash. Clinton will not make much of a dent in Obama's sizable lead. And with a majority of the available pledged delegates, it will take a bold act of the superdelegates to award Clinton the Democratic nomination.

Read the entire New York Times article here.


plez sez: it is all but certain that hillary clinton is going to stay in the race until the bitter end. with only a handful of primaries remaining (4 or 5 left), Obama nursing a majority of the pledged delegates, and Obama holding on to a majority of the superdelegates who've pledged their support, it is highly unlikely that clinton will be able to pull off the nomination without dropping a powder keg on the convention floor!

i can see her making a strong case for getting the number two position on the ticket, but she could've made that argument weeks ago... and really reduced the amount of rancor and bitterness that has bubbled up between the supporters of the two campaigns. every news service is running stories on gender bias and racism in this campaign: the TWO SUBJECTS that these two candidates should've been trying to avoid! for some reason, clinton's allies waited too late into the contest to play the "race card" and then they did such a poor job of it.

i don't see Obama offering her much more than a pat on the back, that's probably why he is treating her campaign with kid gloves, so when all the votes are counted and she's been kicked to the curb, he can smoothly transition to campaigning against mccain full-time. if he lets her fade from the campaign without ruffling her feathers, he should be able to count on her (and bill's) support in the fall campaign.

unfortunately, i don't see billary backing away from a return to washington that easily... they are probably going to make a STRONG CASE for her being on the ticket, whether Obama likes it or not! and if he doesn't offer her the veep role, i can see billary pulling their support (along with their PWT constituents who they just recently aligned themselves with) and handing the win in november to mccain... if mccain wins, billary will be back with an "i told you so" campaign in 2012!