History In The Making

Today's blog is going to take a slightly different turn. I took it verbatim from MSN news as I felt it was important to mark a historical milestone with factual information as opposed to my read on this subject matter so read and enjoy:

Barack Obama was poised to reach a major milestone Tuesday in the Kentucky and Oregon primaries — a majority of the elected delegates offered in the Democratic presidential contest — even as Hillary Clinton soldiered on despite her dwindling hopes.

Clinton was vowing to continue the fight through the last primaries in early June as polls opened across Kentucky, a state she was expected to win by a wide margin. Obama was favored in Oregon, where supporters delivered the largest crowd of his campaign on Sunday in Portland.
Regardless of who prevails in those states, Obama was assured that he would be able to claim the largest share of elected delegates who could be won in the long slog of votes since January.
The Illinois senator's campaign is touting the milestone as a big step toward ending the epic nomination battle with Clinton. Superdelegate sway having a majority of delegates elected in state primaries and caucuses could help Obama's case with undecided superdelegates — the party insiders who are not tied to primary or caucus results — to pick up the pace of their endorsements. Superdelegate support is crucial because neither candidate will have enough delegates from the remaining primaries to clinch the nomination without them.

Including superdelegates, Obama had 1,916 delegates to Clinton's 1,721 going into Tuesday's primaries in which 103 delegates are at stake in the two states.
NBC's national delegate count, including superdelegates, currently stands at 1,723.5 for Clinton and 1,905.5 for Obama.

[There are differences in how news organizations count delegates, how they award superdelegates, how they account for states that have held caucuses but have not yet chosen their delegates, and how they project the apportionment of delegates within Congressional districts where the vote was close. The Associated Press and NBC News conduct separate delegate counts.]

By early Wednesday, Obama could be just 50 to 75 delegates short of the total 2,026 needed to nominate a candidate at the party's national convention in Denver in late August.

McCain targeting Obama: Republican John McCain has already been targeting Obama in his campaign speeches as his likely opponent in the November election. On Monday the longtime Arizona senator accused Obama of inexperience and reckless judgment for saying Iran does not pose the same serious threat to the United States as the Soviet Union did in its day.
Obama has been increasingly presenting himself as the nominee as he looks ahead to the battleground swing states in the general election. On Tuesday night, he planned to hold a rally in Iowa, where he won the leadoff caucuses in early January.

Since Iowa, Obama has won 1,610.5 pledged delegates — leaving him just 17 short of a majority of the 3,253 pledged delegates up for grabs. He is sure to cover the gap in Tuesday's primaries because the delegates are allocated proportionately.
(NBC's pledged delegate count currently stands at 1,602 for Obama.)

Of the nearly 800 superdelegates, about a quarter of them have not declared support for either candidate. On Monday, Obama picked up six more superdelegates. Clinton added none.
Clinton has mounting campaign debts, but she vowed there was "no way that this is going to end anytime soon" as she campaigned Monday in Kentucky.

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.
"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 Bill Clinton at her side. "I'm ready to go to bat for you if you'll come out and vote for me."
Some of Clinton's female supporters urged Clinton in a full-page ad in The New York Times not to give up.
"We want Hillary to stay in this race until every vote is cast, every vote is counted, and we know that our voices are heard," said the Tuesday ad, paid for by the Women Count political action committee.

'Desire to unify 'But former Sen. Tom Daschle, a key Obama adviser, said now is the time for Democrats to coalesce behind Obama in order to defeat McCain.
"We want to begin the process of bringing this party together, and I think that over the last few weeks we've seen indications at virtually all levels in both campaigns that there's a desire to do that," Daschle told CBS's "The Early Show."
"That doesn't mean we're going to do it tomorrow or the next day, but clearly there is a desire to unify."

Obama, seeking to become the first black U.S. president, won the endorsement of Sen. Robert Byrd of West Virginia, the longest-serving senator in history and a former member of the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan and one-time opponent of civil rights legislation.

Nationally, Obama holds his largest lead yet over Clinton in the Gallup Poll, 55 percent to her 39 percent. The poll, released Monday, was conducted among 1,261 Democratic voters and has a 3 percentage point margin of error. Back in mid-January, Clinton held a 20 percentage point lead in the Gallup Poll.

Obama 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 except to praise her "magnificent" campaign. Instead, Obama sought to exploit McCain's ties to lobbyists, drawing a contrast between the Arizona senator's reputation as a reformer and his relationship to special interests in his campaign.

McCain recently adopted conflict-of-interest guidelines that led to the departures of several campaign aides due to their links to lobbyists. While campaigning in Georgia, he dared Obama to follow his lead on the guidelines.

Although Obama does not take money from federal lobbyists and political action committees, he does accept cash from state lobbyists and corporate executives interested in issues before Congress. He has had unpaid advisers with federal lobbying clients, and some of his campaign officials were lobbyists before.

After Tuesday, only three primaries remain on the Democratic calendar. Puerto Rico, with 55 delegates, holds its primary on June 1; Montana, with 16 delegates, and South Dakota, with 15, vote two days later.