On to November: Obama clinches Democratic nomination

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., listens to a question from the audience during a town meeting at Westerville Central High School in Westerville, Ohio, on March 2, 2008. On the strength of a primary victory in Montana and a slew of superdelegates' endorsements, Obama clinched the Democratic Party's presidential nomination Tuesday night. (AP photo/Paul Vernon)

Banner Staff

When Hillary Rodham Clinton declared her candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination some 17 months ago, droves of political onlookers predicted the coming campaign would have an historic, unprecedented result.

Those pundits now look like prophets, as an historic, unprecedented candidate will represent the Democratic Party in the November general election.

His name is Barack Obama.

The Illinois senator clinched the party’s bid Tuesday night, becoming the first black presidential nominee of a major political party in American history.

“Tonight, we mark the end of one historic journey with the beginning of another — a journey that will bring a new and better day to America,” Obama told supporters Tuesday night at a rally in St. Paul, Minn. “Because of you, tonight I can stand here and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States of America.”

While she has yet to concede the nomination, Clinton is expected on Saturday to announce her support for Obama, closing an epic nominating battle that pitted the first serious female candidate against the most viable black contender ever.

In an e-mail to supporters Wednesday, the New York senator and former first lady said she “will be speaking on Saturday about how together we can rally the party behind Senator Obama. The stakes are too high and the task before us too important to do otherwise.”

Clinton’s expected withdrawal sets the stage for November’s general election, the first in a half-century in which neither a sitting president nor a vice president is running for the highest office, and the first since 1960 in which a senator will assume the White House.

According to the results of a recent CBS News poll, Obama holds a slim national lead over his Republican opponent, Arizona Sen. John McCain, 48 percent to 42 percent. It also shows, however, that one in eight Democrats — including one in five Clinton supporters — say they’ll back McCain in the fall, a far higher share of Democrats than voted for President Bush in 2004.

Obama’s victory came after the final two contests of a grueling primary season. Though Clinton won South Dakota’s primary on Tuesday, Obama took the contest in Montana and netted endorsements from a slew of party superdelegates, including former President Jimmy Carter, that put him over the top.

It took 2,118 delegates to clinch the nomination at the party’s national convention, to be held in Denver in August. Prior to Tuesday, Obama was 41 delegates short.

By the time the polls closed in South Dakota and Montana, according to an Associated Press tally, Obama had 2,154.

Even Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, a dogged Clinton supporter, recognized the grim arithmetic.

“I am the last of the Mohicans, but it is over,” he said.

But despite the mathematical certainty that Obama would move on, Clinton did not bow out of the race after Tuesday’s primaries.

Her speech to supporters in New York City praised Obama, calling him a friend and saying it had been “an honor to contest the primaries with him.” But it sounded the same note as others she has delivered in recent weeks — that she was the party’s strongest candidate and had won the overall popular vote, a contention Obama’s campaign has challenged.

“I want the nearly 18 million Americans who voted for me to be respected,” Clinton said.

U.S. Rep. James Clyburn, D-S.C., who endorsed Obama Tuesday, told The Washington Post he felt Clinton’s speech struck an unfortunate tone by failing to acknowledge her defeat.

“At some point, she needs to congratulate the man for having won,” Clyburn told The Washington Post. “Those kinds of things are important to us who grew up in the South with these kinds of slights. That speech cannot be seen as anything but a slight.”

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