AP tally: Obama clinches Democratic nomination
WASHINGTON (AP) - June 3, 2008
Hillary Rodham Clinton swiftly signaled her interest in joining his ticket as running mate.
Obama sealed his nomination victory Tuesday, based on public
declarations from many "superdelegates" as well as private
support from others who confirmed their intentions to The
Associated Press.
Campaigning on an insistent call for change, Obama outlasted
former first lady Hillary Clinton in a historic race that
sparked record turnout in primary after primary, yet exposed deep
racial and gender divisions within the party.
The tally was based on public declarations from delegates as
well as from another 15 who have confirmed their intentions to the
AP. It also included 11 delegates Obama was guaranteed as long as
he gained 30 percent of the vote in South Dakota and Montana later
in the day. It takes 2,118 delegates to clinch the nomination.
The 46-year-old first-term senator will face John McCain in the
fall campaign to become the 44th president. The Arizona senator
campaigned in Memphis during the day, and had no immediate reaction
to Obama's victory.
Clinton stood ready to concede that her rival had amassed the
delegates needed to triumph, according to officials in her
campaign. They stressed that the New York senator did not intend to suspend or end her candidacy in a speech Tuesday night in New York.
They spoke on condition of anonymity because they had not been
authorized to divulge her plans.
Obama's triumph was fashioned on prodigious fundraising,
meticulous organizing and his theme of change aimed at an
electorate opposed to the Iraq war and worried about the economy -
all harnessed to his own innate gifts as a campaigner.
With her husband's two-White House terms as a backdrop, Clinton
campaigned for months as the candidate of experience, a former
first lady and second-term senator ready, she said, to take over on
Day One.
But after a year on the campaign trail, Obama won the kickoff
Iowa caucuses on Jan. 3, and the freshman senator became something
of an overnight political phenomenon.
"We came together as Democrats, as Republicans and
independents, to stand up and say we are one nation, we are one
people and our time for change has come," he said that night in
Des Moines.
A video produced by Will I. Am and built around Obama's "Yes,
we can" rallying cry quickly went viral. It drew its one millionth
hit within a few days of being posted.
As the strongest female presidential candidate in history,
Clinton drew large, enthusiastic audiences. Yet Obama's were bigger
still. One audience, in Dallas, famously cheered when he blew his
nose on stage; a crowd of 75,000 turned out in Portland, Ore., the
weekend before the state's May 20 primary.
The former first lady countered Obama's Iowa victory with an
upset five days later in New Hampshire that set the stage for a
campaign marathon as competitive as any in the last generation.
"Over the last week I listened to you, and in the process I
found my own voice," she told supporters who had saved her
candidacy from an early demise.
In defeat, Obama's aides concluded they had committed a cardinal
sin of New Hampshire politics, forsaking small, intimate events in
favor of speeches to large audiences inviting them to ratify Iowa's
choice.
It was not a mistake they made again - which helped explain
Obama's later outings to bowling alleys, backyard basketball hoops
and American Legion halls in the heartland.
Clinton conceded nothing, memorably knocking back a shot of
Crown Royal whiskey at a bar in Indiana, recalling that her
grandfather had taught her to use a shotgun, and driving in a
pickup to a gas station in South Bend, Ind., to emphasize her
support for a summertime suspension of the federal gasoline tax.
As other rivals quickly fell away in winter, the strongest black
candidate in history and the strongest female White House contender
traded victories on Super Tuesday, the Feb. 5 series of primaries
and caucuses across 21 states and American Samoa that once seemed
likely to settle the nomination.
But Clinton had a problem that Obama exploited, and he scored a
coup she could not answer.
Pressed for cash, the former first lady ran noncompetitive
campaigns in several Super Tuesday caucus states, allowing her
rival to run up his delegate totals.
At the same time, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass., endorsed the
young senator in terms that summoned memories of his slain brothers
while seeking to turn the page on the Clinton era.
In a reference that likened former President Clinton to Harry
Truman: "There was another time, when another young candidate was
running for president and challenging America to cross a new
frontier. He faced criticism from the preceding Democratic
president, who was widely respected in the party."
Merely by surviving Super Tuesday, Obama exceeded expectations.
But he did more than survive, emerging with a lead in delegates
that he never relinquished, and proceeded to run off a string of 11
straight victories.
Clinton saved her candidacy once more with primary victories in
Ohio and Texas on March 4, beginning a stretch in which she won
primaries in six of the final nine states on the calendar, as well
as in Puerto Rico.
It was a strong run, providing glimpses of what might have been
for the one-time front-runner.
But by then Obama was well on his way to victory, Clinton and
her allies stressed the popular vote instead of delegates. Yet he
seemed to emerge from each loss with residual strength.
Obama's bigger-than-expected victory in North Carolina on May 6
offset his narrow defeat in Indiana the same day. Four days later,
he overtook Clinton's lead among superdelegates, the party leaders
she had hoped would award her the nomination on the basis of a
strong showing in swing states.
Obama lost West Virginia by a whopping 67 percent to 26 percent
on May 13. Yet he won an endorsement the following day from former
presidential rival and one-time North Carolina Sen. John Edwards.
Clinton administered another drubbing in Kentucky a week later.
This time, Obama countered with a victory in Oregon, and turned up
that night in Iowa to say he had won a majority of all the
delegates available in 56 primaries and caucuses on the calendar.
There were moments of anger, notably in a finger-wagging debate
in South Carolina on Jan. 21.
Obama told the former first lady he was helping unemployed
workers on the streets of Chicago when "you were a corporate
lawyer sitting on the board at Wal-Mart."
Moments later, Clinton said that she was fighting against
misguided Republican policies "when you were practicing law and
representing your contributor ... in his slum landlord business in
inner city Chicago."
And Bill Clinton was a constant presence and an occasional
irritant for Obama. The former president angered several black
politicians when he seemed to diminish Obama's South Carolina
triumph by noting that Jesse Jackson had also won the state.
Obama's frustration showed at the Jan. 21 debate, when he
accused the former president in absentia of uttering a series of
distortions.
"I'm here. He's not," the former first lady snapped.
"Well, I can't tell who I'm running against sometimes," Obama
countered.
There were relatively few policy differences. Clinton accused
Obama of backing a health care plan that would leave millions out,
and the two clashed repeatedly over trade.
Yet race, religion, region and gender became political fault
lines as the two campaigned from coast to coast.
Along the way, Obama showed an ability to weather the inevitable
controversies, most notably one caused by the incendiary rhetoric
of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
At first, Obama said he could not break with his longtime
spiritual adviser. Then, when Wright spoke out anew, Obama reversed
course and denounced him strongly.
Clinton struggled with self-inflicted wounds. Most prominently,
she claimed to have come under sniper fire as first lady more than
a decade earlier while paying a visit to Bosnia.
Instead, videotapes showed her receiving a gift of flowers from
a young girl who greeted her plane.