Senator Obama Closes in on Democratic Nomination

Senator Barack Obama pulled within shouting distance of the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday. Senator Hillary Clinton won the Kentucky primary and Senator Obama fared better in the Oregon primary. The split decision left Senator Obama needing just 64 delegates from the 2,026 needed to secure the nomination. Senator Obama had a total of 1,962 delegates, including endorsements from party and elected officials known as superdelegates. Senator Clinton had 1,779 delegates. Three primaries remain, Puerto Rico, Montana and South Dakota, with a total of 86 delegates at stake. Senator Obama cannot win enough of those delegates to clinch the nomination because of the proportional way in which the Democrats award delegates. But he can come close. He also secured a majority of pledged delegates won in primaries and caucuses; a milestone that could help him persuade more superdelegates to endorse him.

There are a little more than 200 superdelegates still left to be claimed by the two candidates. Senator Obama has added more than 50 superdelegate endorsements in the past two weeks, while Senator Clinton has picked up 10. He added two superdelegates Wednesday, Representative Joe Courtney of Connecticut and Mississippi Democratic Party Chairman Wayne Dowdy. She picked up one, Ohio superdelegate Craig Bashein. Senator Obama picked up another big labor endorsement, from the United Mine Workers of America.

Senator Obama is now abundant in his praise of a Democratic rival who engaged him fiercely and often bitterly over six months. In his Iowa rally Tuesday night, the man close to becoming the first Black Democratic presidential candidate paid tribute to Senator Clinton's historic effort to become the first female president, saying she "has shattered myths and broken barriers and changed the America in which my daughters and your daughters will come of age, and for that we are grateful to her."

Senator Obama won Oregon with the support of men and young people, but also found plenty of votes from blue-collar workers who were the staple of Clinton victories in other states, according to surveys of voters. As a group, only those making less than $30,000 a year and those over 65 favored Clinton. Women were evenly divided between Obama and Clinton, but men voted for Obama 2-to-1.

So, Senator Obama scored a solid win in a heavily White state, a rare achievement in recent races in which blue-collar Whites have powered his rival. It is not about the blue-collar! The media is afraid to say what everyone else knows, and that Senator Clinton is winning in the same area of the country that is arguably the most racist in the U.S. She won Ohio, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky where when you leave the larger cities in those states it is like you are back in the South of the 1960s.