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Obama Passes Threshold: Has Majority Of Pledged Delegates

May 20th, 2008
By JOE GANDELMAN, Editor-In-Chief

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Senator Barack Obama has now taken the lead in pledged delegates to the Democratic convention in his epic battle with Senator Hillary Clinton for the 2008 Democratic party Presidential nomination:

Despite Hillary Clinton’s landslide victory in Kentucky, Barack Obama has won a majority of pledged delegates in the race for the Democratic nomination.

Clinton won Kentucky by more than 30 points, but Obama’s share of the state’s 51 delegates was enough put him over the threshold, according to CNN estimates.

Obama is expected to pick up at least 14 delegates in Kentucky, and by CNN estimates, that will give him 1,627 of the 3,253 pledged delegates at stake in all of primaries and caucuses.

Obama’s top strategist, David Axelrod, said this was an “important milestone,” but not the end of the trail.

Neither candidate is expected to reach the 2,026 delegates needed to win the Democratic nomination. That means the race is likely to be settled by “superdelegates” — party leaders and officials who will cast votes at the Democratic convention in August.

And, in a speech from Iowa in which he congratulated Clinton for her Kentucky primary win, Obama announced to a cheering crowd that he had taken the lead in elected delegates.

In an e-mail message to supporters, he said, “We have won an absolute majority of all the delegates chosen by the people in this Democratic primary process.”

And in an address to supporters in Des Moines, Iowa — even before the first returns from Oregon were reported — he made it clear that he thought it was only a matter of time before Clinton was vanquished, proclaiming that “you have put us within reach of the Democratic nomination for president of the United States.”

Obama’s campaign touted the milestone as a big step toward ending the epic nomination battle.

“This is about delegates,” Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., an Obama supporter, said in an interview with MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. “I think it’s significant.”

But after coasting to victory in the Kentucky primary, Clinton vowed to continue the fight through the last primaries in early June, “even in the face of some pretty tough odds.”

Some thoughts from Andrew Sullivan HERE. Also read The Politico.

Meanwhile, Clinton campaign official Terry McAuliffe has moved the goalposts.



This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 20th, 2008 at 8:07 pm and is filed under Newsweek Blogitics, Primaries, Superdelegates, Kentucky, Democratic Party, Barack Obama, 2008 Elections, Democrats, Hillary Clinton, Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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Obama Wins Oregon Democratic Primary By Big Margin »


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