Obama Closes In On Nomination

On Tuesday, Hillary Clinton beat Barack Obama in Kentucky in a similar fashion of her massive victory in West Virginia the week before, while Obama beat her handily in Oregon.

In Kentucky, Clinton won 65% of the vote to Obama's 30%. In addition, exit polls showed that only about a third of Kentucky Democrats who voted for Clinton said they would vote for Obama in the general election. This revisits the concerns after West Virginia that he has a major problem with uniting the party and with working class whites.

In Oregon, Obama won 59% of the vote to Clinton's 41%. Something very interesting happened in Oregon, however. Obama beat Clinton solidly among working class whites. He won among those making less that $50,000 a year and those without college degrees.

So it seems that Obama doesn't necessarily have a problem with working class white voters, just working class white voters who live in Appalachia. We'll see how he deals with that in the general election.

After the Kentucky results were finalized, Obama claimed that he now has the majority of pledged delegates. He announced this in Des Moines, Iowa, which symbolizes him coming full circle in this nominating process. After all, it all started with his big win in the Iowa caucuses in January.

Obama was very, very careful not to declare himself the nominee, because that would piss off Clinton supporters (and there are a lot of them who aren't too keen about him already). But he sent the superdelegates a clear message with his triumphant return to Iowa--that it is time to move beyond the primaries and focus on the general election and John McCain.

At this writing, Obama leads Clinton by about 185 delegates, and is only about 65 delegates away from winning the 2026 delegates needed to clinch the nomination.

Clinton now has a very weak argument to the superdelegates, including math that is frankly absurd. Now it's not a matter of whether or not she will drop out, but a matter of when.

Her argument about Michigan and Florida is basically all that she's got now. Howard Dean and other party officials are meeting on May 31 to discuss how or if they want to seat Michigan and Florida's delegates. I will have more on that in the week to come.