Obama poised to claim nomination

Source: Agencies  |   2008-6-4  |     NEWSPAPER EDITION

DEMOCRAT Barack Obama stood poised to claim his place in history as the first black presidential nominee of a major United States party after a pair of primaries yesterday, as Hillary Rodham Clinton prepared to effectively end her campaign.

Two Clinton aides told The Associated Press that her campaign is over once Obama clinches the nomination. He could do so once voters in Montana and South Dakota bring his grueling, months-long contest with Clinton to a close and as party superdelegates - top officials and law makers free to vote as they chose - fall in line behind him.

Increasingly, they have swung behind Obama, with the first-term Illinois senator nabbing the support of two more superdelegates yesterday. He headed into the twin primaries just 40 delegates shy of the 2,118 needed to secure the party's White House nod.

Clinton aides said the New York senator will acknowledge that Obama has the necessary delegates once he is over the top in terms of the delegate count.

But in her speech in New York, she planned to stop short of formally suspending or ending her campaign.

Clinton was yesterday at home in Chappaqua, New York, with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and was placing calls to friends and supporters.

Majority call

Her campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe earlier in the day said in a television interview that once Obama gets the majority of convention delegates, "I think Hillary Clinton will congratulate him and call him the nominee."

Top party officials have been pushing for an end to a nomination battle that shattered fundraising and voter turnout records, but also exposed racial and gender divisions within the Democratic Party that threatened to undermine its chances in the November election against Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain.

Obama has been edging closer to a showdown with McCain, with some choreography by the superdelegates. They have been lining up behind Obama at a rate that could seal his nomination even before the results of the day's two races.

Clinton, once seen as a sure bet in her historic quest to become the first female president, was still pressing the superdelegates to support her.

She still sounded buoyant. Her husband, who is her biggest booster and most tireless campaigner, did not.

"This may be the last day I'm ever involved in a campaign of this kind," the former president said somberly as he campaigned for her in South Dakota.

Speculation for a "dream ticket" in which Clinton would become Obama's running mate has not received much support from either camp.