Obama ready to declare himself winner

I know it's only on the news section which tops her blog but when Taylor Marsh is linking to these two stories, then the Hillary fan club are preparing to accept the inevitable.

The first talks of Hillary's waning campaign:

With each passing day, it seems a little less likely that the next president of the United States will wear a skirt — or a cheerful, no-nonsense pantsuit.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is now in what most agree are the waning days of her bid for the Democratic presidential nomination. To use her own phrase, she has been running “to break the highest and hardest glass ceiling” in American life, and now the presidency, or even a nomination that once seemed to be hers to claim, seems out of reach.

The second talks of the fact that Obama is now drawing record crowds:

An estimated 75,000 gathered on the banks of the Willamette River in Portland on Sunday to see Barack Obama.

“Wow! Wow! Wow!” were his first words, as he surveyed the multitude, which included people in kayaks and small pleasure craft on the river.

Maybe I'm reading far too much into this, but it does seem to me as if Marsh is finally preparing her readers for the inevitable Barack victory, which The Guardian are saying he is going to declare as early as tomorrow.

Barack Obama is planning to declare himself the effective winner of the long-running contest with Hillary Clinton at the close of the Kentucky and Oregon primaries tomorrow.

At that point, he should have passed one of the last remaining milestones in the race, securing more than half the 3,253 elected delegates. To exploit this he is to shun the tradition of hosting a party in one of those two states after the polls close and instead hold a rally in Iowa, a decision full of symbolism. It was in Iowa on January 3 that Obama won the first of the 49 Democratic contests so far and irretrievably damaged Clinton's reputation for invincibility.

His campaign team is anxious to bring the contest to a close to reunite the party after the longest primary season since 1980 - and one of the most acrimonious. It also wants to concentrate on the fight against the Republican presidential nominee, John McCain, in November.

Of course Hillary is not yet ready to concede but when Taylor Marsh is preparing her readers for defeat then even Hillary should realise that the game is truly up.

But Clinton is not yet ready to surrender. "There are some people who have been saying for months that this is over, and every time they say it, the voters come back and say, 'Oh no it's not, we're not ready for it to be over,'" she told supporters in Kentucky on Saturday.

She has already said she intends to fight on until at least the last two primaries, in South Dakota and Montana on June 3. In spite of her defiance, Clinton and Obama supporters are already engaged in informal discussion about preparing for her accepting that the race is over. Clinton's team will seek concessions, possibly a cabinet post or the Obama team taking over her campaign debt of $20m (£10.2m).

The Washington Post yesterday reported that top fundraisers of the two candidates have had private talks about merging the campaigns. One of them, Mark Aronchick, a Philadelphia lawyer who has raised more than $1m for Clinton's run, said: "Only if we do this right, and see this through in the right way, will there be a chance for a full, rapid and largely complete unification of the party."

Now is the time for all the nonsense to end and for Hillary's supporters to realise that the person with the nearest policies to Hillary's is Barack Obama and for them to drop their silly threats to vote for John McCain and unite around the Democratic candidate.

I really hope they can bring themselves to do that.

UPDATE:

It looks as if The Guardian jumped the gun a bit:

Concerned about appearing presumptuous or antagonistic towards Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama will not declare victory in the Democratic nomination fight Tuesday in the event he wins enough pledged delegates to claim a majority.

Rather, he'll tiptoe right up to the line, without explicitly asserting the race is over.

Click title for full article.

Tags: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, US election 2008, Democratic presidential nominee