Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton were showing signs of reconciliation after the primaries in Kentucky and Oregon, but it doesn't seem like the Democrat voters are in the mood to unite.
From FOX News:
Hillary Clinton scored a blowout victory in the Kentucky Democratic primary Tuesday, hours before Barack Obama confidently claimed a majority of pledged delegates for the Democratic nomination with a win in Oregon.
Obama was winning by about 16 points with 70 percent of the votes in in Oregon’s all mail-in primary.
The Obama campaign quickly calculated Tuesday evening that it had achieved what it called a critical “milestone” in Obama’s seemingly inexorable march toward the nomination. With the expected results from Oregon, Obama has a majority of the pledged delegates, but not a majority among all delegates.
Obama will still be 60-70 delegates short of a majority among all delegates to the convention — both the pledged and the unpledged superdelegates — when Oregon votes are fully counted.
The Democratic front-runner claimed Tuesday night at a rally in Des Moines, Iowa, that he had captured most of the pledged delegates at stake in the 56 Democratic contests.
“We have returned to Iowa with a majority of delegates elected by the American people, and you have put us within reach of the Democratic nomination for president of the United States,” Obama declared at the site of his Jan. 3 caucus triumph.
His decision to hold his primary-night rally in a state the campaign considers important to Democrats in November was a sign that Obama is looking straight ahead to the general election.
In his address, he attempted to reach out to Clinton and urge Democrats to unite against presumptive GOP nominee John McCain.
...Clinton won the Kentucky primary by a better than 2-to-1 margin. The win comes one week after Clinton trounced Obama by 41 points in West Virginia, exposing the Democratic front-runner’s weaknesses among whites, working-class voters and other groups.
“Tonight we’ve achieved an important victory,” Clinton told an enthusiastic crowd at her victory rally earlier in Louisville, Ky. “It’s not just Kentucky bluegrass that’s music to my ears, it’s the sound of your overwhelming vote of confidence, even in the face of some pretty tough odds.”
With 100 percent of precincts reporting in Kentucky, Clinton won 65-30 percent.
...The exit polls showed that 64 percent of Clinton voters still think she will win the Democratic nomination.
You wouldn't know it if you get your news from the lib media, but there are a lot of Dems who want Hillary to get the nomination.
Obama still hasn't sealed the deal with Democrats in spite of the fact that the media adore Obama. They've been slobbering all over him since he announced that he'd be running for president.
That's not a good sign for Obama and the Dems.
Obama has not been able to unite the party. I don't get how the lib media can say he's gaining momentum when Hillary positively crushed him in West Virginia and Kentucky.
Obama had a big rally in Oregon. Whoop-de-doo.
There couldn't have been more pre-election hype, but Obama's margin of victory was much narrower than Hillary's stunning performance in Kentucky.
There are a lot of Dems not willing to abandon Hillary, and Hillary has made it clear that she's not willing to abandon them.
From the New York Times:
Rebuffing associates who have suggested that she end her candidacy, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton has made it clear to her camp in recent days that she will stay in the race until June because she believes she can still be the nominee — and, barring that, so she can depart with some final goals accomplished.
Mrs. Clinton has disagreed with suggestions, made directly to her by a few friends recently, that her continued candidacy was deepening splits within the Democratic Party and damaging Senator Barack Obama’s chances of emerging as a formidable nominee. She has also disputed the notion that, by staying in, she was unintentionally fostering a racial divide with white voters in some states overwhelmingly supporting her.
Rather, in private conversations and in interviews, Mrs. Clinton has begun asserting that she believes sexism, rather than racism, has cast a shadow over the primary fight, a point some of her supporters have made for months. Advisers say that continuing her candidacy is partly a means to show her supporters — especially young women — that she is not a quitter and will not be pushed around.
Campaigning in New Hampshire and Indiana this year, Mrs. Clinton endured taunts from passers-by who questioned her abilities because she is a woman and mocked her husband’s affair with a White House intern. Yet Mrs. Clinton has also benefited from the strong support of white voters in many states, including some who have said that race was a factor in their support.
Campaigning with his wife in Kentucky on Tuesday, former President Bill Clinton also weighed in, saying he believed there had been “moments of gender bias” in the campaign, though he added that he thought people had become more comfortable with the idea of a woman in the White House.
And in her victory speech in Louisville, Ky., on Tuesday night, Mrs. Clinton made a pointed appeal, telling her supporters she would keep campaigning until there was a Democratic nominee — “whoever she may be.”
Mrs. Clinton is also focused on some tangible goals by staying in the race: she believes that racking up more victories, delegates and votes will give her and her supporters more leverage this month at a Democratic National Committee rules meeting to advocate for seating the delegates from the unofficial primaries in Florida and Michigan.
“There is not yet a Democratic nominee, and she will continue until every voter has a say in the process, including Florida and Michigan,” said Guy Cecil, the campaign’s political director.
Referring to the three remaining primaries, Mr. Cecil said: “We have thousands of volunteers in South Dakota, Montana and Puerto Rico who are making calls and knocking on doors to get the vote out. The people they are talking to want to participate and be heard.”
Mrs. Clinton’s advisers also say that her popularity could lead Mr. Obama to fold some of her policy positions — like universal health insurance — into his platform, though they discounted the notion that her staying in the race was part of a larger bargaining strategy.
While Mrs. Clinton believes that winning the nomination is a long shot at this point, she is also staying in the race because, in her experience, electoral politics can be a chaotic and unpredictable enterprise, scandals can emerge from nowhere, and Mr. Obama’s candidacy could still suffer a self-inflicted or unexpected wound. Picking up more primary votes and superdelegates could only strengthen her position if the party wants or needs to find an alternative to Mr. Obama.
As for concerns that her continued campaign might exacerbate party divisions, Mrs. Clinton is convinced that if and when she quits, her camp would quickly coalesce around Mr. Obama, advisers say — so much so that any Democratic ill will would fade within days.
I don't know to what extent gender bias is the issue, but I do think it is a factor.
Media bias has probably had a much more signficant role in the race than gender.
So much has changed since Hillary announced in January of 2007 that she would be running for president.
Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton launched a trailblazing campaign for the White House on Saturday, a former first lady turned political powerhouse intent on becoming the first female president. "I'm in, and I'm in to win," she said.
In a videotaped message posted on her Web site, Clinton said she was eager to start a dialogue with voters about challenges she hoped to tackle as president — affordable health care, deficit reduction and bringing the "right" end to the Iraq war.
"I'm not just starting a campaign, though, I'm beginning a conversation with you, with America."
I don't think Hillary expected that conversation to be interrupted by Barack Obama.
I think when she got in, she fully expected to win.
It doesn't look like she'll win, but I admire the fact that she's still fighting.
A lot of Dems believe in her.
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