Obama nears watershed in White House race with Clinton
Posted: 21 May 2008 0110 hrs

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WASHINGTON : Barack Obama is bidding on Tuesday to take a leap forward to the Democrats' White House nomination as Kentucky and Oregon voted, but his rival Hillary Clinton was adamant the race is not over yet.

The Illinois senator was looking to clinch a symbolic majority of elected delegates to cement his right to run in November's presidential election against John McCain, the presumed Republican nominee.

McCain was already anticipating a November face-off with Obama, using a speech in Miami to savage the Democrat's Cuba policy, a day after accusing him of a "reckless" misreading of the threat from Iran.

Obama's willingness to hold talks with the Castro regime and to ease the US trade embargo on Cuba "would send the worst possible signal to Cuba's dictators," the Republican was to say, according to excerpts from his speech.

Obama's campaign said he was 14.5 pledged delegates away from a majority heading into the home stretch of the Democratic nominating campaign. Some smaller blocs such as Democrats Abroad get half a voting delegate.

With party elders known as "superdelegates" thrown in, the Obama camp said it was 110 delegates away from the ultimate winning line of 2,025.

"A clear majority of elected delegates will send an unmistakable message - the people have spoken, and they are ready for change," Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe said in a fundraising email on Monday.

"As we near victory in one contest, the next challenge is already heating up," he said.

In a sign he too is looking to November, Obama was to address a rally on Tuesday evening in Iowa, where he catapulted into contention with a shock win in the year's first nominating showdown in January.

The homecoming of sorts will offer an evocative pivot for Obama to suggest that victory is assured in the Democratic race, and to tout the midwestern swing state's support in the general election.

But Clinton, who claims to be ahead of Obama in the national popular vote by some measures, was in a fighting mood as she addressed supporters in Kentucky on Monday.

"There were a lot of folks who didn't want this election tomorrow (Tuesday) to matter," the New York senator said.

"And what we know is that, if Kentucky votes tomorrow and sends a message, that is sure going to count and it will matter to everybody watching this election."

First polls opened at 6:00 am (1000 GMT) and were to stay open for 12 hours in Kentucky, which spans two time zones, and is an east-central state known for coal mining, thoroughbred racehorses and pastures of bluegrass.

Opinion surveys suggested Clinton's coalition of white, blue-collar, female and older voters would hold firm and carry her to victory.

But Obama was favoured in Oregon, a sparsely populated, liberal state on the western seaboard where voting by mail was to end at 8:00 pm Pacific time (0300 GMT).

The contours of a McCain-Obama general election took on clearer definition as the veteran Arizona senator returned to attacking his Democratic rival's relative inexperience in foreign policy.

"I believe we should give hope to the Cuban people, not to the Castro regime," McCain was to say in his speech, pledging to Cuban-Americans to maintain the US embargo until Cuba conforms to basic elements of democracy.

The occasion was Cuba's Independence Day and the venue was in the state of Florida, a pivotal battleground for the November election where Obama was planning to spend the rest of the week from Wednesday.

Obama has already decried McCain's line of attack, insisting on Monday that the Iranian nuclear threat had only arisen because of the "endless war" in Iraq started by President George W. Bush and supported by the Republican senator.

The trip to Florida was to be Obama's first serious bout of campaigning in the Sunshine State, whose primary results, like Michigan's, were voided by Democratic bosses over a scheduling row.

Heading to the final nominating contests on June 3, Clinton's hopes hinge in large part on getting the Florida and Michigan delegates reinstated at a meeting of the Democratic National Committee on May 31. - AFP/de