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Clinton Projected To Win Kentucky

Victory not expected to stop Obama’s march toward Democratic nomination

From MSNBC:

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York won the Kentucky Democratic presidential primary Tuesday, according to projections by NBC News, but Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois was expected to win later in the evening in Oregon, leaving him poised to reach a major milestone: a majority of the party’s elected delegates.

Clinton has vowed to continue the fight through the last primaries in early June, and her campaign chairman, Terry McAuliffe, insisted Tuesday night that undecided superdelegates — the party insiders who are not tied to primary or caucus results — would begin flocking to Clinton, saying they would conclude that she was the party’s best chance in the general election against Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

In an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, McAuliffe referred to surveys of voters as they left their polling places which showed Clinton running most strongly among less-educated white voters, among whom she won nearly 75 percent support.

White voters without college educations have been a bulwark of Clinton’s coalition, and McAuliffe maintained that they would help her reclaim large industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania for the Democrats.

“We can win them back with Hillary Clinton at the top of the ticket,” he said.

Regardless how the superdelegates break, Obama was all but assured that once Oregon’s returns came in, he would claim the largest share of the delegates elected in primaries and caucuses.

Obama’s campaign touted the milestone as a big step toward ending the epic nomination battle. Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., an Obama supporter, called it “a major step.”

“This is about delegates,” Klobuchar said in an interview with MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. “I think it’s significant.”

A big step for Obama?
Obama’s having a majority of delegates elected in state primaries and caucuses could help his case with the superdelegates to pick up the pace of their endorsements.

Superdelegate support is crucial because neither candidate will have enough delegates from the remaining primaries to clinch the nomination without them, and nearly a quarter of the nearly 800 superdelegates have not declared yet.

By NBC News’ delegate tabulations, including superdelegates, Obama led Clinton by 1,917 to 1,725 going into Tuesday’s primaries, in which 103 delegates were at stake. Obama’s count includes pledged delegates for former Sen. John Edwards who have indicated a new choice.

By Wednesday morning, Obama could be just 50 to 75 delegates short of the 2,026 needed to nominate a candidate at the party’s national convention in Denver in late August.

However, Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, contended that Obama would not really have a majority of pledged delegates because Florida and Michigan are not counted in the tally. The Democratic Party stripped the two states of their delegates for holding their primaries too early.

Both campaigns had predicted that Clinton would comfortably win Kentucky, where she had campaigned dozens of times since March, while Obama visited for the first time just last week.

But nationally, Obama holds his largest lead yet over Clinton in the Gallup Poll, 55 percent to 39 percent. The poll, released Monday, was conducted among 1,261 Democratic voters and has a 3 percentage-point margin of error. In mid-January, Clinton held a 20 percentage-point lead in the Gallup Poll.

Lisa Caputo, a prominent campaign supporter, implicitly acknowledged the math Tuesday night, indicating that Clinton was staying in the race to benefit the party.

“Barack Obama cannot afford to go into the nomination on a losing streak,” Caputo told MSNBC. “Senator Clinton needs to stay in the race to make sure her supporters are galvanized to support the ticket whatever the ticket may be.”

Clinton urged Democrats not to flock to Obama, reminding voters that while Obama has starting to turn his attention to McCain, he has not sewed up the nomination.

“You can declare yourself anything, but if you don’t have the votes, it doesn’t matter,” Clinton said Monday in an interview with NBC affiliate KTVZ of Bend, Ore. “And neither of us have the votes.”

Source:  MSNBC

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