Barack Obama
effectively clinched the Democratic presidential nomination
Tuesday, based on an Associated Press tally of convention
delegates, ending a grueling marathon to become the
first black candidate ever to lead his party into a
fall campaign for the White House.
Campaigning on an
insistent call for change, Obama outlasted former first
lady Hillary Rodham Clinton in a historic race that sparked
record turnout in primary after primary, yet exposed
deep racial and gender divisions within the party.
The tally was
based on public declarations from delegates as well as from
another 16 who have confirmed their intentions to the AP. It
also included 11 delegates Obama was guaranteed as
long as he gained 30% of the vote in South Dakota and
Montana later in the day. It takes 2,118 delegates to
clinch the nomination.
The 46-year-old
first-term U.S. senator will face John McCain in the fall
campaign to become the 44th president. The Arizona U.S.
senator campaigned in Memphis, Tenn., during the day,
and had no immediate reaction to Obama's victory.
Clinton stood
ready to concede that her rival had amassed the delegates
needed to triumph, according to officials in her campaign.
They stressed that the New York State
U.S. senator did not intend to suspend or end her
candidacy in a speech Tuesday night in New York. They spoke
on condition of anonymity because they had not been
authorized to divulge her plans.
Obama's triumph
was fashioned on prodigious fund-raising, meticulous
organizing, and his theme of change aimed at an electorate
opposed to the Iraq war and worried about the economy
-- all harnessed to his own innate gifts as a
campaigner.
With her
husband's two White House terms as a backdrop, Clinton
campaigned for months as the candidate of experience -- a
former first lady and second-term senator ready, she
said, to take over on day one.
But after a year
on the campaign trail, Obama won the kickoff Iowa
caucuses on January 3, and the freshman senator became
something of an overnight political phenomenon.
''We came
together as Democrats, as Republicans and independents, to
stand up and say 'We are one nation, we are one people and
our time for change has come,' '' he said that night
in Des Moines.
A video produced
by will.i.am of the Black Eyed Peas, built around
Obama's ''yes, we can'' rallying cry, quickly went viral. It
drew its 1 millionth hit within a few days of being
posted.
As the strongest
female presidential candidate in history, Clinton drew
large, enthusiastic audiences. Yet Obama's were bigger
still. One audience, in Dallas, famously cheered when
he blew his nose onstage; a crowd of 75,000 turned out
in Portland, Ore., the weekend before the state's May
20 primary.
The former first
lady countered Obama's Iowa victory with an upset five
days later in New Hampshire that set the stage for a
campaign marathon as competitive as any in the last
generation.
''Over the last
week I listened to you, and in the process I found my own
voice,'' she told supporters who had saved her candidacy
from an early demise.
In defeat,
Obama's aides concluded they had committed a cardinal sin of
New Hampshire politics, forsaking small, intimate events in
favor of speeches to large audiences that invited them
to ratify Iowa's choice.
It was not a
mistake they made again, which helped explain Obama's later
outings to bowling alleys, backyard basketball hoops, and
American Legion halls in the heartland.
Clinton conceded
nothing, memorably knocking back a shot of Crown Royal
whiskey at a bar in Indiana, recalling that her grandfather
had taught her to use a shotgun, and driving in a
pickup to a gas station in South Bend, Ind., to
emphasize her support for a summertime suspension of the
federal gasoline tax.
As other rivals
quickly fell away in winter, the strongest black
candidate in history and the strongest female White House
contender traded victories on Super Tuesday, the
February 5 series of primaries and caucuses across 21
states and American Samoa that once seemed likely to
settle the nomination.
But Clinton had a
problem that Obama exploited, and he scored a coup she
could not answer.
Pressed for cash,
the former first lady ran noncompetitive campaigns in
several Super Tuesday caucus states, allowing her rival to
run up his delegate totals.
At the same time,
Sen. Edward M. Kennedy endorsed the young senator in
terms that summoned memories of his slain brothers while
seeking to turn the page on the Clinton era.
In a reference
that likened former president Clinton to Harry Truman:
''There was another time, when another young candidate was
running for president and challenging America to cross
a new frontier. He faced criticism from the preceding
Democratic president, who was widely respected in the
party.''
Merely by
surviving Super Tuesday, Obama exceeded expectations.
But he did more
than survive, emerging with a lead in delegates that he
never relinquished, and proceeded to run off a string of 11
straight victories.
Clinton saved her
candidacy once more with primary victories in Ohio and
Texas on March 4, beginning a stretch in which she won
primaries in six of the final nine states on the
calendar as well as in Puerto Rico.
It was a strong
run, providing glimpses of what might have been for the
onetime front-runner.
But by then Obama
was well on his way to victory, while Clinton and her
allies stressed the importance of the popular vote instead
of delegates. Yet he seemed to emerge from each loss
with residual strength.
Obama's
bigger-than-expected victory in North Carolina on May 6
offset his narrow defeat in Indiana the same day. Four
days later he overtook Clinton's lead among
superdelegates, the party leaders she had hoped would
award her the nomination on the basis of a strong showing in
swing states.
Obama lost West
Virginia by a whopping margin, 67% to 26%, on May
13. Yet he won an endorsement the following day from former
presidential rival and onetime North Carolina U.S.
senator John Edwards.
Clinton
administered another drubbing in Kentucky a week later. This
time Obama countered with a victory in Oregon, and
turned up that night in Iowa to say he had won a
majority of all the delegates available in 56
primaries and caucuses on the calendar.
There were
moments of anger, notably in a finger-wagging debate in
South Carolina on January 21.
Obama told the
former first lady he was helping unemployed workers on the
streets of Chicago when ''you were a corporate lawyer
sitting on the board at Wal-Mart.''
Moments later
Clinton said that she was fighting against misguided
Republican policies ''when you were practicing law and
representing your contributor...in his slum landlord
business in inner-city Chicago.''
And Bill Clinton
was a constant presence and an occasional irritant for
Obama. The former president angered several black
politicians when he seemed to diminish Obama's South
Carolina triumph by noting that Jesse Jackson had also
won the state.
Obama's
frustration showed at the January 21 debate, when he accused
the former president in absentia of uttering a series
of distortions.
''I'm here. He's
not,'' the former first lady snapped.
''Well, I can't
tell who I'm running against sometimes,'' Obama
countered.
There were
relatively few policy differences. Clinton accused Obama of
backing a health care plan that would leave millions out,
and the two clashed repeatedly over trade.
Yet race,
religion, region, and gender became political fault lines as
the two campaigned from coast to coast.
Along the way
Obama showed an ability to weather the inevitable
controversies, most notably one caused by the incendiary
rhetoric of his former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah
Wright.
At first Obama
said he could not break with his longtime spiritual
adviser. Then, when Wright spoke out anew, Obama reversed
course and denounced him strongly.
Clinton struggled
with self-inflicted wounds. Most prominently, she
claimed to have come under sniper fire as first lady more
than a decade earlier while paying a visit to Bosnia.
Instead,
videotapes showed her receiving a gift of flowers from a
young girl who greeted her plane. (AP)