Cheered by a
roaring crowd, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois laid claim to
the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday night, taking
a historic step toward his once-improbable goal of
becoming the nation's first black president. Hillary
Rodham Clinton maneuvered for the vice presidential
spot on his fall ticket without conceding her own defeat.
''America, this
is our moment,'' the 46-year-old senator and one-time
community organizer said in his first appearance as the
Democratic nominee-in-waiting. ''This is our time. Our
time to turn the page on the policies of the past.''
Clinton praised
Obama warmly in an appearance before supporters in New
York, although she neither acknowledged his victory in their
grueling marathon nor offered a concession of any
sort.
Instead, she said
she was committed to a unified party, and said she
would spend the next few days determining ''how to move
forward with the best interests of our country and our
party guiding my way.''
Obama's victory
set up a five-month campaign with Republican Sen. John
McCain of Arizona, a race between a first-term Senate
opponent of the Iraq War and a 71-year-old Vietnam
prisoner of war and staunch supporter of the current
U.S. military mission.
And both men
seemed eager to begin.
McCain spoke
first, in New Orleans, and he accused his younger rival of
voting ''to deny funds to the soldiers who have done a
brilliant and brave job'' in Iraq.'' Americans, he
added, should be concerned about the judgment of a
presidential candidate who has not traveled to Iraq yet
''says he's ready to talk, in person and without conditions,
with tyrants from Havana to Pyongyang.''
McCain agreed
with Obama that the presidential race would focus on
change. ''But the choice is between the right change and the
wrong change, between going forward and going
backward,'' he said.
Obama responded
quickly, pausing in his own speech long enough to praise
Clinton for ''her strength, her courage and her commitment
to the causes that brought us here tonight.''
As for his
general election rival, he said, ''It's not change when John
McCain decided to stand with George Bush 95 percent of the
time, as he did in the Senate last year. It's not
change when he offers four more years of Bush economic
policies that have failed to create well-paying jobs.
... And it's not change when he promises to continue a
policy in Iraq that asks everything of our brave young
men and women in uniform and nothing of Iraqi
politicians.''
In a symbolic
move, Obama spoke in the same hall where McCain will accept
the Republican nomination at his party's convention in
September. Campaign officials, citing the local fire
marshal, put the crowd at 17,000 inside the eXcel
Energy Center, plus another 15,000 outside.
McCain addressed
a smaller crowd by design, an estimated 600 in his
audience and another 600 outside.
One campaign
began as another was ending.
Clinton won South
Dakota on the final night of the primary season; Obama
took Montana.
He later called
Clinton to congratulate her on her victory. When she
called back, Obama reiterated his offer to sit down at a
time convenient for her, according to his spokesman,
Robert Gibbs. He said there were no plans for a
meeting on Wednesday.
Only 31 delegates
were at stake in the two states on the night's ballot,
the final few among the thousands that once drew Obama,
Clinton and six other Democratic candidates into the
campaign to replace Bush and become the nation's 44th
president.
Obama sealed his
nomination, according to The Associated Press tally,
based on primary elections, state Democratic caucuses and
support from party ''superdelegates.'' It takes 2,118
delegates to clinch the nomination at the convention
in Denver this summer, and Obama had 2,154 by the AP
count.
There were more
on the way, including Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland, whom
party officials said would make an endorsement on Wednesday.
Additionally,
party leaders readied a statement urging uncommitted
superdelegates in Congress and among the ranks of governors
to state their preference by Friday. Several officials
said that while they wanted to unify the party
quickly, they were also determined not to appear to
push Clinton out of the race, particularly since she will be
returning to the Senate once her presidential bid is
over.
Obama, a
first-term senator who was virtually unknown on the national
stage four years ago, defeated Clinton, the former first
lady and one-time campaign front-runner, in a 17-month
marathon for the Democratic nomination.
His victory had
been widely assumed for weeks. But Clinton's declaration
of interest in becoming his ticketmate was wholly
unexpected.
She expressed it
in a conference call with her state's congressional
delegation after Rep. Nydia Velazquez, predicted Obama would
have great difficulty winning the support of Hispanics
and other voting blocs unless the former first lady
was on the ticket.
''I am open to
it'' if it would help the party's prospects in November,
Clinton replied, according to participants who spoke on
condition of anonymity because the call was private.
Clinton's
comments raised anew the prospect of what many Democrats
have called a ''Dream Ticket'' that would put a black
man and a woman on the same ballot, but Obama's aides
were noncommittal. ''We're not in the presidential
phase here. We're going to close out the nominating fight
and then we'll consider that,'' David Axelrod, Obama's top
strategist, told reporters aboard the candidate's
plane en route to Minnesota.
McCain's
criticism of Obama referred to a vote last year in which the
Illinois senator came out against legislation paying for the
Iraq war because it did not include a timetable for
withdrawing troops. At the time, Obama said the
funding would give President Bush ''a blank check to
continue down this same, disastrous path.''
Obama previously
had opposed a deadline for troop withdrawal, but shifted
position under pressure from the Democratic Party's liberal
wing as he maneuvered for support in advance of the
primaries.
Bill Burton, a
spokesman for Obama, responded tartly. ''While John McCain
has a record of occasional independence from his party in
the past, last year he chose to embrace 95% of George
Bush's agenda, including his failed economic policies
and his failed policy in Iraq. No matter how hard he
tries to spin it otherwise, that kind of record is simply
not the change the American people are looking for or
deserve.''
The young
Illinois senator's success amounted to a victory of hope
over experience, earned across an enervating 56
primaries and caucuses that tested the political
skills and human endurance of all involved.
Obama stood for
change. Clinton was the candidate of experience, ready,
she said, to serve in the Oval Office from Day One.
Together, they
drew record turnouts in primary after primary -- more than
34 million voters in all, independents and Republicans as
well as Democrats.
Yet the race
between a black man and a woman exposed deep racial and
gender divisions within the party.
Obama drew
strength from blacks, and from the younger, more liberal and
wealthier voters in many states. Clinton was preferred by
older, more downscale voters, and women, of course.
Personality
issues rose and receded through the campaign:
Clinton's
husband, the former president, campaigned tirelessly for her
but sometimes became an issue himself, to her detriment.
And Obama
struggled to minimize the damage caused by the incendiary
rhetoric of his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, an
issue likely to be raised anew by Republicans in the
fall campaign.
Obama's triumph
was fashioned on prodigious fundraising, 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 gifts as an inspirational
speaker.
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 to be
commander in chief.
But after a year
on the campaign trail, Obama won the kickoff Iowa
caucuses on Jan. 3, and the freshman senator became a
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 of
victory in Des Moines.
As the strongest
female presidential candidate in history, Clinton drew
large, enthusiastic audiences. Yet Obama's were bigger. One
audience, in Dallas, famously cheered when he blew his
nose on stage; 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 past
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 inviting 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 courts
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
fell away in winter, Obama and Clinton traded victories
on Super Tuesday, the Feb. 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, D-Mass., endorsed the young
senator in terms that summoned memories of his slain
brothers while seeking to turn the page on the Clinton
era.
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 he 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 in
six of the next 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
one-time front-runner. (Tom Raum, Nedra Pickler, AP)
