|
Obama seals nomination: 'This is our moment'
by Tom Raum and Nedra Pickler
Associated Press Writers
ST.
PAUL, Minn. (AP) — 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.
|
