Obama reaches a milestone

What happened?

Sen. Barack Obama had the Democratic nomination within his grasp this week, after easily winning the Oregon primary. His 59-to-41 percent victory in Oregon, combined with Sen. Hillary Clinton’s 66–30 landslide in Kentucky, gave Obama a simple majority of the party’s pledged delegates. He now needs only about 60 more delegates and superdelegates to reach the total of 2,026 needed to clinch the nomination. To avoid further alienating Clinton’s impassioned supporters, Obama called off a plan to declare the race over, while effusively praising Clinton as a formidable opponent and a trailblazer. “Sen. Clinton has shattered myths and broken barriers and changed the America in which my daughters and yours will come of age,” he told a cheering crowd of supporters.

Clinton once again vowed to stay in the race at least until the last primaries on June 3. “I’m going to keep making our case until we have a nominee—whoever she may be,” she said. In a last-ditch effort to win over the superdelegates, Clinton’s campaign argued that her strength with working-class voters has proved that she has a much better chance in the general election against Republican John McCain. But Clinton said the party would unite around whoever emerged with the nomination.

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What the editorials said

Obama was back on stride this week, said the Portland Oregonian. On the eve of his victory in Oregon, a boisterous crowd of 75,000 turned out to see him in one of the largest campaign rallies in U.S. history. But Obama cannot ignore Clinton’s success in Kentucky, where working-class whites again flocked to her. A stunning number of these registered Democrats—up to 80 percent—told pollsters that if Obama wins the nomination, they will stay home or vote for John McCain. “The mixed messages from the two states raise concerns for all Democrats.”

Obama can win those folks back, said The New Republic, by returning to the themes that first gave his candidacy wings in January. Back then, Obama’s campaign was built on the soaring rhetoric of “hope over fear” and “unity over division.” To prove he had substance, Obama ditched those themes to emphasize “nerdy detail.” His gaffes and the Rev. Jeremiah Wright then enabled the Republican attack machine to paint him as an unpatriotic “cultural foreigner.” To win, Obama needs to reclaim his mantle as the once-in-a-generation orator whose speeches cause white men to break into chants of “USA! USA!”

What the columnists said

Let’s pause for a minute to recognize what a momentous event is upon us, said Jesse Jackson in the Chicago Sun-Times. “On Aug. 28, 45 years from the day of the Rev. Martin Luther King’s historic speech at the March on Washington, Barack Obama will receive the presidential nomination of the Democratic Party.” When King described his dream, America was still torn by segregation and racial violence. But the men and women who fought for civil rights looked ahead to a shining future—a future that has now arrived. “Obama’s victory is a testament not simply to his singular skills but to the struggle and the sacrifice over many decades of many ordinary heroes.”

Clinton has earned a victory lap, too, said Richard Cohen in The Washington Post. “Take a tour of statues throughout the world, and, while you will find monuments to plenty of historical figures who lost battles, you will find none to ‘A Gracious Loser.’” Clinton deserves praise for proving that “pride, honor, and a sort of unforgiving toughness” are not exclusively male qualities.

Clinton has given women another gift, said Barbara Ehrenreich in The Nation. Thanks to her race-baiting, her threats to “obliterate” foreign countries, and her self-indulgent anger over her defeat, Clinton “smashed the myth of innate female moral superiority.” Virtues once attributed solely to women, such as compassion, an appreciation of consensus, and an aversion to violence, “can be found in either sex, and sometimes it’s a man who best upholds them.”

What next?

In November, Obama and John McCain will redefine the old, red/blue electoral map, said Reid Wilson in Realclearpolitics.com. McCain attracts moderate Democrats; Obama energizes young people, minorities, and independents. These dynamics will put many previously predictable Republican and Democratic states into play; for the first time in a long time, candidates will have to campaign in Michigan, Wisconsin, Virginia, the Carolinas, and more. The intricacies will “flummox historians and political scientists for a generation to come.”