ANALYSIS: Obama claims major milestone, Clinton says "not so fast"

May 21, 2008, 5:51 GMT

Washington - Barack Obama has taken his most decisive step yet toward capturing the Democratic presidential nomination, securing a majority of delegates elected in the near five-month-old race and coming ever closer to the general election battle with John McCain.

While Obama described himself as 'within reach' of the party's nomination, Clinton insisted that the battle was not yet over as the former first lady scored some of her largest victories of the entire primary contest in the waning weeks of the intra-party election campaign.

Clinton, 60, trounced Obama Tuesday in the state of Kentucky by a 35-point margin, one week after a 40-point win in neighbouring West Virginia.

Obama, 46, scored his own significant victory Tuesday in Oregon, beating Clinton by nearly 20 points in the Pacific North-West state.

With only three contests left, Obama now holds an insurmountable lead in the number of delegates directly elected in state-by-state votes since January. Puerto Rico holds its primary on June 1, followed by South Dakota and Montana on June 3.

Obama on Tuesday passed the symbolic mark of 1,627 out of 3,252 delegates at stake in the state contests. He remains less than 100 short of the 2,025 total delegates needed to seal his nomination for the November 4 presidential election.

The milestone means that super delegates - elite party members who make up about one-fifth of the total - would have to effectively overturn the state primary results in order to hand the nomination to Clinton.

With the general election within his grasp, Obama returned Tuesday to the Midwestern state of Iowa, the site of the first nominating contest and his very first victory back on January 3.

Obama often spoke of the primary contest in the past tense. He heaped praise on Clinton, called for party unity and mapped out a broad strategy for defeating presumptive Republican nominee McCain in November.

But Obama stopped just short of declaring himself the Democratic Party's nominee.

'We have returned to Iowa with a majority of delegates elected by the American people,' the Illinois senator told a boisterous crowd in Iowa's capital Des Moines. 'You have put us within reach of the Democratic nomination for president of the United States of America.'

Obama's supporters hammered home the same message, suggesting it would be harmful for party officials to buck the will of voters but being careful not to call for Clinton's exit.

'The Democratic Party, through a democratic process, have spoken,' Senator Christopher Dodd, a former presidential candidate who endorsed Obama, told broadcaster CNN.

But Clinton and her campaign continue to make the case that she is better placed to beat McCain in November, pointing to wins in swing states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania that will be crucial to any Democratic victory.

The New York senator's convincing wins this month in West Virginia and Kentucky reinforced doubts over Obama's ability to win rural, working class and older voters that she argues form the core of the Democratic Party.

'I'm going to keep making our case until we have a nominee, whoever she may be,' Clinton told supporters in Louisville, Kentucky.

Her campaign earlier attacked Obama for claiming the party's mantle before the end of the process.

'Premature victory laps and false declarations of victory are unwarranted,' communications director Howard Wolfson wrote in a memo to reporters headlined 'not so fast.'