Frontrunner

Senator Barack Obama has finally clinched the democratic nomination:

"WASHINGTON – Barack Obama clinched the Democratic presidential nomination today, becoming the first black candidate to lead a major party into a campaign for the White House. Vanquished rival Hillary Rodham Clinton swiftly signalled an interest in joining the ticket as his running mate.

Obama arranged a victory celebration in St. Paul, Minn., at the site of this summer's Republican National Convention, an in-your-face gesture to Senator John McCain, who will be his opponent in the race to become the United States' 44th president.

The 46-year-old Obama outlasted Clinton in a historic campaign that sparked record turnouts in primary after primary, yet exposed deep racial and gender divisions within the party.

In a campaign of surprises, Clinton's comments about joining the ticket rated high.

According to one participant in an afternoon conference call among Clinton and members of the New York congressional delegation, Representative Lydia Velasquez said she believed the best way for Obama to win over Hispanics and members of other key voting blocs would be to take Clinton as his running mate.

"I am open to it," Clinton replied, if it would help the party's prospects in November, said the participant, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the call was a private matter.

Obama sealed his victory based on primary elections, state Democratic caucuses and delegates' public declarations as well as support from an additional 22 delegates and "superdelegates" who privately confirmed their intentions to The Associated Press. It takes 2,118 delegates to clinch the nomination."

You know, we all saw this coming. There really wasn't any doubt that this would happen, especially in the past few months where support for Obama had been increasing steadily while Clinton's attack ads against Obama were simply not convincing voters. Perhaps Obama's "no dirty politics" policy was a good one.

It's partially true too; by fighting against each other in this race, the public's image of the democratic party has been dirtied up. I say it's best to just combine won delegates and throw all support behind one candidate instead of fighting through all the democratic primaries to determine Obama or Hilary.

Hmm... Wikipedia hasn't update yet, I've always wondered how quickly they update their pages after a major event like this?

kamster