US:The momentum is now with Obama as Clinton falters and McCain looks secure, writes Denis Staunton
After eight straight wins in four days, Barack Obama was beaming as he addressed a monster rally of supporters in Madison, Wisconsin on Tuesday night.
"At this moment the cynics can no longer say our hope is false," he told the cheering crowd.
"We have now won east and west, north and south, and across the heartland of this country we love. We have given young people a reason to believe, and brought folks back to the polls who want to believe again."
Obama's victories on Tuesday may have been his most impressive to date because they saw him reach past his coalition of African-Americans, the young, the affluent and the educated. In Virginia and Maryland, he won in almost every age category and split the white, male and Latino votes with Hillary Clinton, even coming close to her among women.
"You can see some of the coalition filling in now," Obama's chief strategist, David Axelrod, said. "We exceeded our expectations. We won across all kinds of demographic groups and answered a lot of questions in that regard. It was a great day."
The Obama campaign are overstating their advantage when they claim that it is now next to impossible for Clinton to win the nomination, but a look at the delegate count shows just how formidable a task she faces.
Obama now enjoys a lead of more than 130 among pledged delegates - those chosen as a result of primaries and caucuses - and he is more than 35 ahead if you include super delegates - members of Congress and other party notables who account for a fifth of the votes at the nominating convention.
To regain the lead among pledged delegates, Clinton must win at least 55 per cent of the remaining delegates (if she loses Wisconsin and Hawaii next week, that figure rises to 57 per cent).
If Obama wins Vermont, Wyoming, Mississippi, Oregon, Montana and South Dakota, as almost everyone predicts, Clinton will have to win 60 per cent of the rest of the delegates.
She is banking on big victories in the three remaining big states - Ohio and Texas on March 4th and Pennsylvania on April 22nd. But field director Guy Cecil said yesterday that Clinton will also seek to maximise her delegates in states she expects to lose and will open offices and hire staff in every state still to vote - including Puerto Rico, which votes on June 7th.
Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign will seek to steady the nerves of donors and fundraisers and to prevent a stampede of super delegates to Obama's banner.
Clinton plans to draw a contrast between herself as the candidate of "solutions" and Obama, whom she will portray as "in the promises business".
Clinton's campaign has appeared fatally wounded before, only to rebound dramatically in New Hampshire and again on Super Tuesday, when she won most of the big states, including California. With little hope of good news for three weeks, however, she has never been in as unpromising a position as she is today.
John McCain remains the all-but-certain Republican nominee but he will have to wait until at least March 4th before he can relax into that role. Mike Huckabee failed to win any states on Tuesday and an increasingly frustrated McCain campaign released a memo pointing out that, mathematically, the former Arkansas governor just cannot win.
"He now needs 950 delegates to secure the required 1,191. But in the remaining contests there are only 774 delegates available. He would need to win 123 per cent of remaining delegates," McCain campaign manager Rick Davis wrote.
Huckabee's continued presence in the race serves as a reminder of McCain's failure to win over the most conservative parts of the Republican party. Huckabee won among conservatives in Virginia, although he lost the state by nine points and he could yet do well in Texas and Ohio.
McCain and Huckabee have maintained a studied cordiality since they became the last two candidates in the race but McCain acknowledged this week that he would now prefer to be left alone.
"Of course, I would like for him to withdraw today; it would be much easier," McCain said. "But I respect his right to remain in this race for just as long as he wants to."