US:BARACK OBAMA stepped back from declaring victory after this week's primaries in Oregon and Michigan, claiming only that the Democratic nomination was within his reach after winning a majority of pledged delegates.
Mr Obama's caution does not, however, reflect any doubt on his part that he will become his party's nominee when the primary race is over.
Instead, it speaks of his confidence that victory is so close that it is time to heal the wounds within the party and start winning over Hillary Clinton's disappointed supporters.
Mr Obama's team is acutely aware of the raw feelings in the Clinton camp, particularly among women, many of whom believe that sexism and misogyny helped to wreck their hopes of electing the first woman US president.
His campaign has already made overtures to prominent Clinton supporters, including former campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle, who acknowledged this week that she has had talks about working for Mr Obama in the general election.
This year's Democratic nomination battle is closer than any in living memory, closer even than the bitter battles of 1968 and 1980, which ended with Hubert Humphrey and Jimmy Carter winning by comfortable delegate margins.
Democrats have not been so evenly divided over a presidential nomination since 1924, when the leading candidates Al Smith and William Gibbs McAdoo withdrew after the 99th ballot and the convention chose John Davis as a compromise candidate after four further ballots. Mr Obama currently has 1,959 delegates, compared to Mrs Clinton's 1,778, leaving the Illinois senator just 67 short of the 2,026 needed to secure the nomination.
That figure of 2,026 is likely to change at the end of next week, however, when the Democratic National Committee rules on how to deal with delegates chosen in disputed primaries in Michigan and Florida.
Mrs Clinton wants all the disputed delegates to be seated at the convention, despite the fact that Florida and Michigan broke party rules by scheduling their primaries in January and that Mr Obama was not on the ballot in Michigan.
The most likely compromise would cut each state's number of elected delegates in half, although it remains unclear if the states' superdelegates would also be reduced.
Such a compromise would raise the nomination bar to either 2,131 or 2,118 but would do little to undermine Mr Obama's almost unassailable delegate lead.
Mrs Clinton remains determined to stay in the race until Puerto Rico, Montana and South Dakota vote at the beginning of June and her supporters argue that recent primaries reinforce her claim to be the stronger general election candidate.
"At some point a candidate will have a majority needed to win the nomination, but we have not reached that point yet. We probably won't reach that point on June 3rd," chief Clinton strategist Geoff Garin said yesterday.
"In these swing states - Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Kentucky, West Virginia - we think there's been a clear demonstration that Senator Clinton is the more effective candidate, the candidate who more voters rally around as the best person to fix our economy and keep our country secure."
Both Democratic candidates spent yesterday in Florida, where polls show Mr Obama trailing Republican John McCain by nine points.
Mr Obama has performed poorly among Catholics, who form the state's biggest single denomination with more than a quarter of the population.
He is also vulnerable among Cuban-Americans, many of whom disapprove of his plan to ease the trade embargo with Cuba and to hold direct talks with the island's leadership.
Mr McCain has been courting Jewish-Americans in Florida by portraying Mr Obama as weak in his support for Israel and being unwilling to confront Iran.
Former Democratic vice-presidential candidate Joe Lieberman, who has endorsed Mr McCain, yesterday accused Mr Obama of failing to understand the difference between America's friends and its enemies.
"There are of course times when it makes sense to engage in tough diplomacy with hostile governments," Mr Lieberman wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
"Yet what Mr Obama has proposed is not selective engagement, but a blanket policy of meeting personally as president, without preconditions, in his first year in office, with the leaders of the most vicious, anti-American regimes on the planet. . . If a president ever embraced our worst enemies in this way, he would strengthen them and undermine our most steadfast allies."
In Tampa yesterday, Mr Obama hit back at Mr McCain, claiming that the Republican's tough talk was little more than an echo of the policies of President George Bush.
"He's been spending the last week describing his foreign policy by describing who he won't talk to. He basically wants to perpetuate the same errors that George Bush has made." Mr Obama said.
