Obama will Probably Declare "Victory" Tonight

By Rick Moran

Around 9:00 PM Eastern time when Barack Obama faces the cameras in Iowa, he will probably declare that he now has enough pledged delegates to claim the nomination of the Democratic party:

Much like a children's soccer or Tee Ball game, tonight's contests in Kentucky (which Clinton is expected to win big) and Oregon (ditto for Obama) are going to allow everyone to walk out a winner. And that's especially good news for Obama, because the party's presumptive nominee is going to lose a race by 20-plus points for a second-straight week. But the bigger prize for Obama tonight is what he's claiming at an event in Iowa -- where it all began for him -- that he has earned a majority of the pledged delegates won in the Democratic contests. Per NBC's delegate count, he needs to pick up just 25 to achieve this (not counting some Edwards delegates, which the Obama campaign has already added in to their totals). Yet as the Clinton campaign has pointed out, the milestone is only a symbolic one, but it's still likely to be the dominant storyline tonight. By the way, if Obama picks up approximately 50 delegates tonight, then he'll clinch a majority of the pledged delegates even if you add in Michigan and Florida as they originally voted.

Of course, about 300 of those delegates are Superdelegates who could switch allegiance at a moment's notice so how secure his nomination is depends a lot on what happens between now and the convention.

Meanwhile, Hillary Clinton - who is expected to blow Obama out by more than 20 points in Kentucky - is claiming that based on raw vote totals (including Florida and Michigan) she is ahead in the popular vote and will not quit. She may say that but even many on Clinton's staff are aware that the game is over and that it is only a matter of finding a graceful way to exit the race for Clinton to give up the chase.

Obama will likely win Oregon by a large margin himself. We won't know the vote count until early in the morning though because Oregon is employing a "Mail in primary" and people have until 11:00 PM Pacific time this evening to get their ballots in.

So for the second week in a row, the likely nominee is going to lose a primary by a huge margin - not the most ideal way to declare victory but he's apparently going to do it anyway.