Obama inching ever closer to nomination

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By CALVIN WOODWARD 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Close to securing the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama is lavishing attention on Florida and its wreckage of a presidential primary while minding his manners with Hillary Rodham Clinton – a rival he now can afford to praise.

Obama detoured Wednesday from the campaign for the three remaining primaries – Puerto Rico, Montana, South Dakota – to rally in a state where its renegade primary was disallowed. Clinton, too, was in Florida, pressing to narrow her gap with Obama by having delegates counted from its contest in January.

In results still being counted Wednesday, the Illinois senator was just 66 delegates short of the 2,026 needed to clinch the nomination, with four Oregon delegates still to be allocated from Tuesday’s primaries. Clinton thrashed him in Kentucky; he answered by winning Oregon.

Although Obama won most groups of voters in Oregon, other recent primaries including Kentucky’s have been polarizing, with large numbers of his supporters and Clinton’s digging in behind their candidate and saying they would not vote for the other one in the fall campaign against Republican John McCain.

“If that holds true, then it is a problem,” said former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart, who experienced devastating party divisions as Democrat George McGovern’s campaign manager in 1972. “But I don’t think that’s going to hold true.”

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MCCAIN CRITICIZES OBAMA FOR CUBA POLICY

by FOXNews.com

John McCain lashed out at Barack Obama Tuesday for his pledge to meet “unconditionally” with oppressive leaders, including Cuba’s Raul Castro, if elected president.

“So it’s dangerous. It’s dangerous to American national security if you sit down and give respect and prestige to leaders of countries that are bent on your destruction or the destruction of other countries. I won’t do it my friends,” McCain said to a town hall-style meeting in Little Havana, the heart of Florida’s Cuban-American community and stronghold of the anti-Castro movement.

Obama’s plan to soften the decades-old U.S. embargo against the Cuban regime would “send the worst possible signal to Cuba’s dictators,” McCain said.

Cuban-American voters — who typically favor a harsh stance toward dealings with the Cuban government — make up an important voting bloc in Florida, a swing state in U.S. presidential elections.

The Arizona senator accused Obama of “shifting positions” toward the embargo — saying Obama first pledged to lift the embargo and now favors easing it.

McCain cited Obama’s response to a 2003 questionnaire about his policy toward Cuba, in which the Illinois senator wrote: “I believe that normalization of relations with Cuba would help the oppressed and poverty-stricken Cuban people while setting the stage for a more democratic government once Castro inevitably leaves the scene.”

Complete article.