Did he do it?
 

A selection from here. Spoiler'd tl;dr'd for size.

[TLDR]Obama Secures Nomination, According to Network Projections

By Chris Cillizza
washingtonpost.com

Sen. Barack Obama has effectively secured the Democratic nomination for president, according to several television networks and the Associated Press -- an historic achievement that for the first time will place an African American at the top of a major political party's ticket.

Obama's apparent nomination victory came even as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton scored a come-from-behind victory in South Dakota, a state where Obama was expected to win relatively easily a few weeks ago. South Dakota and Montana, which allocate a total of 31 delegates, brought the 2008 Democratic primary process to a close after five months of voting.

The victory in South Dakota, while gratifying for Clinton, makes no difference as Obama has already crested the magic number of delegates needed to claim the party's nomination.

Clinton in a speech to a cheering crowd at Baruch University in New York congratulated Obama for the "extraordinary race" he ran, although she did not acknowledge the fact that he had effectively won the nomination and she said "I will be making no decisions tonight."

Clinton repeatedly touted her popular vote strength, noting that she had received nearly 18 million total votes. "Even when the pundits and the naysayers proclaimed week after week that this race was over, you kept on voting," she said to roars from the assembled crowd. She added that her campaign has won the swing states "necessary to get to 270 electoral votes."

In the moments before Obama was set to take the stage in St. Paul. Minn., he was declared the winner of the final primary contest in Montana.

Obama needed 2,118 votes to win the nomination and, according to an estimate provided by his own campaign, he stood only eight delegates away from that goal. But, with the polls closed in the South Dakota primary and Obama nearly certain to win at least nine or ten delegates based on the proportional allocation of delegates, the term "presumptive nominee" is being attached to Obama by CNN, NBC and the Associated Press.

Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), in a speech tonight in New Orleans, declared "the primary season is over and the general election has begun."

McCain lavished praise on Clinton for the campaign she had run. "Senator Clinton has earned great respect for his tenacity and courage," McCain said. "The media often overlooked how compassionately she spoke to the concerns and dreams of millions of Americans, and she deserves a lot more appreciation than she sometimes received."[/TLDR]

So, did he finally win? It looks like everyone but Hillary has figured that out.

And, I guess this thread could be used to celebrate (or grieve), speculate on what'll come next, or just talk about the election.

I myself do hope Hillary soon announces that she'll just drop out already, though I imagine she will, at least for a while. It's long overdue, though... I also have my fears that Obama will prove to be too progressive (and, yes, to un-WASP) to be elected. Not that I won't vote for him come November.

Edit: I don't want to make a whole post, but I'm a US citizen living in Ecuador, so I can vote. This is actually my first election.

*looks at location*

What?

So, the nomination season is finally over, after starting, what, like a year ago? That's pretty ridiculous right there. Anyways, I'm still supporting Obama in this, as I have since the beginning. Are there any sorts of polls out to judge between McCain and Obama?

He's had it sown up for ages with a lead that was impossible to surmount except for superdelegates. Not sure how this is news until Clinton calls it in.

And there have been lots and lots of Clinton Mccain and Obama Mccain polls. They all vary a lot, it normally pretty close but as far as I remember Mccain tops most of them but not by a lot.

really? I heard the most recent ones showed that Barack could actually beat Mccain in the end.

Either way, FINALLY!

The one's I've read generally have McCain edging out Obama, but like BHS said, they vary a lot. Other polls I've seen show that as many as a third to a half of Clinton's supporters would rather vote for McCain than Obama come November. That's pretty significant. This primary has definitely split the Democrat party pretty badly, and given the Republicans a shot at winning that by all rights they shouldn't have had.

Obama's going to have to work really hard to reconcile his party before November if he wants to have a chance of winning. But if he does, I think he'll win.

I don't trust the polls and election outcome speculation any more, really, they were wrong for about 80% of the primaries on who would garner the votes, for both parties if I remember correctly. Only in states where it was so painfully obvious who would win that even I could figure it out without their aid are the ones that they really seemed to get. For the past month it's been okay but prior to that none of them were even CLOSE in their predictions.

Most people say McCain can win based on a few faulty predictions, some even involving giving the man Pennsylvania and California in the general election, both quite solid blue states. It seems any state can be called a "swing" state nowadays by these people. I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying the ways they come up with it are pretty ridiculous.

I suppose we can talk about the possible Hillary Clinton VP nomination? Really, I'm not for it, not because it's not the best choice politically. |It probably is, despite Hillary people saying they won't vote for an Obama-Clinton ticket--I just don't believe it. Are they going to ignore her pleas, the woman they love so much, asking them to vote for her? I think not. Also, why in the world are some people saying they're going to vote McCain because Hillary isn't the Democratic nominee? That's a pretty radical change in political standpoint, far more than going with Obama, but people I know have told me this. But just based on past elections, for the most part, I believe the winner chooses his running mate and shouldn't be pressured into picking the second runner up. Unless Obama's actually all gung-ho for it, I don't think it should happen.

EDIT: Note that the people that were giving McCain California, Pennsylvania, and half of New England were on Fox News, so their credibility is automatically in question. If people on CNN were saying something like that it might make sense.

Thing is, Hillary took a couple of gambles towards the end of the race, kinda starting with the Texas primary but really making it official on the Pennsylvania one. The first gamble, the longshot she hoped she'd win was that she could turn the race from a political one (where she was plainly going to lose, as they both had similar policies and he is clearly the better speaker), to a bullshit personality-based race (which she had better chances with, as she had no trouble at all painting him as a high-brow elitist and herself as a (if nothing else, comparatively) tough country woman before the white, possibly racist blue-collar voters of West Penn and the like) and win the nomination. Of course, she lost that gamble and the nomination, but by doing so she kinda won the surer bet she also made, at about the same time if not a bit earlier, that if she couldn't win the nomination, she could set it up so that the rep won, and then she could come in for a final attempt at the presidency in four years. Yes, that's right, she put her personal aspirations WAY before the party or the country (assuming she honestly believes her policies, which Obama practically mirrored, were better for the country).

Now, the physical manifestation of those wagers is that she created a situation where a heck of a lot of white, blue-collar middle-America voters don't look at Hillary's or Obama's politics when casting their vote, but at their personalities (or at least at caricatures of these). And I'm sure you'll agree that, if not Hillary's real personality, her caricature personality is a lot more like McCain's caricature personality than Obama's. Hence all these voters who'd turn from a candidate who'll do almost all the same things their favorite would have done (along with a MUCH better healthcare plan) to a candidate who won't, and whose party hates her and her husband's guts, but will have a much more kindred spirit.

Now, what I'd like to know is, even if she wanted to undo that to help Obama, can she?

And, I seriously doubt Obama would want her on his team, just as I seriously doubt she'd want to get on his team. Not honestly. Not after the way she ran her campaign. I suspect it would also hurt him among reps to have the ever so despised Clinton name thrown in, but given that Hillary destroyed the mythical "the Reps are broken" advantage by putting herself over her party and giving the reps time to line up behind McCain, I'm no longer sure it'll change much.

I thought it was laughable when they did the so-called "values" polls between Hillary and Obama, mainly because I couldn't figure out what exactly "values" are (they weren't very specific), and because traditional "values" voters have been voting Republican, so that would be McCain anyway.

I suppose when they said values they were talking about the patriotism issue or something, which is why Hillary was winning in those, I guess. Why not call it a "patriotism" poll, then?

As far as Hillary winning the white blue-collar votes, I saw it as also being laughable since so many of them vote Republican anyway, it seemed pretty silly for her to point out she was winning them when in the general election most of them will probably vote for McCain, especially in the Red states. Besides which Obama won plenty of Red states too, though he didn't make the mistake of making a big deal out of it. Really, for Hillary, yes, she won some big key states, like Pennsylvania, etc., but then again, Obama won North Carolina, etc. They were close to 50/50, he came out 100 or so higher, give up already. Which she is doing this Saturday, apparently.

As for undoing the "damage" that has been done, I think she can. If she comes right out and says "Vote Obama in November" which I bet she will do as soon as she secedes the race, why would the people following her up to that point vote for McCain for some reason? I'm sure it's possible, it just seems unlikely that a majority of previously pro-Democratic candidate voters would switch over to McCain pretty much out of spite.

It comes down to what people want. There's a nifty little quiz here.

In absence of people taking the quiz, it's a matter of how conservative/reactionary or liberal you are. McCain wants to reverse Rowe v. Wade, continue pumping increasing amounts of troops into Iraq, not communicate with unfriendly nations, and keep tax breaks for the rich. Obama wants to leave a strike force in Iraq for emergencies, withdraw the troops on a fixed schedule to put pressure on Iraq's government to shape up, keep open communication with our enemies, leave RvW be, and give tax cuts to the people who need them.


Edit: As for Hillary helping Obama, I'm sure that if she says to, much of her following will vote for Obama. If not, we may end up with four more years of Bush policies.

According to the news today, Clinton has suspended her campaign (on the assumption that something might happen between now and the election) and supposedly backs Obama. So they should start doing the polling to see if people are still going to vote for McCain just because Hillary lost the nomination.