Obama Plans Iowa Speech on Tuesday

George Wenschhof

Tuesday evening, after the votes have been counted in the Kentucky and Oregon democratic primaries, Senator Barack Obama will deliver a speech from Iowa. This was the first state in the democratic party primary schedule and where his improbable climb began to be the democratic party presidential nominee. He upset Senator Hillary Clinton in Iowa on January 3rd and effectively removed the inevitable veil she had worked hard to convey to voters.

The Obama campaign is indicating that he will have won a majority of the pledged delegates after the primaries on Tuesday. Obama is also scheduled to visit Florida next week. Florida along with Michigan were stripped of their delegates for failing to abide by democratic party rules when they scheduled their primaries.

Today, the total delegate count continues to show a bleak picture for Clinton. Obama leads in total delegates 1897 to 1717 with 2025 needed to secure the nomination. He also leads in superdelegates 295 to 274 and pledged delegates 1602 to 1443. Obama is slightly favored in Oregon (52 delegates) and Clinton is favored big in Kentucky (51 delegates).

If the results on Tuesday reflect a 60-40 win by Clinton in Kentucky and Obama wins 52-48 in Oregon, Clinton will only pick up 9-10 delegates on Obama. While Obama will have moved within 80 delegates of the magic 2025 number needed for the nomination.

It has become painfully clear to the Clinton campaign that they can not overtake the delegate lead Obama has, even with Florida and Michigan included in some sort of compromise agreement when the credentials committee of the DNC meets on May 31st. So, it is clear Senator Clinton is continuing for two more weeks in part to say all the voters were heard from and she finished what she started.

Meanwhile, the Washington Post today has a good article entitled "Rival Camps Plan Inevitable Merger". It is a good read on how many surrogates and aides of the two campaigns are already working on efforts to build unity in the democratic party.

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