May 19, 2008	Monday	Jamadi-ul-Awwal 13, 1429

WASHINGTON: Democratic front runner Barack Obama campaigned in Oregon on Sunday ahead of primaries he said could “put us over the top” in the drawn-out duel with Hillary Clinton to be the party’s pick for the November presidential race.

Obama said Tuesday’s polls in Oregon and Kentucky could mark the end of his battle with Hillary, who trails her rival for the nomination but has refused to back down despite calls for her to exit the race.

At a fundraiser in Portland on Saturday night, Obama predicted victory in the north-western state of Oregon and said he believed the delegates from the win would “put us over the top”. “We will be able to say we have won a majority,” he said. “But we have a lot of work to do ahead of us.” His campaign says he needs 17 more pledged delegates won through state primaries to reach a majority of 1,627, not counting the “super-delegates”, party officials who can vote either way at August’s Democratic national convention.

The official majority is 2,025 delegates, including super-delegates.

Polls show the Illinois senator leading in Oregon, where 52 delegates are up for grabs, while Hillary is ahead in Kentucky, a state with 51 delegates that has a similar demographic to West Virginia, where she won a thumping victory on Tuesday.

To press home their assurance about his nomination, Obama’s campaign said he will make a symbolic return on Tuesday despite the primary voting to Iowa, the scene of his first victory in the 2008 nominating race.

Iowa is “a critical general election state that Democrats must win in November”, his campaign said.

At a rally in Roseburg, Oregon on Saturday, a confident Obama also presented himself as the presidential front runner, attacking Republican White House hopeful John McCain on foreign policy, the environment and health care.

Reviving Friday’s furious row sparked by President George W. Bush’s suggestion that Democrats wanted to appease terrorists, Obama said that not talking to North Korea and Iran had only made those states stronger.

“The fact they are trying to make this into an issue indicates they don’t understand how foreign policy works,” Obama said.

Defending his vow to talk to any of the United States’ enemies, he said: “If George Bush and John McCain have a problem with direct diplomacy led by the president of the United States, then they can explain why they have a problem with John F. Kennedy, that’s what he did, and Ronald Reagan, that’s what he did with Gorbachev, and Richard Nixon.

“That’s exactly the kind of diplomacy we need to keep us safe.” The McCain campaign said Obama was “missing the point”. Spokesman Tucker Bounds said in a statement that it was Obama’s refusal to attach conditions to any talks that was “unacceptable”. “Barack Obama’s pledge to unconditionally bring (Iranian president) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the world stage isn’t ‘new politics’. It’s incredibly weak judgment and reveals why Americans will elect John McCain’s record of experience and tested leadership,” Bounds said.

Obama also argued that the differences between his healthcare plan and that of Hillary “pale in comparison to the differences we have with John McCain”, whose proposals would only work “if you’re healthy and wealthy”. The escalating rhetoric between Obama and McCain has evoked the kind of campaign battles more common in the immediate run-up to an election and emphasised further Obama’s pole position in the Democratic race.

But McCain, taking time out from the heated exchanges, joked on the US comedy show “Saturday Night Live” that he would not mind seeing the Democratic tussle drag on for a few more months.

“Imagine the excitement of leaving the convention and still not knowing who the nominee was. That would be crazy crazy exciting!” he quipped.

“And if come November you still haven’t decided, I’d be willing to set aside my differences with your party and say ‘Hey, let’s put both of them on the ballot.” Hillary for her part reiterated her vow not to retire from the race before the end of the primary season on June 3.

“You don’t quit on people and you don’t quit until you finish what you started and you don’t quit on America,” she told supporters in Kentucky.—AFP