May 8, 2008 4:44 pm US/Central
Obama To Claim Victory May 20
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
Sen. Barack Obama plans to claim the Democratic presidential nomination on the evening of May. 20.
The Illinois senator's chief strategist told CBS station WBBM-TV that is the night Obama expects to have locked up a majority of the elected pledged delegates.
While the Democratic National Committee has said 2,025 would be needed to secure the nomination, that includes the unelected super-delegates.
Strategist David Axelrod says that by May 20, when polls close in Oregon, Obama will have 1,627 pledged delegates--a majority of those up for election.
"To my knowledge, the party has never nominated anyone other than the winner of the most elected delegates,'' Axelrod said.
The Obama campaign is planning a big victory rally on that date, in a scope well beyond the typical rally following past primary victories.
However, the Clinton camp claims the majority number would be 1,784 if the party decides to include delegates from the disputed states of Florida and Michigan.
Axelrod noted that Clinton's final margin of victory in Indiana was only 1.1 percent--a margin, he said, was produced by Rush Limbaugh's so-called Operation Chaos. He claims that Obama would have won the state without Limbaugh's efforts to get his listeners to vote for Clinton, thereby prolonging the election battle.
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