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 Not officially, of course, because Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has not conceded defeat, and Sen. Barack Obama has not secured enough delegates to make it mathematically impossible for her to catch him.
But on Tuesday, Obama gave the clearest sign yet that he considers the Democratic presidential nomination in the bag, and he's not waiting for a Clinton concession speech to start campaigning all-out against Republican Sen. John McCain.
Even before polls closed in West Virginia, where Obama expected to lose to Clinton, he was campaigning in Missouri, a battleground between the two parties in recent elections. He held an economic town hall event at a clothing manufacturing plant in Cape Girardeau County, home to many working-class voters. Obama lost the county to Clinton in the Feb. 5 primary, even though he narrowly carried the state.
Campaign aides said the event underscores two key Obama goals. He wants to start wooing the white, blue-collar workers who favored Clinton in many states and who may be receptive to McCain's appeal to independent, moderately conservative voters this fall. And he sees the economy as a crucial issue, and one in which he hopes to tie McCain to the Bush administration's unpopularity.
"John McCain has decided that he is running for George Bush's third term in office," Obama told a gathering of garment workers at Thorngate Ltd. "He has opted for the same approach that has failed the American people," he said, criticizing the administration on economics and the Iraq war in particular.
"We need a new direction in Washington," he said.
For the second straight day, Obama wore an American flag pin on his lapel, something he had generally avoided in recent months.
"Don't talk to me about his patriotism," Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., said in introducing Obama. She said he epitomizes the American dream by rising from a modest background to the best schools in the country and the pinnacle of government.
Obama spent scant time in West Virginia, and aides said they did not expect him to address the Tuesday primary results in front of cameras. Even if Clinton wins overwhelmingly there and in Kentucky next week, it's nearly impossible for her to overtake Obama, especially with new superdelegates endorsing him daily.
In the past week, Obama has picked up more superdelegates -- party officials free to back whom they choose
-- than Clinton could have offset even if she somehow won all 28 pledged delegates in West Virginia.
"This race, I believe, is over," Roy Romer, a former Democratic National Committee chairman, told reporters Tuesday on a conference call, in which he endorsed Obama. The superdelegate and former Colorado governor said only Clinton can decide when to withdraw from the primary. But he added: "There is a time we need to end it and direct ourselves to the general election. I think that time is now."
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 Clinton and Obama briefly spoke and shook hands on the Senate floor Tuesday, as they interrupted their campaigns for a few hours to vote on an energy-related bill. With no more debates scheduled, it could be their last face-to-face meeting before the nomination is settled definitively.
Oregon and Kentucky hold primaries May 20, but Obama is putting nearly all his focus now on November battleground states. On Wednesday, he will campaign in two Michigan areas that are home to many so-called Reagan Democrats, the blue-collar voters who Clinton has suggested will abandon the party if Obama is the nominee.
Next week he will be in Florida. Florida and Michigan not only are competitive states where McCain will campaign. They also need Obama's close attention to soothe hurt feelings over a scheduling quarrel that led the national Democratic Party to essentially nullify the results of their primaries in January.
Obama could draw bigger, noisier crowds this week by holding rallies in St. Louis and Detroit, his aides noted, but he wants to target swing voters in less heavily Democratic communities.
"He knows he needs to spend more time in places like Cape Girardeau, Hannibal, Poplar Bluff, Springfield, Columbia, and multiply that by 50," said McCaskill, an early endorser. "He has got to make sure that people outside of Democratic strongholds understand he is somebody who loves his country very much and will fight for the middle class."
McCaskill said Obama is "trying to show his belief that there are no red places or blue places or Democratic states or Republican states, there's just a whole lot of America that wants a different set of priorities in the White House."
That's not to say Obama will campaign in all 50 states. Modern presidential campaigns target about 15 competitive states and virtually ignore the others, which are considered solidly Democratic or Republican.
Still, Obama hopes to expand the playing field, as his advisers say, by pushing McCain hard in usually reliable GOP states such as Virginia and North Carolina.
It's part of a long-planned general election strategy that Obama essentially launched this week, without waiting for Clinton's permission.
[Associated
Press; By CHARLES BABINGTON]
Associated Press Writer Betsy Taylor contributed to this report.
Copyright 2008 The Associated
Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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