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Obama crusade 'gathering steam'
06/02/2008 14:04 - (SA)
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| Senator Barack Obama and his wife Michelle on stage at at a Super Tuesday party in Chicago. (M Spencer Green, AP) |
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Chicago - Barack Obama's camp believes the White House nominating battlefield is now tilting in his favour, after he slugged out a tough draw with Democratic foe Hillary Clinton on Super Tuesday.
As he raises campaign cash at the rate of a million dollars a day, and having closed the gap in opinion polls with long-time Democratic front-runner Clinton, the Illinois Senator is setting his sights on the next round of contests.
"Today, on this Tuesday in February, in states north and south, east and west, what began as a whisper ... has swelled to a chorus of millions calling for change," Obama said at a victory rally here.
While the former first lady kept his surge at bay with eight state wins including the top prizes of California and New York, the Obama campaign team predicted the race had reached a pivotal point.
Campaign manager David Plouffe described Obama's 13 Super Tuesday wins as a "terrific springboard" for the rest of the nominating chase, and argued Obama was entering a "more favourable part of the calendar".
Obama, a charismatic 46-year-old first-term Senator vying to become America's first black president, appears to perform best when he can pack thousands of supporters into boisterous rallies.
In that sense Super Tuesday, with its Democratic contests in 22 states, did not play to his strengths, being fought out as a de-facto national election, largely on television, rather than in close-up retail politics.
'We are the ones we've been waiting for'
But coming clashes, including those next week in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington DC, will be on a more intimate basis, and he has a whole month before the next huge state showdowns, Texas and Ohio, on March 4.
The Democratic primary in Louisiana, and caucuses in Washington state and Nebraska, also offer Obama an advantage, his aides believe.
Obama took his wins across all four corners of the country as a sign that his crusade for generational political change was gathering steam.
"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for."
"We are the change that we seek."
Another advantage Obama may have is financial - he piled up a mammoth $32m in fundraising in January alone, dwarfing Clinton's take, said to be around $13m.
That advantage may give him the chance to wear Clinton down in a grinding daily battle for the delegates who will formally anoint the Democratic nominee at the party convention in August.
Meteoric rise
Obama pulled off a stunning win in the leadoff Iowa caucuses on January 3, only to fall to her comeback victory in the New Hampshire primary.
After Clinton bested him in the Nevada caucuses, Obama bounced back with a landslide win in the South Carolina primary.
Obama, with only three years under his belt in Congress, has had a meteoric rise to the top of US politics, built on dazzling rhetorical skills, a blazing charisma and his winning smile.
The son of a black Kenyan father and white American mother, Obama exploded onto the scene with a stunning speech at the Democratic national convention in 2004.
It drew immediate comparisons with civil rights pioneer Martin Luther King, Jnr, and Democratic icons John and Robert Kennedy.
Since then, he has developed his mantra of hope and change, and portrayed Clinton as a symbol of a fractured political system in desperate need of renewal.
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