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A win each for Clinton, Obama
07/05/2008 07:22 - (SA)
Raleigh, North Carolina - Barack Obama conceded defeat to Hillary Clinton in Tuesday's Democratic White House primary in Indiana but, on the back of a win in North Carolina, offered himself up as the only candidate who could truly unite the country.
"I want to start by congratulating Senator Clinton on what appears to be her victory in the great state of Indiana," Obama told a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina - despite uncertainty over who had actually won.
CBS News called Indiana for Clinton, but others were more hesitant and, several hours after polls closed, NBC News and Fox News continued to categorise the race as too close to call.
Obama thanked his supporters for his victory here, which followed a difficult month marked by new controversy over his fiery former pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and his remarks that some working-class voters were "bitter".
"Because of you, we've seen that it's possible to overcome the politics of division and the politics of distraction, that it's possible to overcome the same old negative attacks that are always about scoring points and never about solving our problems," the Illinois senator said to cheering crowds.
He paid tribute to Clinton, "a formidable opponent", and, while acknowledging that Tuesday's results were unlikely to end the long-running and bitter battle between the two rivals, said the Democrats would come together to fight Republican John McCain in November's presidential election.
"This fall we intend to march forward as one Democratic party united by a common vision for this country because we all agree that at this defining moment in our history - a moment when we are facing two wars, an economy in turmoil, a planet in peril, a dream that feels like it's slipping away for too many Americans," Obama said.
"We can't afford to give John McCain the chance to serve out (Republican President) George Bush's third term, we need change in America, and that's why we will be united in November."
The senator has presented himself throughout the campaign as the only candidate who can unite a divided America, and he pressed this home on Tuesday, looking beyond the rest of the Democratic race to the general election.
"Because no matter where I've been in this country, whether it was in the corn fields of Iowa or the textile mills of the Carolinas, I found that while we may have different stories, we hold common hopes," he said.
"It's the simple truth I learned all those years ago when I worked in the shadow of all those shuttered steel mills on the south side of Chicago, that in this country, justice can be won, hope can find its way back from the darkest of corners, and when we're told that we cannot bring about the change that we seek, we answer with one voice. Yes, we can," he said.
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