According to the Obama campaign, Barack Obama now has more superdelegates than his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton - “a clear sign that Democrats across the country and throughout the party are ready for a new kind of politics.” In an email sent out to supporters, Campaign Manager David Plouffe shared the news while noting the race is not over (hint, send money).

“Given the long history the Clintons have with the Democratic Party, it’s no surprise Senator Clinton maintained her superdelegate lead for so long,” Plouffe wrote. “But right now it’s clear that the Democratic Party is uniting around Barack’s candidacy.”

Read the email here:

“Big news today: for the first time since this campaign began, Barack Obama has taken the lead among superdelegates.

We’ve won more elected delegates, more states, and more votes than Senator Clinton. But until yesterday we trailed among Governors, Members of Congress, and Democratic Party leaders — the so-called “superdelegates” who have a vote in the nominating process.

As it stands, we have 279 superdelegates who have committed to cast their convention votes for us. That includes 21 since last Tuesday’s elections, and 3 who switched their support from Senator Clinton.

We have just 152 delegates to go before Barack Obama clinches the nomination.

But Senator Clinton intends to compete vigorously in the remaining contests; at the same time we face increasing attacks from Senator McCain and the Republican attack machine.

Barack needs your support to close out this nomination and start building for the general election.

You got us where we are today. Please help by making another donation of $100 now.

Given the long history the Clintons have with the Democratic Party, it’s no surprise Senator Clinton maintained her superdelegate lead for so long.

But right now it’s clear that the Democratic Party is uniting around Barack’s candidacy.”

(more…)

According to his prepared remarks, Senator Barack Obama was supposed to say, “I want to start by congratulating Senator Clinton on her victory in the state of Indiana.” Instead, Obama said, “I want to start by congratulating Senator Clinton on what appears to be her victory in the great state of Indiana.”

Not a huge difference, but Senator Clinton’s margin in Indiana has narrowed as the returns have come in. The campaign says they’re not “holding our breath,” but wait for results to come in from places like Gary, IN, which is expected to be an Obama stronghold. The two Democratic candidates have not yet spoken, per the Obama campaign.

Prior to Obama’s speech, Senior Advisor David Axelrod and Communications Director Robert Gibbs sounded confident in their North Carolina victory, saying it brought them closer to the finish line.

done

Jacketless and surrounded by staffers, Secret Service, and press, Obama stopped by the home of Andy and Melissa Evers in Union Mills, IN, yesterday – the second time the candidate has made a media event out of visiting an Indiana voter’s home.

A farming family, the Evers welcomed the motley crew onto their property while Obama’s multi-bus motorcaded idled on the sleepy country road in front of their farm. About twenty of the Evers’ neighbors and friends came to mingle with the candidate and to discuss issues like the economy and gas prices while the candidate sat at a picnic table in the backyard - press surrounded the otherwise normal conversation.

After about 25 minutes, Obama announced it was time to leave. One of the neighbors wondered if Obama had the time to shoot some hoops with the Evers’ son, 14-year-old Aaron Villicana. Rolling up his sleeves and heading over to the basketball hoop in the driveway, the always competitive candidate said, “We’ll play a quick game of Pig.”

The game – traditionally referred to as Horse – is played by each participant taking a shot. If the shot is made, the challenger attempts to make the same shot. If that person misses, he is awarded a letter. The first one to spell out the name of the animal, in this case Pig, is the loser.

Obama let Aaron shoot first, noting the kid’s “home court advantage.” Aaron missed. Obama took the ball and said, “Let’s see what I got.” Obama missed. “As an older guy, this dimming light is a disadvantage,” he explained as dusk approached.

Aaron held his own against Obama, who just this week played with the UNC Tarheels - the very same team that was in the NCAA playoffs last month. The score was P-I to P- I and remained such for some time as both Aaron and Obama missed shot after shot after shot. Obama joked, “My shot is broke! We are in Indiana – we’re supposed to be making these.” Indiana is, after all, the Hoosier State.

“We want to make it close and add to the drama,” he said with a smile. Of course everybody observing immediately likened the pickup game to the race for the Democratic nomination. With no end in sight it began drizzling. An audio technician from one of the television networks holding a boom mic finally said what everyone watching was thinking. “Come on, Senator, put it to bed.”

“You know, he’s tough,” Obama replied. “He keeps on coming back. He’s like Hillary!” The spectators all laughed and Obama took another shot. Swish. Aaron missed the shot and the victory was Obama’s. Read into this if you want - or don’t.

Barack Obama continued to rail against John McCain’s proposed gas tax holiday, which just yesterday he called a “scheme.” Today in Wilson, NC, he brought in Hillary Clinton to his riff, saying, “they both, I think, are saying the same thing.”

“Let me explain to you that the gas tax is what pays for our highway trust fund to rebuild our roads and our bridges. If we don’t have that money then roads and bridges wont be repaired, which means folks in North Carolina won’t be working this summer,” he explained [Hillary Clinton has maintained her plan is revenue neutral, and would be paid for by windfall profits from oil companies].

“But not only that, you know how much you’d save under John McCain’s plan? $25. Maybe 30. 25 or $30. That’s his plan to help folks dealing with gas prices,” he said. The federal gas tax is about $.18.4 per gallon, so if you fill up a 15-gallon tank twice a week each of the 12 weeks of summer, the grand total would come out to about $66 - a little more than Obama’s projection.

But Obama says the problem shouldn’t be tackled with a short term fix. “This is typical of what Washington does. You got an emergency, people are getting crushed. People are having a tough time, and instead of really trying to solve the problem you use a gimmick,” he said.

“Where’s John McCain been for the last 25 years?” Obama asked. “What has he been doing to promote clean energy and to increase fuel efficiency standards, to develop alternative energies like bio diesel that could put people back to work?”

The McCain campaign was quick with a response tonight, pointing out that Obama himself supported a similar gas tax relief measure in the Illinois state senate in 2000, and that although he says he’d stand up to oil execs, he voted for the 2005 Energy Bill on several occasions. “Unprepared leadership makes promises and fails to deliver,” said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds.

Obama has admitted in the past that under his administration, gas prices would not be reduced overnight.

When asked by reporters in Indianapolis this morning about Senator Clinton’s offer to debate sans moderator, Obama noted he only had nine more days to campaign in Indiana and North Carolina. “Rather than being in a studio, I want to make sure that we’re reaching out to folks where they live, answering their questions and having as many interactions as possible,” he explained.

But don’t rule out a debate after May 6th - “You know, I’m more than happy to consider something after Indiana and North Carolina. At this point, we just don’t have a lot of time,” Obama said.

In an interview with Fox News Sunday, Barack Obama definitively told host Chris Wallace he would not debate Hillary Clinton before the Indiana and North Carolina primaries on May 6th, but insisted he’s not “ducking” a debate with Clinton.

The candidates have met 21 times to debate during the course of this primary contest; the last one in Philadelphia focused heavily on Obama’s campaign gaffes, which prompted him to note the next day during a North Carolina town hall, “It took us 45 minutes before we even started talking about a single issue that matters to the American people.” Obama also said it was typical Washington. “They like stirring up controversy and they like playing gotcha games, and getting us to attack each other. And I have to say Senator Clinton looked in her element,” he said at the time.

Clinton said he was “complaining” - not so, Obama said. “Did you hear me complain?” he asked a reporter looking for a response. “Who’s been complaining about the media for the last six months?”

But Obama never responded to a CBS News offer to debate Clinton again in North Carolina on the 27th. When asked about it by a Raleigh voter, Obama replied, “We’re trying to figure out what our schedule looks like. But, I’ll be honest with you, you know we now had 21…I could deliver Senator Clinton’s lines, she could, I’m sure, deliver mine, so what we’ve got to figure out how we fit in campaigning actively both here in North Carolina and Indiana…we’re just trying to figure what’s the best way to reach as many constituents as possible in a relatively short period of time.”

CBS News has since cancelled the debate, but Senator Clinton has repeatedly challenged Obama to debate prior to the May 6th primaries. In the past, Obama has said the more time he spends with voters, the better they get to know him, and when you’re competing against the “Clinton brand,” that’s important.

Read the Wallace/Obama exchange below the jump.

(more…)

Barack Obama ended his ten day “standoff” with his traveling press, when he took questions today from his traveling press corps at a Pittsburgh restaurant. The first question of the day - “Why no waffles today?”, referring to Obama answering a reporters question yesterday with, “Why is it that I just can’t eat my waffle?”

Obama responded, “Because they said that their pancakes were the best.” As he enjoyed breakfast, he looked at the press and offered them a bite. No one accepted. “You’re missing out,” he said.

After his meal, Obama took questions some more substantive questions from his press. Asked if he thought he had a chance of winning Pennsylvania’s primary today, Obama replied, “I always think we have a chance.” Noting he’d closed a big gap in the polls, he continued, “A lot of it is going to depend on turnout today, and it’s really hard to gauge.”

The campaign has been predicting a second place finish today, but stressed that Clinton needs to win by “blowout” proportions – more than 20 points. Obama noted, “If you take a look at how the delegates play themselves out at the end of the night, we should be able to measure, given how many contests are left, whether they can make up that ground.”

But in a campaign memo distributed to reporters, Obama’s team downplayed the significance of today’s results. “Tonight’s outcome is unlikely to change the dynamic of this lengthy primary. Fully three quarters of the remaining delegates will be selected in states other than Pennsylvania. While there are 158 delegates at stake in today’s primary, there are 157 up for grabs in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries two weeks from today. We expect that by tomorrow morning, the overall structure of the race will remain unchanged—except for the fact that there will be 158 delegates off the table.”

Obama was also asked about Bill Clinton’s answer yesterday on a Philadelphia radio station about his comments following Obama’s South Carolina victory when he compared the Obama to Jesse Jackson. The former president said that the Obama camp “played the race card” on him and that “we know now from memos in the campaign that they planned to do it all along.”

Upon hearing the question, where the reporter quoted Clinton, Obama chuckled and incredulously said, “Hold on a second, so former president Clinton dismissed my victory in South Carolina as being similar to Jesse Jackson and he is suggesting that somehow I had something to do with it? You better ask him what he meant by that. I have no idea what he meant. These were not words that came out of his mouth - not words that came out of mine.”

Senator Obama has been busy attacking both of his current rivals running for president on the stump at events across Pennsylvania. Senator McCain is on the wrong side when it comes to the economy and the Iraq war, while Senator Clinton’s “kitchen sink” campaign strategy is not moving the debate towards issues important to voters.

But in a moment of candor at the end of a town hall meeting in Reading, PA, he observed with a chuckle, “You have a real choice in this election – you know, either Democrat would be better than John McCain, and all three of us would be better than George Bush!”

At a rally last night in Harrisburg, though, Obama said that’s not a very high standard. “Senator Clinton will be vastly better than George Bush would be, but that’s a very low bar; that’s not good enough,” he told some 9,000 at a rally on the steps of the state capitol.

So why pick Obama out of the three? “What you have to ask yourself is who has the chance to really change things in a fundamental way so that ten years from now, or twenty years from now, you can look back and you can say, ‘Boy, we really moved in a new direction, and we put the country on a better path,’” he said.

As Barack Obama stepped into his waiting SUV on the tarmac in Williamsport, PA, a reporter standing near-by asked the senator if to react to Senator Clinton’s claims that Obama has been complaining about Wednesday night’s ABC News debate.

“Did you hear me complain?” Obama responded. “You tell me who’s been complaining about the media for the last six months,” he added as he entered the car.

Yesterday in Raleigh, Senator Obama told voters, “Last night I think we set a new record because it took us 45 minutes before we even started talking about a single issue that matters to the American people. Took us 45 min. 45 minutes before we heard about health care, 45 minutes before we heard about Iraq, 45 minutes before we heard about jobs, 45 minutes before we heard about gas prices. Now, I don’t blame Washington for this because that’s just how Washington is. They like stirring up controversy and they like playing gotcha games, and getting us to attack each other.”

At a town hall meeting in Raleigh, North Carolina, Barack Obama brought up last night’s debate to jeers from the pro-Obama crowd. ABC News was criticized by several, including the Washington Post, for a one-sided debate that advantaged Senator Clinton. “I will tell you it does not get much more fun than these debates. They are inspiring events,” he said with a grin and a hint of sarcasm.

“Last night I think we set a new record because it took us 45 minutes before we even started talking about a single issue that matters to the American people. Took us 45 min. 45 minutes before we heard about health care, 45 minutes before we heard about Iraq, 45 minutes before we heard about jobs, 45 minutes before we heard about gas prices. Now, I don’t blame Washington for this because that’s just how Washington is. They like stirring up controversy and they like playing gotcha games, and getting us to attack each other,” he said.

Just minutes after his campaign ended a conference call on how Senator Clinton has gone too negative over the past couple of weeks, Obama noted, “I have to say, Senator Clinton looked in her element. She was taking every opportunity to get a dig in there. Ya know? That’s alright. That’s her right. That’s her right to kind of twist the knife a little bit,” he said while making a twisting gesture with his hand.

He then scolded, “That’s the lesson that she learned when the Republicans were doing that same thing to her back in the 1990s, so I understand it, and when you’re running for the presidency then you’ve gotta expect it and ya know you’ve just gotta kinda let it, ya know..” As he trailed off, he brushed off his shoulders and laughed.

Obama later told the North Carolina crowd that the debate was good practice for the general election. “If the Republicans come at me I will come right back at them. You know – I’ll be honest with you – I’ll be honest with you – it’s a little harder to do with a fellow Democrat because you know I’m trying to you know, show some restraint. You know I won’t have this much restraint with the Republicans.”

Watch Obama’s remarks here:

done