DENVER, CO — Hillary Clinton released her delegates today to vote for Barack Obama in tonight’s roll call — but said she’s not telling them to do so.

“It is traditional that we have nominations, that we have a roll call,” Clinton said to thunderous applause from a thousand or so Clinton delegates in a ballroom at the Denver convention center. “That we have candidates who look for ways to work to make sure that we come out of here ready to win in November. “

“As part of that tradition, I’m here today to release you as my delegates,” she continued, prompting shouts of “no!” from die-hard Clinton backers in the room.

But while Clinton said some of her delegates will choose to vote their hearts, or to vote for Senator Obama to demonstrate their commitment to party unity, she isn’t directing them to do either.

“I am not telling you what to do,” Clinton said to cheers. As for her ballot, however, the New York Senator made her intentions plain. “I signed my ballot this morning for Senator Obama,” she said.

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According to the Associated Press, which has twice today sent out wires declaring Obama has clinched the nomination.

The campaign, which has been sending out emails alerting to a slew of superdelegate endorsements all day, as of this writing has estimated Obama needs just 11 more to reach the magic number - 2118 (note this number has been quickly eroding throughout the day).

According to staffers, the new presumptive nominee played basketball today with aides and friends - his primary day tradition - spent time with his family, and did the obligatory satellite interviews with South Dakota and Montana news outlets.

Per one aide, everyone feels good, “cautiously optimistic,” about marking the end of the primary phase, and are ready to begin the new chapter that will be the general election.

Tonight Obama will announce his delegate victory and heap praise on his soon to be former rival, Hillary Clinton. The Obama camp is optimistic that the party will quickly unify around Obama.

Stay tuned.

Barack Obama told reporters traveling with his campaign yesterday that, while he believes he conceded Hillary Clinton a net of delegates in states where he did not campaign or compete, he’s satisfied with the ruling.

“[Hillary Clinton] nets a significant number of additional pledged delegates, but I also understand that many members of the Florida and Michigan delegation feel satisfied, that the decision was fair and our main goal is to get this resolved so we can immediately turn the focus of the entire party on winning Florida and Michigan and delivering on the needs of the people in Florida and Michigan, states that are enormously important, states where a lot of people are struggling. I recognize that there were compromises on all sides in resolving this issue. I’m glad that the DNC worked it through, and I hope that we can start focusing our attention on the substance ads opposed to just the process of politics and start explaining to the American people how the Democrats are going to improve their lives,” he said in a media avail that largely focused on his decision to leave his controversial church.

When asked if he would try to dissuade Senator Clinton from challenging the Michigan decision, Obama said he would not. “I think that Senator Clinton and former President Clinton love this country, they love the Democratic Party. I think they deeply believe that Democrats need to win in November so I trust that they’re gonna do the right thing,” he said.

And what is that?

“Well I think that they’ll have to make a determination on it, but I think that they will be motivated by an interest in bringing the party together and making sure that we’re in a position to win Florida, Michigan and the presidency.”

After more than a year of campaigning and five months of contests, as it stands now, the Obama camp is finally ready to declare victory after the nation’s final contests June 3rd.

According to the campaign’s count, they are just 44 delegates away from the “magic number” - 2026, the amount of delegates needed to secure the Democratic nomination. Of course the DNC rules and bylaws committee is meeting Saturday to determine how to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations, which the Obama camp says will benefit team Clinton and likely increase the number of delegates needed for victory.

On a conference call yesterday, campaign manager David Plouffe admitted that would mean Obama will have to win more superdelegates, but later in the day, Obama had the following exchange with reporters on his campaign plane.

Reporter: Does the general election begin then after Tuesday?

Barack Obama: Yes.

Reporter: And you will be the winner at that point?

Obama: I believe so.

Reporter: We’ll have a nominee?

Obama: I hope so.

Obama hedged later in the conversation when he was asked about his endgame strategy. “I am sure we will have discussions with Senator Clinton and her team. Unless we have, you know it’s technically not over until we have the number of delegates needed to secure the nomination. Once we have that number, we will focus on the general election,” he said.

55 pledged delegates are up for grabs in Puerto Rico this Sunday, while Montana and South Dakota have a combined 31.

On a warm spring evening in Des Moines, Barack Obama took the stage to announce he’d achieved a milestone in the protracted race for the Democratic nomination – a journey that became viable in Iowa thanks to an upset victory in the state on January 3rd. “The skeptics predicted we wouldn’t get very far. The cynics dismissed us as a lot of hype and a little too much hope. And by the fall, the pundits in Washington had all but counted us out. But the people of Iowa had a different idea,” Obama said to about 7,000 in an outdoor rally.

While Hillary Clinton is far from publicly admitting her possible defeat, Obama declared, “Tonight in the fullness of spring, with the help of those who stood up from Portland to Louisville, we have returned to Iowa with a majority of delegates elected by the American people, and you have put us within reach of the Democratic nomination for President of the United States.
”

“This is a big deal,” senior advisor David Axelrod told reporters en route to the rally. “I don’t think anybody has ever won the majority of pledged delegates and have not been the nominee of the party, so it’s obviously very important, but we are going to fight for every delegate and finish out the process,” he continued.

But sounding like the presumptive nominee, Obama has shifted from taking on Hillary Clinton to praising her. Last night Obama called her a formidable candidate and noted her 35 years of pulbic service. “We have had our disagreements during this campaign, but we all admire her courage, her commitment and her perseverance. No matter how this primary ends, Senator Clinton has shattered myths and broken barriers and changed the America in which my daughters and yours will come of age,” he said as the polite crowd applaued.

done

Rather, Obama is ready to move to the next phase of the campaign in taking on John McCain. “While our primary has been long and hard-fought, the hardest and most important part of our journey still lies ahead,” he said. “This year’s Republican primary was a contest to see which candidate could out-Bush the other, and that is the contest John McCain won.”

The candidate will be campaigning in the two states and one territory with remaining contests, but will be making more stops in general election battleground states. “We’re gonna keep working both at closing out this process officially and all the work that lies ahead in terms of the general election,” Axelrod said.

Today Obama is campaigning in Florida.

Barack Obama hit his 48th state today with campaign stops in Montana (this is a personal count for Obama and does not reflect the number of states where he’s campaigned).

“This is some pretty country,” Obama observed. “I think I need to learn fly fishing. Get some waders, go out there, clear my head. We may have to come back to Missoula. There’s no doubt about it,” he said to about 8,000 people at the University of Montana at Missoula.

Both Democrats are campaigning in “Big Sky Country” today, and both Obama and Senator Clinton will speak at tonight’s Mansfield-Metcalf dinner in Butte. The candidates are fighting for each of the state’s 16 pledged delegates, up for grabs in the state’s primary on June 3rd. Montana, a rural red state with a largely caucasian populace, is the kind of state where Barack Obama has done well in past primaries, where his ability to appeal to Independent voters has played well in similar states.

“I didn’t know if it was going to work – me coming out here – black guy, funny name, you know, big ears,” he said with a smile. “What we knew was if we were going to be able to compete, it would have to be a grassroots movement that people would have to get organized and make it happen, and that’s what’s happened, that’s why we’ve won twice as many states as the other candidate in this race,” he said, referencing Senator Clinton, who has done well in more traditional Democratic states like California and New York and in states where there is a large working class population like Ohio.

Even though both candidates are duking it out for delegates in what has become a long primary for the Democrats, Obama predicted the party will unify prior to the Democratic convention in August.

“Listen, I admire Sen. Clinton – she is a tenacious candidate, she is a terrific senator and so we are gonna be unified by the time we get to Denver in August. We will be unified,” he said. “My difference with Sen Clinton is not on policy for the most part, it’s that I don’t think she understands how profoundly we have to change Washington in order to bring about the changes that need to happen,” he observed. But even Clinton, Obama said, is better than McCain.

“Whatever differences I have with Senator Clinton, they pale in comparison with the differences I have with John McCain,” Obama said to cheers. “He wants to continue this war in Iraq maybe for another 100 years; he wants to perpetuate the same tax breaks for the wealthy that he himself called irresponsible when George Bush first passed them.”

When asked about Senator Patrick Leahy’s (D-VT) comments in an interview this week that Senator Clinton should drop out of the race, Senator Barack Obama admitted he hadn’t broached the subject with Leahy, who was an early Obama endorser. “My attitude is that Senator Clinton can run as long as she wants. Her name is on the ballot and she is a fierce and formidable competitor and she obviously believes that she would make the best nominee and the best president and I think that, you know, she should be able to compete and her supporters should be able to support her for as long as they are willing or able,” Obama told reporters at a media availability.

Just how long the primary campaign will continue has some Democrats, like Leahy, worried.  The concern is that as Obama and Clinton campaign against each other, the more likely it is the Democratic Party will fracture and Senator McCain will stand to benefit. Obama rejected that notion, saying he though those claims were “overstated.”

“I think the party is going to come together. You can’t tell me that some of my supporters are going to say, ‘well we’d rather have the guy who may want to stay in Iraq for a hundred years because we are mad that Senator Clinton ran a negative ad against Senator Obama.’ I think the converse is true as well,” he explained.

That said, Senator Obama said he hopes the nominee will be selected prior to the Democrat’s August convention. “When we’ve completed all the contests that are remaining, some time in early June, that at that point there are no more contests and I think it is important to pivot as quickly as possible, for the superdelegates or others to make a decision as quickly as possible so that we can settle on a nominee and give that nominee some time before the convention to select a vice president or presidential nominee to start thinking about how the convention should be conducted,” he said.

A brokered convention is something Obama hopes to avoid. “At that point, there won’t be really anything, any further information to be had. We will have had contests in all fifty states plus several terroritories. We will have tallied up the pledge delegate vote. We will have tallied up the popular vote, we will have tallied up how many states that were won by who. And then at that point, I think people should have more than enough information to make a decision.”

The Obama camp says it netted more pledged delegates by winning yesterday’s Mississippi primary than Hillary Clinton got by winning the big contests in Texas and Ohio. The Obama campaign has downplayed Clinton’s wins in these so-called “big states” - stressing the path to the nomination comes down to simple math.

Obama has done well by handily winning in states like Georgia and Mississippi - and by remaining competitive in the big states that Clinton has won.  It’s a blueprint that has Obama up in the pledged delegate count - 1411 to Clinton’s 1250 (according to the Obama campaign).

But with 10 contests left and 566 pledged delegates to be awarded, no candidate can reach the 2,025 needed to secure the nomination, which would throw the nomination to the superdelegates.

Of course, Florida and Michigan’s contests have not been resolved by the DNC and their combined 313 pledged delegates are yet to be awarded. The Obama campaign has said it will not accept the results based on the January contest results, as Obama’s name was not on the ballot in Michigan, and he did not campaign in the Sunshine State.

Today Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said caucuses were an option as were new primaries, but cautioned the latter method would be expensive. He has “deep concerns” with a mail-in revote, saying “To try to put to something that took the state of Oregon 10 years to get comfortable with at the statewide level is problematic.”

So what’s the best option? “It seems that the easiest solution here would be some kind of fair seating of the delegations that is not reflective of this contest in January, that allows these states to participate in Denver, but does not advantage Sen Clinton unfairly,” Plouffe said. It’s unclear how this seating would be decided.

Just to be sure voters in Michigan and Florida don’t equate Clinton’s concern for the states’ delegates with making sure their voices are heard in this nomination process, Plouffe noted, “We do not think the Clinton campaign’s approach here is based on benevolence towards Florida and Michigan - it’s based on increasingly desperate, self serving stretching for whatever they think might help them secure the nomination.”

Pennsylvania is widely considered the next (and third) “Super Tuesday” coming up on April 22nd, but the Obama campaign today said Clinton will likely win the state. “They should win by a healthy margin, given where they start,” Plouffe said. “We will campaign hard there, we will try to get as many votes and delegates as we can, but our campaign will not be defined by Pennsylvania. We will be campaigning in all the rest of the states.”

Obama will campaign this weekend in Indiana, and will focus time and energy in North Carolina as well the other upcoming states, while the Clinton campaign focuses on Pennsylvania. Should the nomination come down to supedelegates, the Obama campaign will argue he is the candidate with more pledged delegates, more states, and more of the nation’s popular vote.

 According to an article in today’s Detroit Free Press, the Obama campaign nixed a Michigan do-over - in what’s been called a “firehouse primary.”

[If you recall, Senator Obama signed a pledge not to campaign in Michigan when the state moved its primary earlier than the Democratic National Committee permitted. As a result, the DNC stripped the state of its 156 delegates and rendered the primary moot. The name Barack Obama did not appear on the ballot, and Senator Clinton walked away with 55% of the vote. Clinton has expressed interest of seating the delegates at this summer's Democratic Convention, but the Obama campaign has maintained this is unfair for obvious reasons. The issue has yet to be resolved, as is the case with the Florida primary results.]

On a conference call today, Obama Campaign Manager David Plouffe said the report that indicated the campaign would not go for the revote was “not accurate.”

“What we have said we have abided by the DNC rules to this date and we’ll continue to abide by them. If there is a remedy that the DNC and state parties agree to, that meets the rules, we will abide by those. We do not think it’s the place of the two campaigns where we’re in heated contest here, to negotiate this,” he explained.

Plouffe also noted that Hillary Clinton has been “changing the rules midstream” by agreeing to the DNC pledge that the delegates would not count and then seeking to get the delegates seated. This, Plouffe said, “is the kind of politics people are tired of.” He continued, “We’re not going to pick and choose what kind of contest is  appropriate to us. We would like resolution to this and we would like resolution to this quickly. I think everybody would, so that we have some certainty what the nomination fight is going to look like.”

Meanwhile, the Obama campaign has declared victory in Wyoming, where they netted two pledged delegates. This isn’t a huge coup, but as Plouffe noted, ” is a third of her net from those big contests on March 4th.” The Obama campaign has estimated Clinton netted six delegates from her wins in Ohio, Texas, and Rhode Island.

In a pen and pad briefing at a Chicago hotel, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe talked to assembled reporters to discuss the state of the race.

Acknowledging Clinton’s victories, he said she “had a good night last night in terms of the raw vote and, you know, obviously breathed some life into her campaign, but the fact remains that if you look at the entire contests so far, which is just about 40 states, almost 80% of the states have participated right now, Barack Obama has shown real breadth of support.”

To win the nomination, the Obama campaign is not relying on “symbolic wins.” Rather it’s about amassing delegates. And in that playbook, Plouffe said Hillary Clinton is not gaining ground. “If you look at the day on total, she’s gonna net anywhere from four to probably ten delegates,” he said, noting that number is smaller than what they netted when they won Idaho.

“Last night was a big window that closed for them because they probably needed to net more like 75 or 80 delegates to be in a position to suggest that somehow they could retake the pledged delegate lead,” he told reporters. “So even the most generous analysis of how these races might go coming down the pike, they’re never going to even get close to erasing the pledged delegate lead. The fairest look at it probably means we’re going to maintain a pledged delegate lead of over 100 by the end of this,” he continued.

Plouffe stressed they are looking at this as a 50 state race while the Clinton camp is picking and choosing states, ones the Clinton camp refers to as the “big states.” Meanwhile, the Obama campaign is already downplaying Pennsylvania, where Clinton likely has the advantage. “The winner of Pennsylvania is likely to only net, you know, well could net just a couple or four if it’s very close, but nine to ten delegates at most.”

They will campaign hard in Pennsylvania, but they will also organize in states like North Carolina, Indiana, and South Dakota. “They’re not going to win the rest of the contests,” he noted, saying they are preparing for a “long haul” campaign against a fierce candidate, whom Plouffe referred to as “the most secretive politician in America today” for her lack of disclosure.

He also described her campaign strategy as one that “is simply going to be to try to run a scorched earth campaign and somehow, someway convince the superdelegates, the party insiders and leaders, that they should overturn the voters’ decision, which would be catastrophic for the party, though, in terms of heading into the general election.”

Plouffe urged reporters in the room to press the Clinton campaign on this issue. “The question for them is, is there a pledged delegate deficit that you think is low enough that the superdelegates will be comfortable overturning essentially the will of the voters. And that’s really the question for them as we stand here today,” he observed.

In terms of money, Plouffe was coy. “We’ll have our numbers out soon. Candidly, we’re in the middle of these big contests and we had a lot of money to process and wanted to make sure we had the most accurate count of donors and average contributions. We’ve had a very good last 24 hours,” he said. “Just like after New Hampshire, when the media says, ‘well, it was a good night for Clinton,’ our people respond well.”