MAYSVILLE, Ken – Hillary Clinton defiantly claimed the lead in the popular vote and in big states today to make the case that she’s the most electable Democratic candidate – and that there will be no nominee after tomorrow, even if Barack Obama has a majority of pledged delegates.

“This is nowhere near over,” she said at a high school gym in Maysville this morning. “None of us is going to have the number of delegates we’re going to need to get to the nomination, although I understand my opponent and his supporters are going to claim that.”

“I believe that when tomorrow comes we will send a message to this country. Because right now, more people have voted for me than have voted for my opponent. More people have voted for me than for anybody ever running for president before. So we have a very close contest,” she said.

Clinton pressed the importance of Michigan and Florida in the process, and claimed that based on primary results in the states that have already voted, Obama would be much weaker candidate against John McCain — suggesting, contrary to what she’s said in the past, that he can’t win in November.

“The states that I’ve won total 300 electoral votes. If we had the same rules as the Republicans, I would be the nominee right now,” she said. “My opponent has 217 electoral votes including places like Alaska and Idaho, and Utah, and Kansas, and Nebraska. And many of his votes and his delegates come from caucus states, which have a relatively low turnout.”

“So anybody who’s really analyzing this and saying, OK, we did not go through this long campaign to lose in the fall. We cannot afford to have four more years of a Republican president.”

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After enjoying some ice cream with his family on a beautiful Oregon day, Barack Obama took a few questions from his traveling press corps. The first question - why return to Iowa Tuesday?

“We thought it was a terrific way to kind of bring things full circle,” he said. “If Kentucky and Oregon go as we hope, then we think we will have a majority of pledged delegates at that point, and that’s a pretty signigicant mark,” he replied. Obama is expected to win Oregon, while Clinton will likely win by a healthy margin in Kentucky.

So will you hear a victory speech in Des Moines Tuesday night? Not exactly, according to the candidate. “I won’t be the nominee until we have enough, a combination of both pledged delegates and superdelegates to hit the mark.”

To become the Democratic nominee, a candidate needs to secure 2,026 delegates. Right now Obama is short of that mark by more than 100 delegates, but still leads Clinton.

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BOWLING GREEN, Kentucky - Hillary Clinton’s casual appearance at a local Methodist church took an awkward turn this morning, as pastor Paul Fryman launched into a sermon on temptation, lust, and adultery.

With the New York Senator seated in the second pew, a parishioner read the day’s scripture from the book of Matthew, chapter 5 verses 27-32. “You have heard that it was said ‘you shall not commit adultery,’” she read. Members of the press cringed in their seats. “I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

“It was also said ‘whoever divorces his wife, let him give her a certificate of divorce.’ But I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife, except on the grounds of unchastity, makes her an adulteress; and whoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.”

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FRANKFORT, KY – With the Democratic nomination all but wrapped up, Barack Obama has moved past his primary battle with Hillary Clinton, beginning to implement his general election strategy. But even as she slides towards irrelevance, the New York Senator has, in her own way, joined Obama in general election mode — increasingly aiming her rhetorical cannons not at her primary opponent, but at John McCain.

Clinton delivered her sharpest attack yet on McCain’s economic policies – saying the Arizona Senator is “laying out an agenda on the campaign trial that is nothing less than four more years of George Bush economics.” And that, as all Democrats know, is pretty bad. “I don’t know that we’ve had a worse president in American history,” Clinton said of Bush.

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LORETTO, KY – Kentucky loves its horses and its college basketball – and judging by the number of distilleries we drove through on the way to Hillary Clinton’s first campaign event on a four-day tour of the state, it loves its bourbon.

Senator Clinton toured the oldest such distillery in Loretto today, where Makers Mark Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey is produced. She even got to dip a bottle into the company’s trademark red wax to seal it tight – though she admitted she got a little sloppy.

“I think they’re going to give me the bottle because it dripped some,” she told the crowd gathered for a picnic outside. “So I think that I get to take that one home, which is not a hardship, you’ve got to admit.”

“There’s some benefits to running for president, every so often,” she joked.

In the spirit of the place, she even worked some boozy references into her energy plan. “Think of what you could do if we got back to just putting alcohol into the gas tank,” she said. “The model T Ford got better gas mileage than the SUV does today, and it ran on ethanol. You know what it ran on, it ran on moonshine.”

As the crowd whooped and applauded, Clinton continued “it had more power and went further and had more kick than what we see in our cars today. It may be back to the future. I think Kentucky can play a leading role in that, getting us organized for those biofuel futures.”

LORETTO, KY – After seemingly sleepwalking through campaign stops in South Dakota and Oregon, Hillary Clinton got fired up after a visit to a Kentucky distillery – telling voters here that she’s not ready to quit on them.

“You’ve seen all those folks on TV. They keep telling me to quit,” she said. “Maybe I was just raised with the kind of values you were raised. You don’t quit on people, and you don’t quit until you finish what you started, and you don’t quit on America.”

Those TV pundits say Clinton faces an impossible deficit in the delegate count, even if the DNC decides to seat all the delegates from Michigan and Florida – and especially if superdelegates keep flocking to Obama. But the New York Senator continues to make a case that looks past the primary.

“I’m running for president because I believe I would be the best president and I’m the stronger candidate to defeat John McCain in the Fall,” she said. “Right now, I am leading in the popular vote. More Americans have voted for me. Right now, if you add up the states that I have won, it totals 300 electoral votes. You have to have 270 electoral votes to win.”

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LORETTO, KY — Hillary Clinton told a crowd assembled for a picnic at the Makers Mark bourbon facility that her thoughts and prayers are with Senator Ted Kennedy — hospitalized today after suffering a seizure at his home in Massachusetts.

“We had word this morning that my good friend and a great champion of working people, Senator Ted Kennedy, was rushed to the hospital with symptoms of a stroke,” she said. “Our thoughts and prayers are with him and his family, because he has been a champion for health care. Nobody has fought harder to make sure everybody got good health care. And I know that we all join together in wishing him well.”

Clinton pivoted from Kennedy’s hospitalization to the need to implement her universal health care plan. “What Senator Kennedy believes and what I believe and what many others believe is that every American should be entitled to the same health care as your member of congress is entitled to,” she said.

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LOUISVILLE, KY — If the first rule of running for office is “never wear a silly hat,” there’s surely an exception for Kentucky Derby Week — and Hillary Clinton took full advantage outside her state headquarters today.

Arriving to greet volunteers and supporters, the New York Senator donned a flowered hat while shaking hands outside, where there was only one small camcorder present — though she ditched the hat before coming inside and facing the phalanx of network cameras.

While she said wished she could be in town for the Derby on Saturday, Clinton had some instructions for volunteers going to the race in her stead — telling them “I want everybody to place a little money on the filly.”

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Inez, KY — In what is becoming almost weekly protocol, Sen. McCain condemned officials his own party for going over the line in attacking Barack Obama.

This time the North Carolina Republican party has launched a new TV spot tying local Democrats who support Obama to incendiary remarks made by the Democrat’s longtime preacher, Jeremiah Wright. (below)

The ad declares that Obama is “just too extreme for North Carolina,” noting that local officials should “know better” than to support the Democratic presidential frontrunner.

McCain repeatedly called on the state party to pull the ad Wednesday, vowing again to run a “respectful campaign.”

“We called and asked them not to run that message. It’s not the message of the Republican Party. It’s not the message of my campaign. I’ve pledged to conduct a respectful campaign,” McCain said during a press conference Wednesday. “I can’t dictate to them but I want to be the candidate of everybody. I want to be the candidate of Republicans and Democrats and Independents and people across the political spectrum and I think that by traveling America and listening and learning as well as portraying my vision for the future, I’m going to attract a large number of independents and democrats into our cause because right now the cause is America and right now the cause is that Americans want us to work together to solve these enormous challenges that we face today.”

Then, alongside Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan–who was traveling with the presumptive GOP nominee to his own hometown of Inez–McCain told reporters that local and state GOP officials sometimes lose sight of the ultimate party goals.

“I think sometimes we neglect a fundamental reason why we have political parties–that is to elect our candidates to office,” McCain said aboard his bus. “What I hope is that they would listen to my views that it’s not representative of the Republican Party and what we are trying to be. We are trying to be a party that respects everyone and to show disrespect for any candidate or anyone…is certainly not the party of Abraham Lincoln.”

Informed that the state party is planning to keep the ad on the air, McCain lamented, “unfortunately all I can do is, in as visible way as possible, is disassociate myself from that kind of campaigning.”

The AZ Senator added today that he believes “it is clear” that Obama does not share the world view of Rev. Wright and stated his intention to run an issue-centric campaign.

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Inez, KY - The loudest applause line of the day at Sen. John McCain’s town hall in rural Kentucky Wednesday did not come in response to remarks by the GOPer but rather a local official.

Asked to comment on Sen. Obama’s “bitter” remarks, McCain first offered the state senator who served up the guaranteed grand slam question take the first crack at it.

“Do you think those comments reflect the views of your constituents?” McCain asked Kentucky District 30 State Sen. Brandon Smith.

“I think it reflects the views of someone who doesn’t understand this neck of the woods,” Smith responded, generating a thunderous standing ovation from the nearly 500 attendees in the Inez Courthouse.

McCain then slammed Obama for the comments, referring to them “elitist remarks to say the least,” and essentially calling the Democrat out of touch with “Americans who love this country” and have a “fundamental faith and believe in God and respect for the constitution.”