Polls: Dems split dibs on Ky., Ore.
BILLINGS, Mont. -- On the eve of today's primaries in Kentucky and Oregon, Hillary Rodham Clinton warned that the Democratic race is not yet over, while rival Barack Obama jumped ahead to a general-election fight with Republican John McCain.
Clinton told a Kentucky audience Monday that Obama may be getting ahead of himself before the last votes are cast on June 3. "This is nowhere near over," she said.
Obama is expected to reach a majority of pledged delegates awarded from nominating contests with a win today in Oregon, where he is leading state polls. But he will need votes from party leaders known as superdelegates to reach the 2,026 needed to clinch the nomination. Clinton has a wide lead in Kentucky polls.
Obama campaign spokesman Robert Gibbs told USA TODAY that the campaign is not taking things for granted with a visit tonight in Iowa, where Obama won the nation's first caucuses in January.
The Iowa trip "isn't about declaring ourselves the nominee," Gibbs said. "It's about coming back to where it all started, marking a milestone and planting our flag for the fall."
Clinton's campaign reinforced that the fight is not yet over with a memo entitled: "Mission Accomplished? Not so fast." She also dispatched supporters from rural Upstate New York, including a dairy farmer, to campaign in Montana where Obama spent much of Monday.
In a sign that some Clinton supporters believe the end is near, Politico reported former Clinton campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle is in talks to join the Obama campaign. "If Barack Obama's the nominee, I'll do everything I can to get him elected," Doyle told Politico.
At a Billings, Mont., rally, Obama largely ignored Clinton and criticized McCain. The presumptive Republican nominee declared Obama showed "inexperience and reckless judgment" over the weekend when Obama said Iran did not pose the same threat to the USA as the Soviet Union did during the Cold War.
Obama essentially said the same at West Billings High School, as he explained he would meet with Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
