Barack Obama clinched the Democratic presidential nomination Tuesday, becoming the first black candidate to lead a major party into a campaign for the White House. Vanquished rival Hillary Rodham Clinton swiftly signaled an interest in joining the ticket as running mate. Campaigning on an insistent call for change, Obama outlasted Clinton in a historic race that sparked record turnout in primary after primary, yet exposed deep racial and gender divisions within the party. In a campaign of surprises, Clinton's comments about joining the ticket in a showdown against Republican nominee John McCain rated high. According to one participant in an afternoon conference call among Clinton and members of the New York congressional delegation, Rep. Lydia Velasquez said she believed the best way for Obama to win over Hispanics and members of other key voting blocs would be to take the former first lady as his running mate. “I am open to it,” Clinton replied, if it would help the party's prospects in November, said the participant, who spoke on condition of anonymity because the call was a private matter. Obama sealed his victory based on primary elections, state Democratic caucuses and delegates' public declarations as well as support from an additional 22 delegates and “superdelegates” who privately confirmed their intentions to The Associated Press. It takes 2,118 delegates to clinch the nomination. Clinton stood ready to concede that her rival had amassed the delegates needed to triumph, according to officials in her campaign. They stressed that the New York senator did not intend to suspend or end her candidacy in a speech Tuesday night in New York. Obama arranged a victory celebration at the site of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul, Minnesota – an overt gesture aimed McCain, who will be his opponent in the race to become the US's 44th president. Obama's triumph was fashioned on prodigious fundraising, meticulous organizing and his theme of change aimed at an electorate opposed to the Iraq war and worried about the economy – all harnessed to his own innate gifts as a campaigner. With her husband's two-White House terms as a backdrop, Clinton campaigned for months as the candidate of experience, a former first lady and second-term senator ready, she said, to take over on Day One. As the strongest female presidential candidate in history, Clinton drew large, enthusiastic audiences. Yet Obama's were bigger still. The former president Jimmy Carter said Tuesday he will endorse Democrat Barack Obama after the last two primary states vote. His comments came as Obama clinched the nomination.
