Obama inching ever closer to nomination

updated 4:40 p.m. ET May 21, 2008

WASHINGTON - Close to securing the Democratic nomination, Barack Obama lavished attention on Florida and its wreckage of a presidential primary while minding his manners with Hillary Rodham Clinton — a rival he now can afford to praise.

Obama detoured Wednesday from the campaign for the three remaining primaries — Puerto Rico, Montana, South Dakota — to rally in a state where its renegade primary was disallowed.

"It is good to be back in Florida. It's good to be back. I know you guys have been holding down the fort," Obama told supporters at a Tampa, Fla., rally.

Clinton, too, was in Florida, pressing to narrow her gap with Obama by having delegates counted from its contest in January.

The former first lady told supporters in Florida that they "learned the hard way what happens when your votes aren't counted and the candidate with fewer votes is declared the winner," a reference to the state's disputed presidential vote that gave George W. Bush the White House. "The lesson of 2000 here in Florida is crystal clear: If any votes aren't counted, the will of the people isn't realized and our democracy is diminished."

Video Obama: 'We are at the threshold' May 21: Barack Obama speaks at a rally in Tampa. MSNBC

The Illinois senator was just 64 delegates short of the 2,026 needed to clinch the nomination, after two superdelegate endorsements Wednesday and a pair of primaries the night before. Clinton thrashed him in Kentucky; he answered by winning Oregon.

Obama also secured a majority of the pledged delegates won in primaries and caucuses across the country — a milestone that could help him persuade more superdelegates to endorse him.

Mississippi Democratic Party Chairman Wayne Dowdy and Connecticut Rep. Joe Courtney, whose district voted for Clinton in the state's Feb. 5 primary won by Obama, padded the Illinois senator's lead with superdelegates by declaring their support. Superdelegates are party insiders who are not tied to the outcome of state contests.

Obama picked up another big labor endorsement, from the United Mine Workers of America.

Clinton gained up a superdelegate, too — Craig Bashein of Ohio.

Although Obama won most groups of voters in Oregon, other recent primaries including Kentucky's have been polarizing, with large numbers of his supporters and Clinton's digging in behind their candidate and saying they would not vote for the other one in the fall campaign against Republican John McCain.

"If that holds true, then it is a problem," said former Colorado Sen. Gary Hart, who experienced devastating party divisions as Democrat George McGovern's campaign manager in 1972. "But I don't think that's going to hold true."

Speaking Wednesday on CNN, he said Obama is right to have turned recently to unifying the party and "he has already, wisely, I think, begun the fall campaign."

McCain addressed an enthusiastic crowd in Miami on Tuesday, Cuba's independence day, and pledged to hold firm against normal trade relations with Cuba until that country honors basic freedoms.

He criticized Obama for saying he would meet President Raul Castro, called the Democrat a "tool of organized labor" for opposing a Latin American trade deal and said his opponent had advocated lifting the trade embargo before shifting his position to say he would merely ease it.

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