NEW YORK — Two weeks before the final primary in their marathon battle, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton were campaigning hard Wednesday. Both were in Florida, but their goals could hardly have been more different — or said more about how each one hopes to bring to a close a historic race.
Obama, feeling sure of the Democratic nomination, was trying to stake an early claim to a state that could be crucial in the general election against Republican John McCain. Clinton, insisting she can still be her party’s nominee, was making an impassioned plea for the state’s disputed primary results to be counted.
Obama plans to contest the final three primaries in Puerto Rico, South Dakota and Montana, but he is already moving on, well into the early stages of a general-election plan that will take him to other critical swing states in the coming weeks.
His campaign was offering some new delegate math — before the last votes were cast. Because of how the party allocates its delegates, Obama almost certainly cannot win the nomination based on the 86 pledged delegates yet to be claimed in the final three contests. But his advisers project that he needs just 25 to 28 more superdelegates to come aboard by the end of the primaries to put him over the top.
The campaign’s estimate was confirmed through a separate tabulation by The Associated Press.
As for Clinton, aides said she has two immediate goals: to see the results of the Florida and Michigan primaries restored, and to persuade the remaining uncommitted superdelegates that she would be the better candidate in November against McCain.
While she has signaled that the race will end soon after the final primaries June 3, Clinton is also counting on a meeting of the Democratic Party’s rules committee May 31 to end the dispute over Michigan and Florida, whose delegates were stripped after they violated party rules.
Still, all signs overwhelmingly indicate that Obama will emerge as the Democratic standard-bearer. A handful of superdelegate endorsements Wednesday on top of primary results in Kentucky and Oregon have brought him within striking distance of claiming the nomination.
