Hillary who? Obama acts likes it's over
By CARRIE BUDOFF BROWN & KENNETH P. VOGEL | 5/11/08 5:24 PM EST
BEND, Ore. — When the election returns filter in Tuesday from West Virginia, Sen. Barack Obama won’t be there. Nor will he leapfrog ahead to a later primary state, as he usually does on election nights.
Exercising his new-found role as the likely Democratic nominee, Obama will instead travel to Missouri, a general election swing state, to begin laying the groundwork for November. He will do the same next week in Florida, raising money and setting out on what aides describe as a fence-mending bid in the orphaned state.
The travel schedule is just one mark of a candidate eager to shift from primary to general election mode.
Obama and his aides repeatedly told reporters this weekend that the primary is not yet over. But the signs of change were everywhere during the senator’s first campaign trip after a big win in North Carolina and a narrow loss in Indiana nudged him closer than ever to the Democratic nomination.
In a two-day swing through Oregon, Obama purged Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton from his stump speeches, addressing his Democratic rival only when asked by voters. Obama instead focused solely on Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.With the race moving beyond the confines of the Democratic Party, the tone of introductory speeches at events has turned increasingly partisan. At a town hall meeting Friday, Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) signaled a bare-knuckles approach, raising McCain’s involvement in the 1980s "Keating Five" banking scandal just minutes before Obama took the stage.
Obama's campaign kicked off a 50-state voter registration drive Saturday. Aides are mulling a summer tour intended to highlight Obama’s eclectic biography.
And on a personal note, Obama recouped a bit of his strut, the streak of supreme self-confidence that appeared to dim as he slogged through some of the toughest weeks of his campaign.
He made a rare attempt to connect with reporters, playing a late-night game of "Taboo" on his campaign plane. He stood in the aisle, just below a TV monitor papered with a greeting card that he autographed just before Tuesday’s primary depicting him as the boxing-gloved “Baracky” (a play off “Rocky”).
The inscription: “Feeling strong now!”“We only have six contests left,” Obama told reporters Saturday, explaining his strategy. “We are getting to the point where someone will be the nominee. We are not going to have a lot of time to pivot, and John McCain has been given a free pass. For the last two months, he has been able to go on various tours and make assertions that I think are questionable.”
Asked for his thoughts on a general election matchup with McCain, Obama said it was “premature” to project. But then, nearly free from the intractable primary fight, he went ahead and did just that.“There is going to be a very clear choice on policy that I don’t think will have to do with ideology or theoretically who is more liberal or conservative,” Obama said. “This is going to be a very concrete contest around very specific plans for how we improve the lives of Americans.”
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In what will be a recurring line of attack, Obama took aim at McCain’s persona as a straight-talking maverick. Obama described McCain’s support for a gas tax holiday as a “pander,” and he charged him with flip-flopping on the Bush administration's tax cuts.
“We are going to have to have a debate not based on John McCain’s image or my image, but facts and where we’ve stood on various issues," Obama said.
The quick shift to the general election means the remaining primary states, especially those favorable to Clinton, are not getting the full Obama treatment.He kept Kentucky Democratic Party officials in the dark about speaking at their fundraising dinner Friday until two days before the event, when he declined to appear.
Both of Kentucky's undecided superdelegates — state party chairwoman Jennifer Moore and vice chairman Nathan Smith — said they've spoken multiple times with Clinton. Moore said she hasn’t heard from Obama. Smith said he has received one call from the Illinois senator.
Rep. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.), a superdelegate backing Obama, appeared at the state party’s dinner Friday to apologize for Obama's absence.
“Not only does he want to contest Kentucky today, but he believes Kentucky can be a blue state in November,” Yarmuth said, noting that Obama opened more than a dozen offices in Kentucky.
A mix of cat calls and chants of “Hillary” nearly drowned him out.
Obama will campaign Monday in Kentucky and West Virginia, but the number of visits by him and his surrogates will likely pale in comparison to those by Clinton and her supporters.Even though Clinton is expected to win both states by large margins, a blowout could fuel a fresh round of concern about Obama’s soft support among working-class voters.
Obama communications director Robert Gibbs said the campaign was continuing to work hard in the remaining primary states — and it isn't making apologies for looking ahead.
“The bigger battle the Democrats have always had in this race isn’t with each other but the other party,” he said. “So I don’t think people will find that us talking more about John McCain is something that offends them.”Obama will fly out of Kentucky on Tuesday morning and head for an event in Cape Girardeau, Mo., the hometown of conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh.
The Florida trip next week will be a “pretty comprehensive trip that involves message events, fundraising, as well as just doing our politics,” Gibbs said.
Craig King, a 38-year-old Obama supporter who attended the Kentucky Democratic Party fundraiser in Louisville, didn’t begrudge Obama for passing up the party’s invitation.
“Kentucky and West Virginia are not in his favor,” said King, a full-time photojournalism student. “He’s got better obligations at this point.”http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0508/10261.html 
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