UNITED STATES:Obama is now within touching distance of securing nomination, writes Denis Stauntonin Washington.
A DEAL to resolve disputed primaries in Florida and Michigan has given Hillary Clinton a modest delegate boost but it remains practically impossible for her to overtake Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination.
Hundreds of Mrs Clinton's supporters came to Washington to protest at Saturday's meeting of the party's rules and bylaws committee, a 30-member body whose deliberations seldom attract public notice. Inside the meeting, speakers were booed, heckled and occasionally shouted down but the committee's decisions offered clear evidence that the era of Clinton dominance in the Democratic party is over.
Florida and Michigan were stripped of all their delegates to the Democratic national convention after they defied the national party by holding primaries in January. Mr Obama took his name off the ballot in Michigan and neither candidate campaigned in either state.
Mrs Clinton won both contests and she wanted Saturday's meeting to recognise all the delegates from each state, apportioning them in accordance with votes cast. The committee agreed a compromise for Florida without much difficulty, seating the entire delegation but giving each delegate just half a vote.
Michigan presented a bigger problem, not least over what to do about the 40 per cent of Democrats in the state who voted "uncommitted", a recognised category in primary contests. The Clinton campaign wanted 73 delegates from Michigan, with 55 designated as uncommitted.
The Obama campaign said that, since the primary was badly flawed, the best solution was to divide the delegates equally between Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama. Mr Obama had enough support on the committee to force through that option but citing party unity, his representatives agreed to a compromise proposed by the Michigan state party that gave Mrs Clinton 69 votes and Mr Obama 59.
Several Clinton loyalists broke ranks to support the compromise, which passed easily but the candidate's senior adviser, Harold Ickes, said he was outraged.
"We strongly object to the committee's decision to undercut its own rules in seating Michigan's delegates without reflecting the votes of the people of Michigan. The committee awarded to Senator Obama not only the delegates won by Uncommitted, but four of the delegates won by Senator Clinton. This decision violates the bedrock principles of our democracy and our party," he said later. "We reserve the right to challenge this decision before the credentials committee and appeal for a fair allocation of Michigan's delegates that actually reflect the votes as they were cast."
Mr Obama enjoys a majority on the credentials committee, so any appeal by Mrs Clinton is unlikely to succeed, even if it postpones her formal withdrawal from the race.
Saturday's decision lifted the number of delegates needed for the nomination to 2,118 and, before Puerto Rico voted yesterday, Mrs Clinton was almost 240 delegates short, compared with Mr Obama's deficit of about 63. Puerto Rico and the final primaries in Montana and South Dakota have a total of 86 delegates at stake, which the candidates are expected to share about evenly.
That leaves the final decision on the nomination to the remaining 205 undeclared superdelegates, of which Mr Obama needs only a couple of dozen to become the nominee, whereas Mrs Clinton would need about 195.
Since Super Tuesday on February 5th, 157 superdelegates have endorsed Mr Obama, compared with just 33 for Mrs Clinton.
Mrs Clinton's supporters continued to argue yesterday that she is the strongest candidate to face republican John McCain in November, pointing to polls putting her ahead in battleground states like Ohio and Florida. Mr Obama is already focused on the general election campaign, however, seldom mentioning Mrs Clinton as he trades barbs with Mr McCain over Iraq, the economy and President George Bush's legacy.
Over the weekend, Mr Obama took care of some political housekeeping when he announced that he was leaving the church where he has been a member for 20 years. Mr Obama found Christianity at the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, he was married there and his two daughters were baptised there but it had become too controversial in recent months.
"It was going to be very difficult to continue our membership there so long as I was running for president," Mr Obama said.