IF EVER there was a surer sign that the Democratic presidential nomination race is over, it came on a sunny day in a waterfront park in Oregon.
Last Tuesday Hillary Clinton had struggled to round up more than a few hundred people for her victory party in a dingy civic centre, after she won the West Virginia Democratic primary.
On Sunday the Democratic frontrunner, Barack Obama, packed a 75,000 crowd - his biggest crowd so far - into the Waterfront Park in Portland on an unseasonably warm afternoon.
It could not have been a more joyous affair. Pleasure craft bobbed in the river and families covered the gently undulating banks as far as the eye could see, delivering for Senator Obama his biggest rally yet.
In the sunshine Senator Obama, in shirtsleeves, entered to thunderous cheers, accompanied by what could soon be the first family of the US. His gangly eight-year-old daughter, in a lemon sundress, stood close to her father while her six-year-old sister, carried by Senator Obama's wife, Michelle, buried her face in her mother's neck at the sight of the crowd.
Even the candidate seemed a little overawed. "Hello Portland. Wow. Wow. Wow," he said as he surveyed it.
"I have had a lot of rallies but nothing has been in such a spectacular setting and it doesn't hurt that it's a perfect day," he said to wild cheers.
The children and their mother were quickly ushered off stage and Senator Obama began his speech, not one of his greatest, it has to be said, but after 14 months on the campaign trail, giving it three, four, even five times a day, perhaps weariness is forgivable.
"There are babies who are walking and talking since we started this endeavour," he joked with his Oregon supporters.
But by the end of today's Oregon primaries, in which the people will likely deliver him a win and take him past 50 per cent of the delegates available to be won at primaries, Senator Obama will be in Des Moines, Iowa.
Symbolically he will return to the same town where he began what he calls his "improbable journey" after he surprised everybody to take the first caucus contest in January.
Pragmatically, it makes sense to invest the time in Iowa, a Midwest state that could swing to the Democrats in the presidential election.
Senator Clinton may still be fighting the primary battle, but Senator Obama has undoubtedly moved on to phase two of this titanic battle for the presidency.
On Sunday he mentioned Senator Clinton just once to compliment her on her pluckiness as a campaigner. Most barbs were reserved for President Bush and the Republican nominee, John McCain, who he accused of running for a third Bush term.
Mark McKinnon, a strategist and former adviser to Mr Bush, told Senator McCain last year he would not work for him in the general election if Senator Obama became the Democratic nominee, Cox newspapers reported.
With news that Senator McCain has now lost his campaign co-chairman, the former Texan congressman Thomas Loeffler, the fifth to resign because of his lobbying activities, Senator Obama stepped up the rhetoric about governing for the people.
He is now honing his speech to highlight the differences between himself and the Republicans. Hillary, it seems, is history.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/all-the-numbers-go-obamas-way/2008/05/19/1211182703387.html
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