After crushing Sen. Hillary Clinton in North Carolina and narrowly losing a hard fought battle in Indiana, leading Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama has left his last standing opponent little choice, but to surrender the party nomination to him.

Obama won North Carolina on the heels of Black voters who picked him 9-1 over Clinton. He captured a whopping 56 percent of the vote to just 42 percent for Clinton in the primary.

The in his neighboring state of Indiana, Obama trailed Clinton 51 percent to 49 percent with 99 percent of all precincts reporting late Tuesday.

In North Carolina he won 890,695 votes and in Indiana he won 615,862 votes, increasing his over all lead in the popular vote and in the all important delegate count, thus making it virtually impossible for Sen. Clinton to win the nomination.

North Carolina had 115 delegates at stake; Indiana had 72.

While Clinton’s campaign attempted to spin the results this week in her favor, she conceding that she would support whoever is the nominee for the Democratic Party, obviously Obama.

Voters in both states appeared to refocus their attention on issues that were important to them, namely the gasoline tax instead of news rhetoric concerning Obama’s former pastor Jeremiah Wright.

Including Super delegates, Obama has increased his lead to 1,836, while Clinton has 1,681.

Last weekend, Obama won the caucuses in Guam. He leads in states, and delegates won, thus far, and many super delegates seem to be abandoning their apparent ties to the Clinton camp and jumping on the Obama bandwagon.

That is the good news; the not-so-good news is that Obama has been “under the gun” for the past month and the national media is hell bent in trying to re-direct his campaign away from the issues by trying to focus his efforts and energies on distractions.

In reporting the voting trends, whenever Obama wins a state(s) [North and South Carolina] by overwhelming Black votes, the mainstream media inject a racial element in the voting. However, the same racial element is never attributed to Clinton whenever she wins a state(s) by overwhelming White votes.

The thrust of Obama’s campaign is the inclusion of young people into the political process and first-time voters have been answering his call to become involved. There is so much negativity on the campaign trail and to the extent that young people can be brought into the process via a positive calling - the change that Obama has been calling for, a change that the country so desperately needs that will become a reality with a President Barack Obama. He said, “We’ll change this country together.”

Young entertainers are shooting music videos and inviting their contemporaries to join on. Supporting Obama has become a trend that crosses racial lines and he has tried to dodge the racial element throughout the campaign. A recent media release hit the airwaves stating “Recording Artists Shoots Music Video in Support of Sen. Barack Obama” with a sub-title “Cameos by Kanye West, Jay Z, Chris Brown, Travis Barker and many more...” In addition, Caroline Kennedy—daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy—has sent out a mass e-mail asking recipients to support Obama, whose candidacy resembles her father’s.

In reporting Obama’s win, the “Nightly News” reported, “Hillary Rodham Clinton lost her last best chance to score an upset on Barack Obama’s turf Tuesday, putting the Illinois senator a step closer to becoming the country’s first Black presidential nominee.”

The primaries continue on to West Virginia (28 delegates), Oregon (52) and Kentucky (51).

Published in : News, National