BARACK Obama yesterday erased Hillary Clinton's once- imposing lead among superdelegates in their epic race for the Democratic Party nomination and turned his attention to the expected campaign against Republican John McCain.
Barely mentioning Mrs Clinton, Mr Obama said he was open to campaigning with Mr McCain in "town hall" events.
He warned he wouldn't stay away from controversial issues, attacking Mr McCain's proposal for a temporary halt in the federal gasoli
ne tax as a "pander".
And Mr Obama said the election this autumn would be more about specific plans and priorities than questions of political ideology or patriotism.
The turn towards campaigning against Mr McCain came as Mr Obama surpassed Mrs Clinton in the count of superdelegates for the first time this weekend.
Superdelegates are party and elected officials who attend the Democratic National Convention and are free to support whoever they choose, regardless of the results of the primaries. There are nearly 800, and they will vote at the convention in Denver in August. They are key this year because the Democratic race has been so close.
Mrs Clinton started the year with a lead of 169-63. Mr Obama now has 276 endorsements according to the latest tally by US media; Mrs Clinton has 271.5.
In the overall race for the nomination, Mr Obama has 1,864.5 delegates against Mrs Clinton's 1,697, according to the latest polls. A total of 2,025 is needed to secure the nomination.
Reflecting his new focus on campaigning against Mr McCain rather than Mrs Clinton, Mr Obama is visiting states without upcoming primaries.
He said he would soon visit Michigan and Florida, whose primaries were essentially nullified by party disputes. He is set to visit Missouri tomorrow.
During a brief campaign stop in Oregon, Mr Obama took questions about the likely outlines of a contest against Mr McCain.
Mr Obama said: "I think this is going to be a very concrete contest around very specific plans for how we improve the lives of Americans and our vision for the future.
"It is going to have to do with who has a plan to provide relief to people when it comes to their gas prices, who has a real plan to make sure that everybody has health insurance, who's got a real plan to deal with college affordability."
Mr Obama said Mr McCain has received "a free pass" while his own battle with Mrs Clinton for the Democratic nomination has raged on.
And he said that Mr McCain "has a straight-talker image, but it's not clear that lately he's been following through on that image. I mean, this gas tax holiday was a pander."
Although party leaders feel it is only a matter of time before the former first lady must concede defeat, on Saturday Mrs Clinton held a campaign fundraiser in New York.
"Let's keep going, stay with me, this is a great adventure and we're going to make history," she told the crowd.
Mrs Clinton is tipped to win tomorrow's primary in West Virginia, where polls show her leading Mr Obama by as much as 40 percentage points in a state where her strongest supporters – white working-class voters – make up a substantial portion of the Democratic electorate.
However, that will probably be one of her last hurrahs.
Mrs Clinton has struggled to raise money in recent weeks, and was set back further last week when she achieved only a narrow win in Indiana while Mr Obama won convincingly in North Carolina. Mrs Clinton has insisted she will remain in the race until the last of the nominating contests is waged in early June.
