Obama Prepares for Tues. Victory

clipped from www.mcclatchydc.com Barack Obama is preparing to claim victory in the Democratic presidential nominating contest after next Tuesday's final primaries in Montana and South Dakota. In a question and answer session Wednesday night with reporters on his campaign plane between Denver and Chicago, the Illinois senator dismissed the idea that rival Hillary Clinton's stated willingness to take her fight for the nomination to the party convention in late August would matter. "When Dukakis won the nomination, you know, Jesse (Jackson) was still running until the convention," Obama said. "When Bill Clinton was running, Jerry Brown was still technically in it. As far as I can tell, this is fairly standard fare."

Expects to clinch it next week.

I found this interesting:

He predicted that after the last primaries, "whatever remaining super delegates will make their decisions pretty quickly after that."

"If we've got the number of delegates to secure the nomination," Obama said, "then I'm the nominee."

"It is technically not over until we have the number of delegates that are needed to secure the nomination. Once we have that number, then we'll focus on the general election," he said.

Marc Ambinder reported earlier this week that Obama's "banking" superdelegates -- i.e., collecting endorsements he's not announcing. It sounds to me like he's going to release that info tuesday or just after, to really hammer the victory home.