Obama Is The Nominee! Probably!

Tonight's the night, indeed — finally, this long and drawn-out primary season will be over, and the Democrats will have their nominee. Or will they? Only ABC seems to know for sure — at 5:59 p.m. they sent out an email blast with the headline "Obama Clinches Democratic Nomination: Last Primaries and Superdelegates Push Obama to Victory," making the call based on "the preliminary exit polls and our reporting," which they are apparently so confident in that one minute later they released this one: "Obama Becomes First Black Democratic Presidential Nominee: The Third African American Senator Since Reconstruction Makes History," followed by "How Obama Won and Clinton Lost." Okay, so we know that ABC News is clearly not on the fence. But what about everyone else?



AP: "Obama Effectively Clinches Nomination" (as of 1:26 p.m.)
WaPo: "Obama Pushes to Lock Up Nomination" (as of 6:05 p.m.)
MSNBC First Read: "Heading into tonight's contests, Obama is now 14 delegates away from clinching the Democratic nomination" (as of 6:14 p.m.)
HuffPo: "Delegate Countdown To The Nomination: 11 To Go" (as of 6:18 p.m.)
The NYT: "Superdelegate Declarations Push Obama Closer to Goal" (as of 6:41 p.m.)
CBS News: "Obama on the Brink" (as of 6:53 p.m.)
CNN: "Obama closes in on Democratic nomination" (as of 7:01 p.m.)
Drudge: "She'll Concede The Delegates" (as of 7:04 p.m.)

Upshot: So far, only news organizations starting with "A" have called it for Obama. But no one really thinks he's not gonna be the nominee. But, if Guam and Puerto Rico get their moment in the sun, then, dammit, South Dakota and Montana are gonna have their say. In the meantime, whatever will Hillary do? Never mind that, what will the networks do? Gulp. Oh, right, Obama still has to choose a VP! That'll take weeks. Phew.