WASHINGTON (AFP) — White House hopeful Barack Obama's campaign said Thursday he was on the verge of clinching the Democratic nomination once his bruising battle with Hillary Clinton climaxes next week.
"I would say either on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, we'll know the Democratic nominee," Obama's communications director Robert Gibbs said on MSNBC television.
"And I can predict for you right here on the show that that Democratic nominee will be Barack Obama," he said.
After nearly six months of arduous, coast-to-coast campaigning, Obama is in striking distance of gaining enough Democratic delegates to earn the right to take on Republican John McCain in November's presidential election.
On Saturday, the Democratic Party's rules and bylaws committee will meet to adjudicate on one of the biggest controversies left: whether Florida and Michigan delegates should be reinstated after a scheduling row.
Then on Sunday, Puerto Rico holds its primary followed by the last two contests Tuesday in Montana and South Dakota.
"And at that point, all the information will be in. There will be no more questions answered," Obama told reporters aboard his plane late Wednesday.
Once the primary season is over, Democratic grandees known as superdelegates "will make their decisions pretty quickly after that," the Illinois senator said.
On Thursday Obama won the support of Oregon superdelegate Gail Rasmussen and according to his campaign, he needs just 44 more delegates to reach the current winning line of 2,026.
While that number could go up depending on a Florida-Michigan fix this weekend, both candidates would still need the support of enough superdelegates to go over the top. But Obama would need far fewer.
In any case, in recent weeks, both McCain and Obama have been pummeling each other and leaving Clinton largely out of the mix as the contours of a general election battle take shape.
Obama, who opposed the Iraq war from the start and accuses McCain of wanting to prolong "failed" US policies, told The New York Times he was considering an overseas trip this summer after securing the Democratic nod.
"Iraq would obviously be at the top of the list of stops," the Democrat said, while scorning McCain's offer of a joint trip as a "political stunt."
McCain, an advocate of President George W. Bush's troop "surge" strategy who has made multiple visits to Iraq, said Obama's possible trip was "long overdue."
"I'm confident that when he goes he will then change his position on the conflict in Iraq, because he will see the success that has been achieved on the ground," he said.
Meanwhile Clinton, vowing no compromise on allowing Florida and Michigan back into the fray despite their violation of the primary calendar in January, is pursuing an 11th hour bid to deprive Obama of the nomination.
The former first lady Wednesday wrote to the nearly 800 superdelegates to try to persuade them she was more likely to beat McCain in November's general election.
"I believe I am best prepared to lead this country as president, and best prepared to put together a broad coalition of voters to break the lock Republicans have had on the electoral map and beat Senator McCain," she wrote.
House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the nation's top elected Democrat who is to preside over the party's August convention, said she would "step in" if there is no resolution by late June about Florida and Michigan.
"Because we cannot take this fight to the convention. It must be over before then," Pelosi, who has remained neutral between Obama and Clinton, told the San Francisco Chronicle's editorial board.
The Clinton campaign said all current polls had her beating McCain in November, and claimed to be ahead in the popular vote by half a million ballots after 51 valid Democratic contests stretching back to Iowa in early January.
Gibbs mocked the New York senator's calculations, which rest on counting Florida and Michigan and estimating vote totals from Obama's victories in four caucus states where official tallies have not been released.
The Obama aide said: "It involves square roots and logarithms and you know, I think there's a computer crunching the formula. And a lot of margaritas."
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