Obama: it’s a tremendous achievement...

Only two people have ever defeated a Clinton in electoral combat. The first was a Republican, Frank White, who evicted Bill for a couple of years from the Arkansas governor's mansion in 1980. The second is Barack Obama, who went over the top in the delegate count yesterday, prompting Hillary Clinton to slouch sulkily to the brink of a formal concession, while she manoeuvers for everything from an offer of the nomination for vice president, to a big role at the convention in Denver, to help in paying off her campaign debts.

To have persuaded enough Democrats that a black man can be their champion in November and have a passable chance of winning the Oval Office is a tremendous achievement, even if Obama's campaign has flagged badly in recent weeks. But by then Obama was cantering through the final

straight. The battle was won in the first two months, when Obama ambushed Mrs Clinton's slow-moving phalanx.

He crushed Mrs Clinton in grass-roots organising and in fund-raising which eventually left her campaign - top-heavy with consultants extorting huge salaries - deeply in debt. Meanwhile, Obama banked millions both from big Wall Street institutions and small contributors. Obama survived the uproar over his radical pastor, Jeremiah Wright, who surely helped his former congregant. If the accusation was Obama is a closet Black Panther plotting to enslave the white race, it was better he got this charge hurled at him in now than in the autumn.

Mrs Clinton was not so agile in separating herself from her husband who spent what he described as probably his last day on the campaign trail cursing a New York Times reporter, Todd Purdum, for a nasty piece in Vanity Fair charging him with uncouth cavortings with teenage girls and billionaires.

Obama turns on young people who flock to his rallies. He promises not only to "create