Barack Obama... today's headlines with excerpts

Obama: McCain is "The Past"

“We are the party of tomorrow, he’s the party of yesterday. He’s the past, we’re the future,” Obama said. Since McCain became the presumptive Republican nominee, Obama has ratcheted up his criticism of him, referring to McCain at every campaign stop.

Obama said that he can take on the Republicans in general elections, joking that he’s “skinny but tough.”

“Don’t mess with me! Let them bring it on, who they got, John McCain? I respect John McCain for his half century of service but he’s on the wrong side of history right now,” Obama said.

Obama favored in Potomac Primaries

The campaigns of Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama are gearing up for today's presidential primary in Virginia, a key Southern state rife with knotty demographics and shifting party loyalties.

Both camps view the Democratic vote in Virginia as their toughest matchup in the so-called Potomac primaries, a stretch of contests that also includes Maryland and the District of Columbia, where large and passionate constituencies among black voters and college students make Obama a heavy favorite.

Obama faces uphill fight to win over Texas Hispanics

In more than 30 years of political organizing in South Texas, and with four trips in the past 16 months, the Clintons could write chapter and verse about the Rio Grande Valley.

Barack Obama, who has never been south of San Antonio, is just opening the cover. And that very fact could help determine the outcome of Texas' March 4 primary fight between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama. ..

Seeking unity, Obama feels pull of racial divide

While Mr. Obama has made great strides in appealing to white and black voters, his campaign has proved less effective in drawing Latino support. While a few experts point to longstanding rivalries between blacks and Hispanics over jobs and other opportunities, most faulted him as doing too little, too late...

Obama's extraordinary wave fails to sink extraordinary foe

After storming five presidential-nominating contests over the weekend, Sen. Barack Obama is favored to take three more primaries today and two later this month -- a potential 10-contest run that will give him wins in nearly half the states compared with Sen. Hillary Clinton's total of just 10 wins since voting began in Iowa.

In another year, against another candidate, Illinois's Sen. Obama might be on the verge of nabbing the Democratic nomination. A few Democratic strategists, and some Republicans, think he is almost there now. But Sen. Clinton is no average candidate, and party rules give the New York senator enough convention delegates to weather February's squalls until contests in March...

Fixing error gives Obama sweep of all Washington's counties

It turns out Barack Obama did win every county in Washington state's Democratic caucuses on Saturday.

The state Democratic Party had initially reported that Hillary Rodham Clinton won just a single county, Douglas, in Eastern Washington by a 53-32 count of delegates.

But now party leaders say someone misreported the results. The correct tally in Douglas County, according to state party Executive Director Jaxon Ravens, is 65 delegates for Obama and 37 for Clinton, completing Obama's sweep of all 39 Washington counties.

Can the Muslim smear hurt Obama?

[Newsweek's Andrew Romano:] 

After a few months on the trail, I'm starting to worry that there are national-security swing voters out there who will be suspicious of someone who has ANY links to the Muslim world--as irrelevant as those links may be. I wish it wasn't true, but over the past two months, I've had at least a dozen people respond to my rote question--What do you think of Barack Obama?--by worrying aloud about his "Muslim background."

I'm always quick to tell them that he's not a Muslim, but it rarely makes a difference.

Take Vicki Hercsky, 47, a teacher from Boca Raton, Florida. "Obama, I don't even know how he got where he is," she told me after a Rudy Giuliani event late last month.

"Why do you say that?" I asked.

"He's Muslim," she replied, matter-of-factly.

I stammered. "Well, um, his father was raised Muslim but was an agnostic by the time Barack was born," I said. "Obama is a Christian."

Hercsky wasn't swayed. "Yeah, but he has it in his blood," she said. "You can't take away what's given to you. It's given to you for a reason, and that's who you are. That's who he is."

I'm not sure what she meant by "it," or "who he is"--and I'm not sure I want to know...