A staffer for Sen. Obama states that Obama plans to declare victory in the nomination on May 20:
Not long after the polls close in the May 20 Kentucky and Oregon primaries, Barack Obama plans to declare victory in his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.
But won't Clinton keep slugging it out? Probably not through the Montana primary, but only until May 31st:
Since the earliest possible resolution of the Florida/Michigan dispute is May 31, when the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee will meet in Washington to address petitions from Michigan and Florida DNC members, the 11-day period between the May 20 primaries and the RBC meeting could produce a chaotic stretch where Obama claims to be the party nominee while Clinton argues otherwise.
Which means that even in the perfect storm of two evenly matched candidates under the perfect storm rules of the Democratic Party's proportionate delegate assignment, the race will still be over before Montana votes.
At this point, it seems impossible to identify a solution that would be satisfactory across the board -- fair to both parties in light of their own party rules, cost effective, and not interfering with what is a very nice June date for Montana's down-ticket primaries.
And for those who didn't like the Montana GOP caucus, we would hasten to point out that Montana Republicans will get to vote in a Presidential primary on June 3rd. There will be just as many names on the ballot as if we had never had a caucus here in Montana on Super Tuesday, and the primary will have just as much effect on the delegate selection process and on choosing the Republican nominee as in every other year. This year, it seems that everyone won -- both those who wanted to have an early caucus, and those who wanted things to remain exactly the same as they were.
