WOLFFE on Obama: 'A Sigh of Relief'

Here's my NEWSWEEK colleague Richard Wolffe with a dispatch from Barack Obama's victory party in Minnesota.

For Barack Obama's team, Tuesday was a day unlike any other primary day. Gone were the normal nerves about the final results, the shared leaks of exit polls and the memories of dashed expectations in previous contests.

Since late on Monday evening, the Illinois senator's top aides had known they would secure the nomination with a bloc of superdelegates to be rolled out over the course of the coming day.   But it wasn't until the elected officials and party insiders started to make their own endorsements public early Tuesday afternoon that Team Obama could finally, at long last, begin to relax.

On the plane to St. Paul, Minnesota, the inner circle could finally savor the historic nature of the victory at hand: the man they worked for was about to become the first African-American candidate ever to top a major-party ticket. Staffers began to hug and joke. Amid the festivities, reporters asked senior strategist David Axelrod if he and his colleagues recognized the milestone they had reached.

"I think that it's going to take a little while for it to sink in," Axelrod said. "We've been so engaged in this process day-to-day that it's almost surreal that we're at this moment.

...

[In his speech,] Obama noted that McCain had served America "heroically," but added pointedly that there was little respect shown in return. "I honor that service, and I respect his many accomplishments, even if he chooses to deny mine," he said.

"There are many words to describe John McCain's attempt to pass off his embrace of George Bush's policies as bipartisan and new," Obama observed. "But change is not one of them."

The McCain campaign has been hammering at Obama in recent weeks, decrying the Democrat's stated intention to negotiate with hostile foreign leaders, and faulting Obama for not having traveled to Iraq. Obama aggressively moved to turn that argument against McCain Tuesday night. "John McCain has spent a lot of time talking about trips to Iraq in the last few weeks," Obama said. "But maybe if he spent some time taking trips to the cities and towns that have been hardest hit by this economy—cities in Michigan, and Ohio, and right here in Minnesota—he'd understand the kind of change that people are looking for."

Those states—like Iowa and Pennsylvania, also shouted out in St. Paul--are core battlegrounds; Obama knows he must win over many of Clinton's supporters in coming months if he's to vanquish McCain there this fall. (Florida and Michigan, stars of the party's dramatic rules sessions over the last weekend, are also crucial; Obama trails McCain in both places in the most recent polls).

As Team Obama pivots into the fall campaign, they will be focusing on states that John Kerry won in 2004—not least Pennsylvania where Obama lost to Clinton but is ahead of McCain by several points. In Michigan and Ohio, Obama's aides believe the economy will be critical in shaping voters' attitudes. In Florida, where Obama trails McCain, the campaign believes it can be very competitive very soon, with the help of high turnout among African-American voters and students, as well as younger Cuban-Americans. The campaign also believes it can run strong out west—in states like Oregon, Washington, Montana, Colorado—and pick off several southern targets such as Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia.

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