Obama strikes gold in Kansas + Edwards out of race

[General Duke]

Obama strikes gold in Kansas

Key Endorsement

 

Toby Harnden, The Daily Telegraph, With Files From News Services

Published: Wednesday, January 30, 2008

 

Jason Reed, ReutersDemocratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama kisses Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius after she formally endorsed him during a rally in El Dorado, Kan. El Dorado was the birthplace of Obama's maternal ...

EL DORADO, KAN. - Barack Obama took his presidential campaign to America's rural heartland yesterday, dropping in on the town where his white mother grew up to "talk about the roots of my life that directly connect to the broader story of the country."

 

The Democratic presidential wannabe had never before visited El Dorado, a conservative former oil town with a tiny black population that he described in his autobiography as being in "the dab-smack, landlocked centre" of the United States.

 

As Mr. Obama's motorcade sped through the flatlands of Kansas en route to El Dorado, it passed the nodding donkeys that mark the places where oil is still pumped. His grandparents, Stanley and Madelyn Dunham, who partly raised him, left El Dorado in 1955 when his mother Ann was 13. Five years later, she married his Kenyan father after they met at university in Hawaii.

 

Mr. Obama's chief rival, Hillary Clinton, is concentrating on the Democratic strongholds of California, New York, New Jersey and her one-time home state of Arkansas before Super Tuesday next week, when 22 states vote.

 

But Mr. Obama set out on a cross-country trip designed to show he could generate wider appeal and broaden the base of his party, as well as taking the edge off the advantage Ms. Clinton has among core Democrats and union members.

 

Mr. Obama hopes to run Ms. Clinton close in the big states, while scoring in smaller, traditionally Republican "red states" such as Kansas, Utah, Idaho and Alaska.

 

His pilgrimage to the place where his grandparents met as high-school sweethearts was a way of placing himself firmly in the mainstream American experience, despite his exotic childhood in Hawaii and Indonesia.

 

Just hours before Mr. Obama's pilgramage, Kathleen Sebelius, the Kansas Governor, said she was endorsing Mr. Obama for president.

 

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[General Duke]

Edwards expected to drop out of race today

Democrat notifies Obama and Clinton; announcement set for 1 pm ET

 

DENVER - Democrat John Edwards is exiting the presidential race Wednesday, ending a scrappy underdog bid in which he steered his rivals toward progressive ideals while grappling with family hardship that roused voters' sympathies but never diverted his campaign.

 

The decision came after Edwards lost the four states to hold nominating contests so far to rivals who stole the spotlight from the beginning — Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

 

Clinton said Wednesday that Edwards called her to inform her about his decision.