Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) has won a majority of available delegates for the Democratic presidential nomination, becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee. Obama will likely be facing Senator John McCain (R-AZ) in the November general election. McCain has been the presumptive Republican nominee since gaining a delegate majority in March.
The Associated Press reported this morning that Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) would concede the Democratic Nomination in the race for the Presidency to Obama this evening, however Clinton has not yet conceded the race and does not intend to do so today.
Obama is the first African American to win a major party nomination for the United States Presidency and, if elected, would be the first non-white president.
Update 6/9/2007: While I have left the original entry intact, as a matter of policy I will no longer refer to Senator Obama as an ‘African American’. Obama is, in fact, biracial. His father is Kenyan; his mother is an American of European descent. Thus, Obama is properly neither ‘white’ nor ‘black’. He is both. This does not change the historic nature of his presumptive nomination, as he remains the first minority or biracial person to win a major party nomination and, if elected, he would still be the first non-white president. That said, referring to Senator Obama as ‘black’ or ‘African American’ is at-worst inaccurate, and at-best incomplete.
[As an aside, this issue is fairly important to me, since Melissa and I are a biracial couple and any biological children we may have in the future would be biracial—half European American, half Chinese American. The media should not favor one part of a person’s racial makeup over another, and neither should biracial or multiracial individuals.]