(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-05-13 15:16

WASHINGTON - Barack Obama's wave of superdelegate endorsements puts him within reach of the Democratic presidential nomination by the end of the primary season on June 3 - even if he loses half of the remaining six contests.

Democratic presidential hopeful, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., speaks at a town hall-style meeting in Charleston, W. Va., Monday, May 12, 2008, in anticipation of the state's primary election Tuesday. [Agencies]

The Illinois senator has picked up 26 superdelegates in the past week. At that pace, he will reach the number of delegates needed to clinch the nomination - 2,025 - in the next three weeks, when delegates from the remaining primaries are included.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's best chance to slow Obama is to move the goal posts. She will get that chance May 31 when the Democratic National Committee's rules panel considers proposals to seat the delegates that had been stripped from Florida and Michigan. Those two states violated national party rules by holding their primaries in January and lost their delegates.

"Michigan and Florida are key to it," Howard Wolfson, Clinton's communications director, said Monday.

Obama picked up four superdelegates Monday, including Sen. Daniel Akaka of Hawaii and Rep. Tom Allen of Maine.

Allen, a six-term congressman who is running for the Senate, said the time has come for a "graceful end" to the nomination fight.

"I believe the process of reconciliation, the process of unifying this party, should begin sooner rather than later," Allen said. "It should begin in May and not in June."

Obama has 1,871.5 delegates, including endorsements from party and elected officials known as superdelegates. Clinton has 1,697, according to the latest tally by The Associated Press. That leaves Obama just 153.5 delegates short of the number needed to win the nomination at the party's national convention this August in Denver.

There are 217 delegates at stake in the six remaining primaries, in West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Montana and South Dakota. Even if Clinton wins most of those delegates, Obama could reach the magic number by the time South Dakota and Montana vote on June 3.

Obama has been careful not to declare himself the nominee prematurely, even as his campaign focuses increasingly on Republican Sen. John McCain. Clinton's campaign, meanwhile, has outlined a strategy for winning the nomination that extends beyond the end of the primaries.

The battle might not last that long.

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