ROSEBURG, Oregon - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama appears ready to put his opponent, Hillary Clinton, into the past tense of the grueling primary campaign.

When asked on Saturday at a rally in Roseburg about party unity, the Illinois senator acknowledged people’s concerns about the length of the nominating process but assured them that Democrats would come out united in the end.

“It was pretty tough and hard fought,” he said about the primary season, describing the former first lady as a “formidable opponent.”

“She was relentless and very effective.”

Was? Note the use of the past tense.

Obama has not wrapped up the nomination and Clinton is still campaigning hard in the remaining primary states.

But the Obama campaign has shifted its focus, at least partly, onto a general election against Republican John McCain. Obama stopped in Michigan and Missouri this week and intends to campaign in Florida and Iowa next week, all of which are states that have already voted and will be crucial to a Democratic win in the fall.

Clinton is seen winning Kentucky on Tuesday while Obama is expected to take Oregon, at which point the campaign predicts he will have more than half of the pledged delegates needed to help secure the nomination. Superdelegates — party leaders and elected officials with the deciding vote in this close race — will follow from there, his camp believes.

Clinton has said she will stay in the race until there is a nominee. The last nominating contest is on June 3. 

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage.

Photo credit: Reuters/Richard Clement (Obama waits to speak as he is introduced at a town hall campaign event)

LORETTO,  KENTUCKY  -   Sen.  Hillary Clinton, campaigning in rural Kentucky, on Saturday blasted critics telling her to drop out of the presidential race as America’s advantaged and well-heeled trying to tell the rest of the nation what to think and do.

“All those people on TV who are telling you and everybody else that this race is over and I should just be graceful and say, ‘Oh, it’s over,’” she said in Loretto, Kentucky. “Those are all people who have a job. Those are all people who have health care. Those are all people who can afford to send their kids to college. Those are all people who can pay whatever is charged at the gas pump.

“They’re not the people I’m running to be a champion for,” she said after touring a bourbon distillery. “I’m running to be a champion for all of you and your children and your grandchildren.”

Clinton, facing calls to quit in favor of Democratic frontrunner Barack Obama, has adopted a populist appeal in her bid for her party’s presidential nomination, especially as she has sought support in the rural Midwest and South.

As her campaign accused Obama of being an elitist, she drank a shot of whiskey before a crowd of photographers, posed with the driver of a large pickup truck to oppose high gas prices and campaigned at a farm equipment dealership and an auto race car hall of fame.

Recent primaries have shown Clinton faring better among voters with less education and less income in rural areas than Obama who is doing better among more affluent, more educated voters in more urban areas.

Later on Saturday, at Kentucky State University in Frankfort, Clinton continued in the same vein.

“I think we have a problem because too often, folks who are sitting in Washington or on TV sets tell people what you’re supposed to think and what you’re supposed to do,” she said, “and I don’t believe that’s the best way that America can work. The strength of America comes from our people.”

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Photo: Reuters/Chris Keane (Clinton supporter in West Virginia )

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - As Barack Obama gains momentum in his battle with Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party’s 2008 presidential nomination, there are signs that the scrappy New York senator’s inner fighter may be giving way to the uniter who will knit the fractured party back together once the bruising nomination process ends. 

But parsing her recent campaign speeches from West Virginia and South Dakota to Oregon and Kentucky, Clinton does not appear ready to give up the fight just yet.  

At a speech late on Friday here, Clinton appeared initially to aim for a conciliatory tone toward Obama, only mentioning her challenger to draw comparisons between women and blacks — two groups that she said had suffered greatly under the original U.S. Constitution written by America’s founders. 

“Neither Senator Obama nor I nor many of you were fully included in the vision of our founders,” Clinton said.

“We’re here for one reason - to make sure the next president is a Democrat,” Clinton told the dinner held by the Kentucky Democratic Party. “Once we have a nominee I know in my heart we will come together as a party.”

But later in the speech she used very specific pronouns: calling for “a Democratic president who will roll up her sleeves and get to work for all of you.”

A day earlier in Charleston, West Virginia, Clinton had dismissed calls for her to drop out of the race as “déjà vu all over again,”  and recalled similar entreaties before she won the Pennsylvania Democratic primary. 

“There are people who said we need to end this before we get to West Virginia. Well, I don’t think so,” Clinton said. “I was never supposed to win Indiana.” 

Clinton has vowed to continue running until the voting concludes on June 3, but she and campaign aides have hinted she would step aside if it is clear that Obama will be the nominee. 

So which is it? Hillary the Fighter or Hillary the Uniter? Time will tell.

Click here for more Reuters 2008 campaign coverage. 

- Photo credit: Reuters/Chris Baltimore (A Clinton supporter holds up boxing gloves at fundraiser in New York City.)