Obama nets razor-thin win in Guam

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WAKE FOREST, N.C. — Sen. Barack Obama took a razor-thin victory in the Guam caucus yesterday, edging him closer to the Democratic presidential nomination as the two candidates made their closing arguments to Indiana and North Carolina voters before Tuesday's primaries.

Mr. Obama cast himself yesterday as "something entirely different" and depicted his race with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as a choice between himself and "the same kind of politics we've come to know in Washington."

He also dismissed his own troubles with symbolic issues in recent weeks, called on people to vote for him as a repudiation of those issues, and slipped in a backhanded reminder of when Mrs. Clinton told a false tale about her trip to the Balkans as first lady and landing in Bosnia under sniper fire.

The Illinois senator said while campaigning in Indianapolis that "the only way a black guy named Barack Obama ... can win this race — [is] if you decide that you've had enough of the way things are; if you decide that this election is bigger than flag pins and sniper fire and the comments of a former pastor — bigger than the differences between what we look like or where we come from or what party we belong to."

Mrs. Clinton, campaigning here, sharpened her focus on Mr. Obama yesterday, and she and former President Bill Clinton planned multiple campaign appearances across North Carolina.

"You have to ask yourself who will really stand up for you and who can you count on," Mrs. Clinton told a few hundred voters in this college town, beaming when most in the crowd said they already had cast ballots for her through the early-vote program.

Mrs. Clinton holds a solid lead in Indiana, and has set her sights on getting the North Carolina race as close as possible. Mr. Obama leads there, but keeping the margin thin would allow her to continue arguing to superdelegates that she is more deserving of the party nod.

Both states are critical with just one month left of Democratic contests.

As expected, Mr. Obama won the caucus in Guam, but by a mere seven votes. Final returns early this morning from the small Pacific island showed 2,264 votes for him to Mrs. Clinton's 2,257.

The contest sparked wide interest, including campaign ads and a radio appearance by Mr. Clinton, even though Guam only gets four pledged-delegate votes at the Democratic National Convention — eight delegates, each of whom can cast a half-vote. Mr. Obama remains fewer than 280 delegates from securing the nomination.