United for Peace of Pierce County, WA - We nonviolently oppose the reliance on unilateral military actions rather than cooperative diplomacy.

As a surprising turn of events Tuesday night kept Americans up late watching poll results from Indiana, the mayor of Gary told the Washington Post that "[W]hen Gary comes in, I think you're looking at something for the world to see. I don't know what the numbers are yet, but Gary has absolutely produced in large numbers for Obama here."[1] -- "Gary, a predominantly African-American, post-industrial city, is considered a major stronghold for the Illinois senator, whose South Side Chicago home is just a short drive across the border," Alec MacGillis reported. -- The Canadian Press devoted a piece to Obama's strength in Gary, observing that "Barack Obama holds a major home court advantage here, where residents have watched the rise of his political career in Chicago, just a half-hour to the west across the state line."[2] -- In North Carolina on Tuesday, meanwhile, Barack Obama beat Hillary Clinton by about 230,000 votes or 14 percentage points, 56% to 42%. -- Television commentators said Tuesday evening that Clinton's "full speed ahead" victory declaration early in the evening was principally designed for an appeal for more contributions from supporters, but that in recognition of her potential May 6 Waterloo she had cancelled further appearances pending an evaluation of the situation. -- A curious AP piece was titled "Indiana's Lake County Has Tradition of Late Vote Tallies," but contained no mention of any such tradition.[3] -- The Sydney Morning Herald in Australia felt no need to wait for the news from Lake County. -- The paper declared before the final results in Indiana were available that "Obama is now in a virtually unassailable position and is on the brink of being the Democratic nominee. In winning North Carolina by at least 10 points, and by holding Clinton's victory in Indiana to under five points, Obama has effectively ended the potency of her appeal to the superdelegates that he is less electable and that she deserves their votes to be the nominee."[4] -- The senator from Illinois has apparently emerged unscathed from the Republican-engineered "Operation Chaos," which had pundit Rush Limbaugh encouraging Republicans to vote for Hillary Clinton in the Indiana primary "to keep her in the race and to have her bloody up Obama in the process of staying in the race," in Limbaugh's words....

As the fate of a nailbiter Indiana primary -- and possibly the course of the Democratic race -- hung on his city, Gary Mayor Rudy Clay said just now that it might take a while yet to finish counting the vote in Lake County, which includes Gary, and said tonight his city had turned out so overwhelmingly for Barack Obama that it might just be enough to close the gap with Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"Let me tell you, when all the votes are counted, when Gary comes in, I think you're looking at something for the world to see," Clay, an Obama supporter, said in a telephone interview from Obama's Gary headquarters. "I don't know what the numbers are yet, but Gary has absolutely produced in large numbers for Obama here."

Clay said the results were late coming in from Lake County because of the large numbers of absentee ballots that had to be counted -- about 11,000. Under local practice, all of the cartridges from voting machines in Gary and nearby East Chicago are first collected at the local airport before being driven to the county headquarters to be tallied with the results from the rest of the county, he said. He said there were no major technical problems holding up the count.

"It takes a little time. We want to be sure that every vote is counted fair and right," he said. "I just talked to the director out there and they are working like junkyard dogs to get that done as soon as possible. They are taking some time but I told them to do it right. That's what taking the time."

Gary, a predominantly African-American, post-industrial city, is considered a major stronghold for the Illinois senator, whose South Side Chicago home is just a short drive across the border. Smaller towns within Lake County are expected to break in a more balanced way between Obama and Clinton. In 2004, 188,000 voters turned out in Lake County, with 61 percent voting for John Kerry. Clay predicted that Clinton would win other towns in the county by narrow margins but that Obama would rack up huge totals in Gary, where he said some precincts reported only a handful of votes for Clinton. So closely was he following the local vote counting that he did not even know how close the statewide vote had gotten -- a four percentage difference at 10:30.

In March, Clay predicted the race would come down to Gary, telling the Northwest Indiana and Illinois Times that tonight on CNN, "They are going to point at Indiana and say Hillary Clinton is leading by one point but Gary ain't come in yet."

Clay himself was deeply involved in get out the vote efforts this afternoon, going door to door to drum up anyone who hadn't yet voted, he said. A volunteer in the Obama office in Gary said that canvassers who went out today found that in some neighborhoods almost everyone reported having already cast an absentee ballot.

"It was one of the biggest get out the vote campaigns I've seen," Clay said. "It was the biggest get out the vote campaign ever in Gary for a presidential election."

GARY, Ind. -- It's in the heart of a key battleground in Indiana's Democratic primary Tuesday -- this predominantly black steel city full of excited hope that carries a palpable nervous edge.

Barack Obama holds a major home court advantage here, where residents have watched the rise of his political career in Chicago, just a half-hour to the west across the state line.

Early in the nomination race, there were reservations about his general appeal, but that gave way to wonder with his triumphs in white states like Iowa, Vermont, and Maine.

Now, with worries about a "white flight" of blue-collar voters who flocked to rival Hillary Clinton in Ohio and Pennsylvania, few hold back on their tense determination and potent desire to see Obama knock her out.

"Gary's got his back," retired day-care worker Dorothy Cowan declared outside a grocery store on Broadway Avenue, a central street where boarded windows reflect the painful decline of steel industry jobs.

"He really needs this vote to take Indiana. If he stays strong, he'll be all right. I'm praying."

Finally, a place that has viewed itself as an overlooked underdog for decades has a chance to make its mark on the nomination fight of a lifetime.

With Indiana's generally reliable Republican leanings and a nomination primary coming too late to have an impact, residents haven't been wooed by presidential contenders since Robert Kennedy and Richard Nixon in 1968.

Many African Americans in this struggling liberal northwestern pocket of a heavily conservative state aren't taking anything for granted.

"They're going to the polls this time, they're not just talking," says Julia Smith, a pharmacy technician.

A win in Indiana would help Obama rebut Clinton's argument she's better placed to capture lower-income voters crucial to winning this fall's general election against Republican John McCain.

Gary Mayor Rudy Clay, a staunch, vocal Obama supporter, is predicting that the galvanized grassroots movement in the city will carry him to victory in the tight state contest.

There have already been complaints from Clinton supporters in nearby union towns along Lake Michigan who are angry that Gary has been using tax dollars to bus high school seniors to the county courthouse for early voting.

Founded in 1906 by United States Steel Corp., Gary thrived until the industry started dropping workers in the 1960s.

The city of 100,000, which is more than 80 per cent African American, is plagued with some of the highest rates of violence and unemployment in the country.

Outside of the central capital of Indianapolis, populated by some 250,000 blacks, Gary is Obama's best bet in a classic rural small-town state where the demographics are often overwhelmingly white.

In those areas, the angry anti-American outbursts from Obama's ex-pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, have threatened to tarnish the candidate's image as the country's first mainstream black candidate.

Indiana was once a major base for the Klu Klux Klan and several communities have a history of racial conflict -- a troubling scenario at a juncture when race has become such a predominant issue.

"I don't think a lot of people are ready for a black man," said Angie Andrews, taking a break from her job as an attendant at a dry cleaners.

"I just hope people can overlook Wright. Obama ain't got nothing to do with that."

For Andrews, who's in her 40s, Obama is nothing short of the reincarnation of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King.

She expects big things from him if he makes it to the White House, just not right away.

"Not in the first year, maybe the second year, maybe the third. He's got to get fixed with the Congress."

While Obama hasn't been in Gary since early April, his footprints are all over the city, said Arnold Finch, 28, who works as many shifts as he can get at Industrial Steel.

"He knows what we need. He wants to bring the gas prices down and make sure kids get more education. Clinton ain't saying what we need in life."

"There will be a lot more open doors than shut doors. That's what I pray for -- a lot of change around here, and in every city and state."

Obama has told voters in Gary that he'd end the Iraq war and use some of the money to help people like them.

And he's blasted corporate executives making millions while workers are losing their pensions.

Throughout the northwest, he has been emphasizing his early work in southside Chicago communities that have been bashed hard by job losses.

Clinton, too, has campaigned hard in blue-collar towns around Gary, backed up by her husband Bill and daughter Chelsea, where her focus on creating jobs is resonating.

Smith, though, is unimpressed with her support of a gas tax holiday this summer, something Obama has called a "classic Washington gimmick" that wouldn't keep prices down in the long term and would eat into a fund to repair bridges and roads.

"She's just saying something to get voters," said Smith. "She's not thinking about how she's going to do this."

GARY, Ind. -- Indiana's sometimes-stepchild county held the balance late Tuesday in deciding whether Hillary Rodham Clinton would gain a key primary victory.

Lake County, the state's second-most populous with nearly 500,000 people, had reported no results as of 11 p.m. EDT. A large number of absentee ballots and a record turnout delayed the tallies, and polls there close an hour later than much of the state because Lake is in the Central time zone.

Lake County, which runs along the southern shore of Lake Michigan, is an amalgamation of steel mills and chemical plants in cities with large minority populations such as Gary and Hammond, along with numerous mostly white suburbs to the south. It always has had more in common with neighboring Chicago than the rest of Indiana. As such, it was expected to favor Sen. Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential race.

The county is in the Chicago television market, where the Illinois senator has received plenty of coverage since being elected in 2004.

Another factor is race. Lake County is the state's most diverse, with 26 percent of its population black and 14 percent Hispanic.

The county has long been a Democratic stronghold and a key to the party's hopes in statewide races. In 2004, it provided nearly 12 percent of all the votes John Kerry received in Indiana.

Clinton and her husband made numerous campaign trips to Lake County, hoping to gain advantage among its Hispanic and blue-collar white voters.

"The delegate count continues inexorably, however, and even with a double-barrel loss, Obama will gain at least 80 delegates, putting him within 200 of victory. But he needs North Carolina to give his calculus continued grunt and traction." --White House 08, smh.com.au, May 5, 2008

"You know, when this campaign began, Washington didn't give us too much of a chance. But because you came out in the bitter cold, and knocked on doors, and enlisted your friends and neighbours in this cause, because you stood up to the cynics and the doubters and the naysayers, when we were up and when we were down, because you still believe that this is our moment and our time to change America, tonight we stand less than 200 delegates away from securing the Democratic nomination for president of the United States." --Barack Obama, North Carolina victory speech, May 7

Barack Obama did exactly what he needed on Tuesday to continue his decisive march to victory in the epic battle with Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination.

Obama is now in a virtually unassailable position and is on the brink of being the Democratic nominee.

In winning North Carolina by at least 10 points, and by holding Clinton's victory in Indiana to under five points, Obama has effectively ended the potency of her appeal to the superdelegates that he is less electable and that she deserves their votes to be the nominee.

Clinton is formidable and tenacious and, in Indiana, she held her very strong margins in core Democratic constituencies: white blue-collar voters, seniors, union members. But she was unable to reprise her double-digit victory only a week ago in Pennsylvania because Obama was able to increase the turnout in his base, particularly among younger voters and with crossover independents and Republicans.

The bald populism of Clinton's late appeal on petrol prices -- and the most dangerous place in U.S. politics to be is between an American and the petrol pump -- failed to gain sufficient traction with voters in both states.

So, while she told her victory rally in Indiana: "It's full speed on to the White House," the message she will get from the superdelegates in the coming days is that their ranks will continue to break to Obama. Indeed, in the past month, Obama has won 80 per cent of the 100+ supers who have declared, and her overall lead among the supers has dwindled to no more than 15. Obama's supers drip will flow more heavily and it will be a source of increasing pressure on Clinton in the coming days.

There is a lot of continuing concern about what this race is doing for prospects of Democratic unity in November. It will be a challenge.

But a footnote on the Republicans: John McCain also won in Indiana and North Carolina on Tuesday. But 22 per cent of the Republicans in Indiana and 25 per cent in North Carolina voted for other candidates who threw in the towel: Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, Mitt Romney. So there is an issue of enthusiasm in the Republican ranks even as McCain has sealed a remarkable comeback.

Conservative voters have been accused of hijacking today's Democratic presidential primary in Indiana.

There are indications that up to 10% of voters in Indiana were "crossover" voters -- Republicans voting in a Democratic primary. Crossover voting is not allowed in North Carolina, where Barack Obama won comfortably.

Crossover voting has been heavily encouraged by conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, who has been directing his listeners to take part in his "Operation Chaos."

Limbaugh is encouraging Republicans to vote for Senator Clinton to both prolong the Democratic contest and to damage Barack Obama.

On his show on the day of the May 6 primaries, Limbaugh explained, "Operation Chaos was born primarily for the purpose of assuming Obama was going to be the nominee . . . He needs to be bloodied up politically since McCain is not going to do it.

"The only person that can do it is Hillary, and she can't do it if she's not in the race -- and so the purpose of Operation Chaos was to keep her in the race and to have her bloody up Obama in the process of staying in the race. I'm talking about politically."

Ten per cent of those who participated in the Democratic primary were Republican voters who intend to vote for John McCain in November, AAP reported.

Local news station WSBT22 said Republican Party officials in Elkhart County were reporting at least 22 precincts, out of 110 in the state, with major crossover voting.

Two readers posted comments at the bottom claiming they were directly influenced by Operation Chaos. Troy wrote "Hey Ed, turn on your AM radio. Operation Chaos!" and Ed wrote "Operation Chaos . . . That's why I crossed over. Thanks Rush!!!"

CNN's latest figures are 522,286 votes for Clinton and 483,899 for Obama. If 10% of Senator Clinton's votes came from Republicans (52,000 votes), Operation Chaos has succeeded in influencing the Indiana primary.

According to the Associated Press, over one million votes were cast in both the Democratic and Republican presidential races, and some stations were ordered to stay open after they ran out of ballot papers.