There is a ceasefire in the Democratic presidential battle, but Barack Obama is still waiting for Hillary Clinton to surrender.

He proclaims that he is “within reach” of victory, confident that time, money and the remorseless mathematical logic of his delegate lead will make her lingering resistance futile.

Although he lost Kentucky’s primary on Tuesday by a landslide 35-point margin — confirming his weakness among white voters in the conservative Appalachian region — Mr Obama comfortably won the whiter but more liberal state of Oregon in the Pacific North West.

He now has a majority of the party’s elected delegates and, by most counts, needs just a few dozen more votes at the convention to be certain of clinching the nomination.

Mrs Clinton insists that she will fight on — “never giving up and never giving in”. It is, she says, “the only way I know how”. Geoff Garin, her chief strategist, even hinted yesterday that she might continue beyond the final primaries on June 3 in a desperate effort to sway minds among the dwindling number of uncommitted super-delegates.

But the fires of this epic fight are cooling. She no longer claims that her rival is unfit to be commander-in-chief, merely that her victories in key swing states show that she is “best positioned” to take on John McCain in the general election.

Yesterday both candidates were in Republican-leaning Florida — pivotal in the past two presidential elections — and where Mrs Clinton is pressing for the votes to be counted from her victory this year.

Delegates from Florida and Michigan are banned from the Democratic convention because the states broke rules by holding primaries in January. Mrs Clinton compared this to shenanigans over the hanging chads and recounts in Florida which, many Democrats believe, cheated Al Gore of the presidency in 2000.

The party’s rules committee will consider next week what to do. There is talk of seating half the delegates from the disputed primaries, which would only dent Mr Obama’s lead but give Mrs Clinton the edge in the question of who has won the most votes — a measure deemed largely irrelevant by her opponent.

But Mr Obama may yet accept a compromise on the disputed delegates: he wants to mend fences and get on with building support in Florida — where Mr McCain campaigned on Tuesday with a venomous speech attacking him over his willingness to meet foreign dictators.

Yesterday it was the Republican nominee-elect, rather than his Democratic rival, who was Mr Obama’s chief target. Mr McCain, he said, “wants to perpetuate the same errors that George Bush has made”.

In the coming days he will sweep through other general election battlegrounds such as Colorado in the West, as well as some of those he has lost to Mrs Clinton including Pennsylvania and Ohio in the East. He will make more of a token effort in the remaining primaries of Puerto Rico, Montana and South Dakota.

Mr Obama is already laying plans to take over the Democratic Party apparatus and install his own team for the general election. Speaking in Tampa, Florida, Mr Obama came close to declaring that he was the presumptive nominee, saying that his bet has paid off and his faith in the American people “had been vindicated”.

He is, however, sensitive to complaints from the Clinton camp that he risks echoing President Bush’s infamous “mission accomplished” boasts about the Iraq war — or being seen to push a candidate who commands extraordinary loyalty among many women voters out of the race.

In speeches he showers praise on Mrs Clinton’s courage and perseverance, suggesting that she has “broken through barriers” for women everywhere including his own daughters. Mrs Clinton, too, is increasingly injecting a conciliatory note into her fighting talk. “We continue to go toe-to-toe for this nomination but we do see eye-to-eye when it comes to electing a Democratic president,” she said in Kentucky on Tuesday night. “We will come together as a party — and when we do there will be no stopping us.”

Some of Mr Obama’s aides suspect that she wants to negotiate terms or, perhaps, stake a claim for the vice-presidential slot. But they refuse to believe Mrs Clinton is the best — let alone the only — Democrat who can balance his ticket by appealing to the white working-class.

There are concerns that Mr Obama’s brand of “new politics” might be damaged by linking up with her, as well as concerns that Mrs Clinton — together with her husband — would become a focal point for intrigue or division in the White House.

Instead, the names of some of her prominent backers such as Ted Strickland and Ed Rendell, the governors of Ohio and Pennsylvania, or Evan Bayh, the Indiana senator, are being talked of as possible running-mates.

Mr Obama’s aides acknowledge that they have a problem connecting with the rural working-class voters, especially in the Appalachian region. Nearly half of Kentucky’s voters on Tuesday said that they would not support him in a general election and two in ten said that race was a factor in their decision.

Plans are already being laid to offset such opposition by registering millions more black voters in states such as Virginia, North Carolina and Georgia, states won by President Bush in 2004 but where Mr Obama believes rock-solid support from African Americans could help him into the White House.

Mr Obama’s chief strategist, David Axelrod, has already effectively poured cold water over the prospect of an another deal with Mrs Clinton under which she would receive help in paying off some of her campaign debts, estimated at between $20 million (£10 million) and $30 million.

Mrs Clinton remains beleaguered and under seige. But her victories in recent weeks have given her enough ammunition to avoid flying any white flags just yet.

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