WASHINGTON, March 8 – Al Gore and George W. Bush emerged Wednesday as the all-but-certain presidential nominees following crushing "Super Tuesday" victories over the underdogs that put the November 7 White House race into focus.
Gore buried the faltering hopes of former senator Bill Bradley, who failed to win any of the Democratic Party Super Tuesday contests up for grabs and was reported to be preparing an announcement of his withdrawal.
Bush triumphed in key states against Republican challenger John McCain, whose insurgent campaign sparked a groundswell of popular support from crossover Democrats and independents in his early primary forays.
The results set up a showdown between the heirs of two political families: Gore is aiming for a goal his father, Albert, a senator from Tennessee, failed to achieved, while Bush will be trying to avenge his father's loss to Bill Clinton in 1992.
The vice president and the Texas governor both sounded conciliatory notes to their party challengers while sharpening their message for the general election.
"I'm feeling a lot of joy and a lot of gratitude to all the people who helped me to the victories last night, and a lot of desire to reach out to those who supported other candidates and to those who want to join this campaign and make it a cause for America's future," Gore told CBS.
Gore said he had received "a very gracious and friendly call" from Bradley late Tuesday, adding, "I appreciated it very much and I told him of how much Tipper and I think of him and Ernestine."
Bradley will announce his withdrawal Thursday, CNN and other networks reported, citing sources close to the former senator. There was no immediate confirmation from the Bradley campaign.
Bush, who was comfortably in the driver's seat, said of the Arizona senator, "We agree more than we disagree."
Asked by NBC what his message to McCain is now, Bush replied, "I would say, 'John, let's team up and let's win. Let's beat Al Gore.'"
Bush won the Republican contests in the big states of California, New York and Ohio by comfortable margins, which together offer 332 delegates to the Republican convention opening late July.
Bush also took Georgia, Maine, Maryland, Missouri, Minnesota and Washington while McCain won in Vermont, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
According to CNN, Bush has 681 of the 1,034 delegates needed to nominate the Republican candidate for president, to 225 for McCain.
In his victory speech, Bush lost no time in turning his attention to the upcoming contest with Gore. "Tonight we have good news from sea to shining sea," he said in Austin, Texas. "We were challenged and we met the challenge."
Referring to the race to November, he said: "Soon our party will reunite and turn to the main task at hand: ending the era of Clinton-Gore."
Gore appeared eager to cross swords with the Republican favorite who has been mired for weeks in an increasingly vitriolic campaign with McCain. "You ain't seen nothing yet. Our fight has just begun," Gore said from Nashville, Tennessee, where he monitored the results.
"I will challenge the Republican nominee to hold joint open meetings with me to make
this a contest of ideas and not insults, a campaign conducted in full daylight and not through secretly funded special interest attack ads or smear telephone calls from the extremist right wing."
He also gave a broad outline of how he hoped to beat Bush, taking swipes at the Texas governor's anti-abortion stand, education platform and pledges to drastically cut taxes.
Gore said he intended to reach out to "those who want to keep the prosperity going rather than going back to an old, discredited policy with a risky tax scheme that put us into recessions in the past and could threaten our prosperity in the future."
The vice president also made an overt bid to reel in McCain followers who may be tempted to steer clear of the more conservative Bush, who will also be seeking to win over his Republican opponents' supporters. "And to those Republicans and independents out there whose heroes are Theodore Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, to all of you I say as well, 'Join with us. Our campaign is now your cause,'" said Gore.
With the Tuesday victories, Gore had locked up 1,421 of the 2,170 delegates needed to secure the Democratic nomination, to 411 for Bradley, CNN said.
A near sweep of New England states offered little consolation to McCain, who agreed before polling day that he needed to take two of the big three states California, New York and Ohio, to stay alive.
In his concession speech in Los Angeles, McCain suggested that he may pull the plug on his insurgent White House bid and that his participation in future primaries was uncertain. "Over the next few days we'll take some time to enjoy our victories and take stock of our losses," he said.
