It's still not over, or is it?

Is it over?

It is if you listen to Sen. Barack Obama's camp, which two weeks ago predicted Tuesday's Oregon and Kentucky primaries would give him a majority of pledged convention delegates -- those won through the lengthy primary and caucus process.

Tuesday's results, a big Obama win in Oregon and an even bigger Hillary Clinton victory in Kentucky, did boost Obama to that predicted majority.

But, is it over?

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Not if you listen to Clinton's backers, who point out -- correctly -- that a pledged-delegate majority in this case does not quite a winner make, not when the few remaining few primaries will yield too few delegates to put Obama over the top.

Superdelegates, consisting of high-ranking elected and party officials, still will determine the outcome, as Obama's 1,940 pledged delegate count is short of the 2,026 delegates needed to seal the nomination.

Which means that the Democrats' intramural battle continues, as does a debate over what the latest results mean.

While Obama carefully avoided declaring victory and praised Clinton's effort when he spoke to an Iowa rally Tuesday night, some supporters are less circumspect.

"It really does say that this contest is over," said U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin of his colleague's capturing a majority of pledged delegates. "Superdelegates are not going to overturn the pledged delegates. Only her most loyal supporters could make that argument with a straight face."

But that is the case some Clinton backers are making.

"Things are going against her, but she can win," Bonnie Grabenhofer, a Clinton volunteer and president of Illinois NOW, said Tuesday. "Superdelegates were created to use their wisdom and vote for who would be the best candidate for the party, and the map shows that she's captured the large states needed for a Democratic win in November."

Mark Hansen, a University of Chicago political science professor, said the nomination belongs to Obama for all intents and purposes, but not because Tuesday's vote gave him a majority of pledged delegates.

"For weeks now, the movement has been in that direction for a whole bunch of reasons," Hansen said. "I don't think this alone would change anyone's mind."

But talk that the race is over rankles some Clinton supporters, particularly women, who express increasing resentment at the attitude of the news media and Obama campaign toward their candidate.

"There's been a lot of buzz in the women's community about the notion of asking Hillary to step aside that has been going on for a very long time," said Gay Bruhn, a pledged Clinton delegate from Aurora. "We think it's kind of like, 'Sit down and shut up.' "

"If the sexism we've seen in this campaign were expressed equivalently as racism," Grabenhofer said, "there would be an uproar. There would be outrage."

WomenCount PAC placed a full-page ad in Tuesday's New York Times calling it the party's responsibility to "hear our voices and count all of our votes."

Grabenofer and Bruhn, like Clinton delegate Brian McPartlin -- a veteran of the Bill Clinton administration and a Mount Prospect resident -- point to unresolved issues of Florida and Michigan primary votes. National party leaders have said they will not seat delegates from either state, a penalty for both conducting earlier-than-allowed primaries. Clinton won Florida by a wide margin. She also won in Michigan, but without Obama or John Edwards, still running at the time, on the ballot.

McPartlin points to May 31 as a crucial date, when the Democratic National Committee is expected to rule on the disputed states.

Margaret Blackshere of Niles, a longtime union official and now a superdelegate for Obama, said she understands the disappointment of Clinton backers, particularly women, who sense their candidate's chances slipping away.

"I've been in their position, where you put everything in it to win, but you don't win," she said. "You don't immediately go over to the guy or gal who beat you."

But Blackshere, like many other Obama backers, has little patience for talk of Florida and Michigan boosting Clinton to victory, saying that both states knew the rules, which should not be changed at this late date.

Grabenhofer, Bruhn and McPartlin all said they see no problem for Democrats even if the nomination contest stretches out until the convention in late August.

"The bottom line is that this is the most exciting presidential election in my lifetime," McPartlin said. "It's been healthy for the Democratic Party."

As for political scientists, like Hansen, the year is shaping up as a potential gold mine.

"One of the interesting things about this primary is that it may actually give us new data," Hansen said. "We have some evidence suggesting that divisive primaries hurt parties in the fall, but in every instance it's a situation where you wonder whether it was the divisive primary that caused problems in the fall or whether the divisive primary was because there were going to be problems in the fall anyway."