Illinois Sen. Barack Obama urged tens of thousands of supporters under sunny skies at Portland's waterfront to send a message in Tuesday's primary that the time has come for change. "We are tired of business as usual and we are going to change America," he told the crowd, which filled the bowl south of the Hawthorne Bridge and spilled into boats on the Willamette River and along the bridge.
Obama said the crowd of 30,000 was spectacular, but estimates ranged as high as 70,000.
Obama focused his remarks on Republican Sen. John McCain, and promised that Democrats would be united in their battle against him.
The campaigns of Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton were making one final, frenetic charge to the finish line today in Oregon, a state once dismissed as "irrelevant" in choosing the Democratic nominee.
Obama started his day greeting seniors at Huntington Terrace Assisted Living Facility in Gresham and warning them about Republican plans for Social Security.
While he was speaking there, thousands were lining up on downtown streets more than two hours ahead of the rally. Obama will wrap up his Oregon quest with a town hall meeting in Pendleton tonight.
Clinton was being represented by her husband, former President Clinton, and daughter, Chelsea, who are barnstorming their way south with stops in Portland, Salem and Ashland.
Sporting a blue "Hillary 2008" baseball cap, the former president told more than 1,000 people at Salem's sun-drenched Riverfront Park to ignore the growing news media consensus that Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois has all but wrapped up the nomination. "Don't you let anyone tell you she can't win," Clinton said. "You can still make your voices heard."
In Salem Sunday, Clinton received a rousing introduction from Gov. Ted Kulongoski, who has remained a staunchly loyal Hillary Clinton superdelegate, one of the delegates not bound by state voting results.
At the waterfront, Obama said to ignore the Republican attacks that emphasize he isn't ready to be president. "This is our moment," he said. "This is our time."
Obama told the seniors at the Huntington Terrace Retirement Center today that McCain would threaten the Social Security because he supports privatizing the program. "Let me be clear, privatizing Social Security was a bad idea when George W. Bush proposed it, it's a bad idea today," Obama said. "That's why I stood up against this plan in the Senate and that's why I won't stand for it as president."
Obama said McCain also would push to raise the retirement age for collecting Social Security benefits or trim annual cost-of-living increases. Obama has rejected both ideas as solutions to the funding crisis projected for Social Security in favor of making higher-income workers pay more into the system.
McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds accused Obama of making "misinformed partisan attacks." "John McCain has been clear about his belief that we must fix Social Security for future generations and keep our promises to today's retirees, but raising taxes should not be the answer to every problem," Bound told the Associated Press.
Today's Obama events follow his ramble up Interstate 5 on Saturday and a Friday visit by Hillary Clinton. The campaign flurry signals the end of a historic primary battle -- Oregon hasn't seen this kind of attention in a primary since 1968, when Robert Kennedy crisscrossed the state.
Obama will spend election night in Iowa, where his campaign was launched into the spotlight. Clinton won't be in Oregon either and is expected to be in Kentucky, where polls show her ahead of Obama.
Recent polls show Obama is likely to win in Oregon. Analysts increasingly consider him the most likely to win the nomination, a view he did little to dissuade Saturday.
At stops in Roseburg, Eugene and Salem, Obama dwelled on health care and his clashes with McCain. He said McCain's plan to offer a tax credit for working families to buy health insurance doesn't go far enough. And he said he would pull all troops out of Iraq years before McCain would.
"You've got John McCain wanting to stay in Iraq, and I want to end the war in Iraq. You've got John McCain essentially offering Bush's health plan, and you've got me offering universal health care," Obama said. "People could not have a starker choice in this election."
Bounds, spokesman for the McCain campaign, agreed that the gap between the two is wide.
He said Obama "is not someone whose plan for Iraq includes success or victory." He said McCain is talking about winning the war in a way that allows for a stable transition by Iraqis to a Democratic society.
Obama visited with nurses at Sacred Heart Medical Center in Eugene, ate ice cream at a Eugene shop and stopped at the Keizer Iris Festival on his way up to Portland.
As he was leaving Sacred Heart, one staff member shouted out a question that stopped Obama in his tracks:
"Mr. Obama, how do I know I can trust you?" asked Ron Spooner, an X-ray technician. Obama walked over.
"That's always a tough question," Obama said. But without missing a beat, he suggested Spooner read one of his books and look up his resume. "Look at what I've done over the last 20 years," Obama suggested.
Spooner told Obama he was trying to make up his mind between him and McCain. He said he started leaning Obama's way when the candidate refused to go along with suggestions for a proposed summerlong "holiday" from federal gas taxes.
"To me, that was being honest," Spooner said. The two shook hands, and Obama promised more honesty.
Meanwhile, Bill Clinton told a crowd of several hundred at North Clackamas Park in Milwaukie that his wife was the best and most electable candidate.
Sweating through a red-checkered shirt under a hot sun, the former president told voters to ignore polls and cast their ballots. "It's silly for some people to say, oh, you don't matter, Kentucky doesn't matter, that everybody doesn't need to vote," Bill Clinton said.
He spent nearly 50 minutes giving a detailed and sweeping speech that covered Iran's nuclear ambitions and his wife's plans for health care, the economy and the military. And he discussed Oregon-specific issues, saying Hillary Clinton is the only candidate to co-sponsor bills that would better regulate liquefied natural gas terminals and that would extend timber payments to rural counties.
"She can win in the popular vote, she's ahead in the electoral vote, she can still win this thing," the former president said. "But the most important thing is, she'd be the best president."
Earlier in Portland, Chelsea Clinton spent an hour talking to 40 volunteers training to be Planned Parenthood political activists. Clinton emphasized her mother's long support for reproductive rights and health care. As president, Clinton said, her mother would expand sex education and teen pregnancy prevention programs, raise taxes on people making more than $250,000 a year, make it easier for generic drug companies to make pills and nominate pro-choice judges to the U.S. Supreme Court.
When Alicia Viani asked what Sen. Clinton would do to counter oppression of women, Chelsea Clinton said her mother would expand federal health insurance coverage for contraception, increase the food stamps program and the federal earned income tax credit. And she discussed Clinton's health plan in detail, saying it would insure all Americans but Obama's plan would not.
Viani later said she was pleased with Clinton's attention to women's and reproductive rights. But "I'm not voting for her mom," she said. She said Obama seems more likely than Clinton to make "radical change on many fronts."
-- Harry Esteve; harryesteve@news.oregonian.com
-- Andy Dworkin; andydworkin@news.oregonian.com
Noelle Crombie and Whitney Malkin of The Oregonian and The Associated Press contributed to this posting.