PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) - Could Oregon be the state where Hillary Clinton pulls off a miracle comeback?
     
Or will it turn out to be the state that puts Barack Obama on top for good?
     
Maybe, just maybe, the Democratic presidential race will be all be over before the state's final votes are tallied on May 20, should Clinton decide to suspend her campaign in the wake of Tuesday's results from North Carolina and Indiana.
     
Or perhaps, Oregon's race will be just another stop near the end of an endless primary season, as the two battle all the way through to Montana and South Dakota on June 3.
     
Save for perhaps Clinton and Obama themselves, no one really knows whether one of these scenarios - or another, yet undreamed-up even by political junkies - will come true.
     
But all those possibilities were flying around the state Wednesday, as both campaigns prepared for overlapping visits by the two main players.
     
Clinton is due in Southern Oregon on Thursday night, after earlier campaign stops in West Virginia and South Dakota, and will be in Portland on Friday morning. Obama follows her to the state on Friday.
     
In a memo to superdelegates Wednesday, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe suggested his campaign is counting on a big win in Oregon.
     
"We believe that the winner of a majority of pledged delegates will and should be the nominee of our party. And we estimate that after the Oregon and Kentucky primaries on May 20, we will have won a majority of the overall pledged delegates," he said.
     
Since Clinton is expected to win handily in Kentucky, that suggests that the Obama campaign is counting on Oregon to provide enough delegates to seal the victory.
     
It takes 2,025 delegates to win the nomination in Denver this summer. Obama has 1,846.5 delegates to 1,696 for Clinton in The Associated Press tally.
     
Not so fast, Clinton partisans have warned.


     
Of the states left, Oregon is considered the most competitive, and her campaign has been aggressively trying to catch Obama.
     
No one will be watching more closely - or be more closely watched - then Oregon's eight uncommitted superdelegates, who may vote for the candidate of their choice at the convention.
     
In interviews Wednesday, most Oregon superdelegates said they would resist entreaties to make their leanings public until after the primary votes are counted May 20.
     
Oregon Secretary of State Bill Bradbury, who will represent his fellow Democratic secretaries of state as a superdelegate, said Clinton and Obama can't wait too long to laser in on Oregon, thanks to the state's unique vote-by-mail system.
     
By the final weekend before the primary, when campaigns in other states kick into their highest gear, about 50 percent of Oregon voters will have already turned in their ballots, Bradbury said.
     
Over the next two weeks, Bradbury said he'll watch closely to see how both Clinton and Obama fend off controversies. He's been impressed, he said, with the way Obama has dealt with the fallout from statements made by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
     
"It appears that he has survived that one superbly, given that Indiana is within 20,000 votes." Bradbury said. "That was a key issue for me."
     
Wayne Kinney, a superdelegate from Bend, said he doubted the race would sputter and end before it gets to Oregon. The dispute over seating delegates from Michigan and Florida, penalized for early primaries, awaits a May 31 meeting of the Democratic National Committee's Rules and Bylaws Committee, he said.
     
Clinton has held onto the possibility that delegates from those two states will be seated, giving her bid a big boost. Her campaign has argued that with the representation from those two states, the number of delegates needed to secure the nomination is really 2,209.
     
"That (May 31 meeting) guarantees that we are going to have a big primary effort here on May 20," Kinney said. "And a huge turnout. It is going to be really good for Oregon Democrats."
     
(Copyright 2008 by The Associated Press.  All Rights Reserved.)