Everyone knew when today began where it would end up; it was just a matter of how we’d get there.

The Associated Press tally, which included 11 delegates Senator Barack Obama was guaranteed as long as he gained 30 percent of the vote in South Dakota and Montana, declared Obama the winner in the early afternoon. Other news outlets were more cautious, though FoxNews.com and MSNBC.com (among others) ran banner headlines like, “AP: Obama Clinches Democratic Nomination With Superdelegates,” prescribing the credit to the AP. (A good strategy considering FoxNews’ history in this particular area.) As of 7:45 p.m. CST, even the Wikipedia page about the election stated that Obama was the Democratic nominee. (Hey, if relationships aren’t official until they’re on Facebook, then election results aren’t official until they’re on Wikipedia, right?) At around 9 p.m., CNN “projected” Obama to be the winner.

Obama will claim victory in a speech in St. Paul, Minnesota later this evening. The Drudge Report leaked the text of the speech, in which Obama declares, “Tonight, I can stand before you and say that I will be the Democratic nominee for President of the United States.”

It won’t become official official until Obama accepts the nomination at the Democratic National Convention on August 28, which is also the 45th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech. But with over 2,118 committed delegates as of Tuesday night, it’s about as official as it gets: Obama will go up against Senator John McCain as the first ever African-American to run on a major party ticket.