Clinton vows to stay in White House race
STATE COLLEGE, Pa —
Democrat Hillary Clinton vowed to stay in the White House race to the bitter end as party elders Sunday floated ideas to avert a paralyzing struggle between her and Barack Obama.
In a Washington Post interview, the former first lady said: “I know there are some people who want to shut this down and I think they are wrong. I have no intention of stopping until we finish what we started and until we see what happens in the next 10 contests, and until we resolve Florida and Michigan.”
The two states were stripped of their delegates to the Democrats’ August convention when they advanced their primaries into January. Clinton won both contests and needs the results to stand to have any chance of overhauling Obama’s lead in the national popular vote.
The Clinton-backing chief executive of Pennsylvania, which is the next state to vote on April 22, said it was a “disgrace” that Obama’s campaign was pressing for him to become the nominee with weeks of voting to go.
But Governor Edward Rendell, speaking on ABC television, also said he would “love” for the two star Democrats to join forces against Republican candidate John McCain for November’s general election.
Clinton, who is behind Obama in terms of elected delegates and states won, is under mounting pressure to bow out of the nominating race so that the Democrats can take the fight to McCain.
But Obama on Saturday said “Senator Clinton can run as long as she wants.”
“She should be able to compete, and her supporters should be able to support her for as long as they are willing or able,” the Illinois senator said on the campaign trail in Pennsylvania.
Former President Bill Clinton said his wife could still win the Democratic race and insisted that party unity would prevail.
“We just need to relax and let this happen. Nobody’s talking about wrecking the party, but there are real differences here,” he said in Pennsylvania.
Democratic National Committee chairman Howard Dean is warning the party needs to unify soon to avoid handing November’s election to McCain, and former New York governor Mario Cuomo said the party was courting “disaster.”
Writing in Sunday’s Boston Globe newspaper, Cuomo revived talk of a “dream ticket” pairing Obama and Clinton for the election, urging the warring candidates to announce a deal sooner rather than later.
Tennessee’s Democratic governor, Phil Bredesen, returned to his idea of a gathering in mid-June of the nearly 800 party luminaries known as “superdelegates” who are likely to decide the nomination.
The superdelegates would convene after the last primaries in Montana and South Dakota on June 3 with the aim of crowning a nominee well before the Aug 25-28 convention in Denver, he said on Fox News Sunday.
“I think it’s hurting us, hurting us tremendously,” he said of the protracted battle between Obama and Clinton, which polls suggest is helping drive up support for McCain.
Bredesen said the Democrats would eventually find a standard-bearer, “but if it’s the nominee of a divided party and an emotionally exhausted party, there’s just not time to conduct the kind of campaign we need to have.”
Obama, while refusing to back the calls for Clinton to quit, also said the nominee needed enough time before the convention to select a running mate and allow the party to regroup for the larger battle in November.
Clinton needs a big win in Pennsylvania to boost her argument that only she can win hefty states that Democrats need to recapture the White House.
She is leading Obama by double digits in most polls here, but that gap could narrow as he steps up his campaigning on the approach to the primary.
The Illinois senator fed a calf with a giant bottle of milk on a stop Sunday at the Penn State Agriculture Facilities, before holding a packed rally at a branch of the state university.
“You guys look good,” Obama told reporters forced to wear blue plastic boots to keep disease out of the dairy complex. “I bought some new shoes,” he said, explaining why he escaped the barnyard chic look.
AFP
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Hikozaemon
If I had any say in this, I would support Clinton. I like Obama more as a person, but he is more loopy left than centrist - anti-free trade, isolationist, etc. Although there again, as I recall Bush campaigned on isolationism and "a humble foreign policy" and look at how that ended up.
I like the Clintons, but they have failed to get the democratic nomination, and I agree that if she wants the democrats to win, she should step down and start supporting Obama now, and hopefully start trying to influence his policies.
As it is, the election will be a centrist candidate (McKain) against a far left (at least as the US goes) candidate. While I would prefer not voting for dems or republican, in order to not waste a presidential vote (all hail the 2 party dictatorship) and have it count, I think that in terms of the direction he would take America as an international citizen, McKain is the better candidate. Clinton forcing Obama to posture as a true-left candidate in a prolonged campaign will reinforce this perception and so she should pull out and let him claim her centrist supporters now if she wants the dems to have a shot.
Peace
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Nessie
At least she did the right thing by releasing her tax return and putting that issue to bed. ;)
http://img253.imageshack.us/my.php?image=clintontaxesvo9.jpg
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RomeoRamenII
Oh course hillary will stay in the race. barack chased all the white voters away by aligning himself with a "Hate Whitey", anti-American minister. If you sit in the pew, you agree with the view.
RR
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SezWho2
"If you sit in the pew, you agree with the view."
This is not true. People attend churches for a variety of reasons. Some people do not give up on their communities.
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RomeoRamenII
Sez;
A lot of black churches in the Chicago area. If barack indeed disagreed with his preacher of hate's spin on things, he could have gone down the street and joined another congregation.
But he didn't (and still hasn't). A person who attends a racist anti-American church for 20 years and says he wants to be the president of my country does not deserve my vote.
RR
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SezWho2
RomeoRamenII,
Whether he deserves your vote or not, your original comment is not true. Furthermore, it strikes me that your following comment is in itself racist.
It is true that if Obama disagreed with anything his minister said, he could have gone to another church. However, this does not mean that people should decamp to another church and another congregation every time they disagree. Sitting in the pew does not mean agreeing with the view.
Additionally, that Obama continued to sit in the pew argues more that Obama's view of Wright's view is perhaps more informed than your view of Wright's view. Perhaps it is not as racist or as anti-American as you claim. Where you hear hate, for example, I hear anger.
Furthermore, there are a lot of churches in the Chicago area. Who says Obama should have been going to a different black church? The focus on race is yours.
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buddha4brains
RomeoRamenII you are quite selective. There have been plenty on the right who have made similar claims. Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell and others have damned America in one form or another over the years. AIDS and 9-11 have been described as God's punishment of America for its liberal policies. Rev. Wright followed a similar script by saying that America's human rights abuses (domestic and foreign) deserves God's wrath. Typical fire and brimstone sermons however in this case the angry right-wing white preachers but somehow an angry left-wing black preacher is beyond the pale.
Seems that Obama needs overcome a higher standard than white McCain. Clinton has other problems besides a higher standard because of gender. I'd place her much closer to McCain in terms of style (not ideology). And her creative story telling is an eerie echo of Bush's perpetual sunny skies view of everything he does. No thank you.
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