Clinton vows no surrender in election race
By Alain Jean-Robert
Agence France-Presse
First Posted 07:17:00 03/31/2008
Filed Under: US elections, Politics
STATE COLLEGE, Pennsylvania—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 August 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.
Accompanied by Pennsylvania Senator Bob Casey, whose coveted endorsement he won last week, Obama paid a lunchtime visit Saturday to a bar in Johnstown frequented by blue-collar workers playing pool and watching TV.
"We may not be able to win (in Pennsylvania) but I think we've got a good chance and we're going to work as hard as we can," he told a later rally at a high school in the former mining settlement of Johnstown.
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