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Hillary facing pressure cooker
02/03/2008 21:40 - (SA)
Westerville - Democrat Hillary Clinton faced pressure on Sunday to abandon her White House bid heading into pivotal contests in Ohio and Texas that are unlikely to dent Barack Obama's surging momentum.
Democratic grandees who are supporting Obama said that, for the sake of party unity, Clinton should consider her options after Tuesday's primary battles as the Republicans rally behind their heir apparent, John McCain.
The pressure on the former first lady intensified as new polls suggested she was deadlocked with Obama in Texas and Ohio, far from the kind of blow-out wins that she needed to overhaul his lead among Democratic delegates.
However, the former first lady has come out firing against her rival, issuing an ominous television spot that suggests Obama would be ill-prepared to protect United States children in the event of a foreign-policy crisis.
"This is a wartime election," she told a rally on Sunday in the Ohio town of Westerville.
Too much bickering
"For some people, this election is about how you feel. It is about speeches. That is not what it is about for me," she said. "It is about solutions."
One party elder not yet endorsing either candidate, New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, said "the bickering between these two very fine senators is going on too long" as they fought running battles about national security.
"D Day is Tuesday. We have to have a positive campaign after Tuesday," said Richardson, who abandoned his own White House bid in January, on CBS News.
"Whoever has the most delegates after Tuesday, a clear lead, should be the nominee."
The latest count of nominating delegates by website RealClearPolitics shows Obama leading by 1 389 to Clinton's 1 279, with the freshman senator pulling into the lead after 11 nominating wins in a row.
A total of 2 025 delegates is needed for victory at the Democrats' August nominating convention in Denver.
Tuesday's votes look unlikely to change that picture much, given that Democratic primaries award delegates on a proportional basis.
A new poll by Ohio's Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper found Senator Clinton slightly ahead in the economically struggling state, by 47% - 43%.
'All of us respect Clintons'
Obama led in Texas by 46% - 45%, according to polling by McClatchy Newspapers, MSNBC television and the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
The results were within the four-point margin of error for both polls.
Senator Richard Durbin, who is backing his Illinois colleague Obama, denied that Clinton would face orchestrated pressure to bow out after Tuesday "because all of us respect her and her family".
"But I hope that there's an honest appraisal of her chances to win the nomination after Tuesday," he told Fox News on Sunday.
"And, having made that appraisal... I hope she'll understand that we need to bring our party together and prepare for a victory in November, which is the ultimate goal."
Clinton's communications advisor Howard Wolfson was adamant that the race would go on beyond Tuesday, with delegate-rich Pennsylvania the next big state to vote in April.
"What I'm saying is, we're going to have a great day on Tuesday. We're going to win this nomination. This nomination fight is going to go forward after Ohio and Texas," he said on ABC television.
"We're going to go to Pennsylvania, where a lot more Americans are going to vote, and we're going to be the nominee in Denver."
Wolfson, meanwhile, raised questions about Obama's links to a Chicago property developer, Antoin Rezko, whose federal trial for corruption is set to open on Monday.
Obama's chief strategist David Axelrod said the Rezko affair had been "thoroughly reviewed" by the Chicago and national press.
Huckabee at risk
"No one has asserted any wrongdoing on the part of Senator Obama," he said, while demanding that Clinton release her recent tax returns, and records from her time as first lady.
McCain, a Vietnam war hero and foreign-policy veteran, looks set to seal the Republican nomination on Tuesday by eliminating the pesky challenge of former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee.
The Arizona senator is already framing the presidential election in terms of who can best take on the "transcendent challenge" of Islamic extremism, and accuses the Democrats of wanting to cut and run from Iraq.
Obama fired back by insisting that both Clinton and McCain gave the "wrong answer" to the foremost policy question of recent years, whether to invade Iraq.
- AFP
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