Clinton Fights Pressure to Withdraw, Tees Up for Fight With Party Elders
Hillary Clinton campaigns at Mishawaka High School in Indiana Friday. She rejected mounting pressure to end her campaign. (AP Photo)
Hillary Clinton, under mounting pressure to bow out of the presidential race and avoid a floor fight at the Democratic National Convention in August, is standing firm in her determination to fight Barack Obama to the finish.
Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut, a former candidate himself, said Clinton has virtually no chance of winning, and Sen. Patrick Leahy of Vermont said Friday the New York senator should just end her campaign.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wants the party’s uncommitted superdelegates to support the candidate who has the most votes, which to this point is Obama. And Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean on Friday urged all those superdelegates to announce whom they will support by July 1.
But Clinton says she will not abide by anyone’s timetable.
“There are some people who are saying, ‘You know, we really ought to end this primary; we just ought to shut it down’,” she said Friday in South Bend, Ind. “Well, one thing you know about me, when I tell you I’ll fight for you, I’ll get up every day and that’s exactly what I will do.”
Clinton told FOX News in an interview Wednesday that the race is a “long way from being over,” and that she’ll take it to the convention if she has to.
The Clinton campaign sent a fund-raising letter Friday that argued: “Every time our campaign demonstrates its strength and resilience, people start to suggest we should end our pursuit of the Democratic nomination … and they know we are in a position to win.”
The promise of short-term reward is not lost on Clinton. Polls show her way ahead in Pennsylvania, which holds its primary April 22 and offers an attractive 158 pledged delegates. That is roughly how many delegates separate the candidates.
“I think there’s very little chance that Hillary Clinton will drop out at all,” said Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia Center for Politics. “I think this will go all the way through to the end of the primaries. And look, she’s poised for a very substantial victory in Pennsylvania.”
But Democratic primaries are not winner-take-all. With a proportional allotment, Clinton has little chance of gaining much ground on Obama in Pennsylvania, even if she wins handily.
And party leaders are concerned that every day the Democratic race lasts gives another opening to presumptive GOP nominee John McCain.
On the day that McCain launched his first general election ad of the campaign, Obama supporter Leahy called on Clinton to withdraw, citing Obama’s endorsement by Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey as the latest sign of her undoing.
“There is no way that Sen. Clinton is going to win enough delegates to get the nomination,” Leahy told Vermont Public Radio in an earlier interview. “She ought to withdraw and she ought to be backing Senator Obama. Now, obviously that’s a decision that only she can make. Frankly, I feel that she would have a tremendous career in the Senate.”
Dodd, who also has endorsed Obama, told National Journal radio that party leaders need to “reach a conclusion” over the next several weeks.
“I think it’s very difficult to imagine how anyone can believe that Barack Obama can’t be the nominee of the party. I think that’s a foregone conclusion,” he said. “I think you have to make a decision, and hopefully the candidates will respect it and people will rally behind a nominee that, I think, emerges from these contests over the next month.”
The upper-level pressure is coming from Pelosi and Dean. They are both uncommitted and are not outright calling on Clinton to leave the race, but they are stonewalling part of her victory strategy.
Clinton and her supporters are banking on uncommitted superdelegates to put her over the edge, and they are looking to the convention as a final opportunity to settle the dispute over the Michigan and Florida delegations. Clinton won the primaries in both states, but they were disqualified for holding their primaries early, and none of the candidates campaigned in either of the states.
Dean’s determination to compel the superdelegates to announce their picks on July 1 could result in a candidate being chosen before the Florida and Michigan controversies are resolved.
Appearing on CBS’ “Early Show” on Friday, Dean said: “Well, I think the superdelegates have already been weighing in. I think there’s 800 of them and 450 of them have already said who they’re for. … I’d like the other 350 to say who they’re on between now and the first of July so we don’t have to take this into the convention.”
In a separate interview with The Associated Press, Dean warned against “demoralizing” Democrats with a drawn-out fistfight between Clinton and Obama.
Pelosi, meanwhile, has urged superdelegates to follow the choice of the pledged delegates, more of whom favor Obama. She rejected an overture by wealthy Clinton donors Wednesday that she recant that position.
With no end to the intra-party squabbling in sight, Obama joked Friday that this primary season is “like a good movie that lasted about a half an hour too long.”
“I think there are some people who felt like ‘God, when will this be over?’” he told a Pittsburgh, Pa., crowd. He later qualified, adding: “It’s been hard and tough because both Clinton and I understand what is at stake, how important this race is, how important the next presidency will be to the American people and to families right here in Pennsylvania.”
Though trailing in Pennsylvania, Obama’s shown a resilience to the recent controversy over his former pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.
According to a Gallup Poll released Friday, Obama leads nationally with 50 percent to the New York senator’s 42 percent, his biggest lead in that survey since the Wright controversy broke.
In response to Leahy’s calls for the race to end, Clinton supporter Sen. Chuck Schumer in a conference call Friday urged supporters to wait and see, citing the upcoming Pennsylvania primary.
Former Vice President Al Gore said Thursday that he expects the Democratic nomination fight will work itself out before the party’s convention.
“What have we got, five months left?” he told The Associated Press in a brief interview after a speech at Middle Tennessee State University.
“I think it’s going to resolve itself. But we’ll see.”
Gore didn’t elaborate.
FOX News’ Aaron Bruns and Bonney Kapp and The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Wait a minute; it was the DNC, headed by Howard Dean, who created the short-sighted ruling to disenfranchise the FL and MI votes. Technically, if the delegates Hillary received by those states had been counted, she would be ahead of Obama and this is why Obama and his supporters are throwing every encumbrance they can think of to disallow any revote. So who should step down? For starters, Kerry, Richardson, Kennedy, should remove themselves from office for attempting to override the will of the people in their very own home states. Next, Howard Dean should step down for being a part of this ridiculous rule, and last, but not least, Obama should concede the race to Hillary.
Let’s stop the Bull CRAP. Hillary is not the one who is splitting the party apart. It is the unfair tactics that have been conducted by specific members of the Democratic party. Hillary has been conducting a fair campaign although the majority of the Democratic voters might believe otherwise because of all the media-biased hype. The polls for the general election are painting an entirely different picture. The master-minds need to reconvene and play honestly in the next several months. Don’t try to stop the race when 10 States have not even voted in the primaries. Are we going to go into those states with one Democratic name on the ballot? What country does that remind you of? Have the leaders lost their minds?
A new ad by Sen. Obama running in Pennsylvania falsely claims that Obama doesn’t accept money from big oil. In the ad, Obama says, “I’m Barack Obama and I don’t take money from oil companies or lobbyists and I won’t let them block change anymore.” According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Sen. Obama has received over $160,000 from the oil and gas industry. The major bundlers for Obama’s campaign are George Kaiser and Robert Cavnar who are big oil CEOs. Obama has accepted money from Exxon, Shell, BP, Chevron and just about every oil company. Last month, Obama accepted another $8,400 from ExxonMobil, $12,370 from Chevron and $6,500 from British Petroleum. This makes Obama the biggest liar of them all. The last thing this country needs is another big oil president like Bush that allows the consumers to be shafted to no end. Yes the Obama supporters have been very naive. Obama is big oil’s man. Anyone that thinks that Obama will do something about gasoline prices needs to pay attention to these facts! Here we have Obama claiming that he doesn’t take money from big oil & that he will not let big oil block change while he’s been getting major campaign funding from big oil the entire time! Obama will never get my vote! I will never vote for big oil’s man!
Hilary only thinks of Hilary, not the party, not the country but Hilary.
There is such a thing as being a fighter and having tenacity but hurting so many in the process isn’t a good thing. I see she is a “the end justifies the means” person, not “the means justifies the end” person.
Hillary, the voters of America are not stupid. We know that 2 + 2 = 4. You don’t have the numbers. You cannot change the rules. If you had won 12 straight primaries and/or caucauses, had the most delegates, and the most popular vote, Obama would have been out of this race. It’s not for you this time. I know it goes against everthing you feel that you are entitled to, but please bow out gracefully.
I don’t understand Pelosi’s stance re the superdelegates. The whole point of creating the superdelegates was so that if some event (such as Rev. Wright’s flare-up) came after a number of states had already voted & a particular candidate’s electability was thereafter considered to be at risk, the party could correct the potentially disastrous result. In this instance, I’m not entirely sure that Rev. Wright’s impact has played itself out yet. Certainly, I’m not sure that the reverberations possible in the general election have been thoroughly analyzed and sufficiently taken into account. Could this make “Swiftboat” look like an afternoon tea & crumpets get-together?
I wish this media and all of them would please note that the candidates Clinton and Obama are not the “democratic” candidates. The correct word would be democrat. It’s just all to ironic because there is nothing democraTIC about the demoCRAT party. Please check whatever you have to check and phrase these things correctly.
Hillery, should stay in the race and now listen to the power boys so to speak . Hillery
staying in and fighting should prove her strength as a women to lead the nation. But she
must come out for economic developement.nuclear, fusion, solar energy. A National
Health plan . Anna Belle Bourgois
LEAHY AND DODD: These Obama cronies are from two tiny states (who represents about 4 million people in Vermont and Connecticut) are lecturing over 70 million people [(Pennsylvania (>12 million), West Virginia (>1.8 million), Kentucky (>4 million), Oregon (3.7 million), Indiana (> 6 million), Guam (0.17 million), Florida (>18 million), Michigan (>10 million), North Carolina (8.8 million), Puerto Rico (3.9 million), South Dakota (0.7 million), Montana (0.9 million)] that their voices won’t count. What arrogance. This is democracy not dictatorship. What right these two people (Dodd couldn’t even gain a single delegate in presidential election) have to tell over 70 million people that their judgment is inferior. Give me break. Let the people vote
Hillary has virtually no chance of winning the Democrat nomination, but that won’t stop her from doing what she does best; fight everyone who disagrees with her; disrupting the process for nominating a Presidential Candidate; pressuring the Superdelegates to vote in contrast with the Pledge Delegates; threatening House Speaker Pelosi and ignoring DNC Chairman Howard Dean; and anything else she can do to unethically tip the balance in her favor.
In other words, lie cheat and steal, just like her ethically-deprived husband.
I actually hope the Dems slug it out right up to the vote on the Convention Floor. The longer this stupid megalomaniac continues to cause chaos, the better chance John McCain has to win the Presidency. I wonder what the Democrat Party will have to say about Hillary then…
Where were all these people calling for Clinton to just quit when the race is close–but when Obama was way behind—I did not hear anyone telling him to quit for the good of the party.
I think it is Obama and the news media that has destroyed the dem party.
I forsee a lot of people switching to the ‘I’ reg… if Obama wins this mess mainly created by the news media.
This country does not need another 90 day wonder scrip reader for another four years—this country has gone through enough hell over the last seven years of Bush.
Go Hillary
or
Go McCain