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WASHINGTON: Hillary Clinton, buoyed by her win in the Pennsylvania
primary, piled pressure Wednesday on top Democratic Party officials
who hold the key to her gripping White House feud with Barack Obama.
The “superdelegates” who can vote how they
like at the party’s August convention came under a glaring
spotlight after Clinton defied Obama’s latest bid to bundle her
out of the contest with a 10-point triumph in Tuesday’s vote.
Though Clinton trails Obama by every metric in
the race, the result gave the former first lady more time to raise
doubts among party members that her rival cannot win the general
election in November against Republican John McCain.
“The delegates, all of them, have to make up
their minds as to who is the stronger candidate. I believe in the
last month I’ve demonstrated a real strength,” Clinton told NBC
news. “At the end of the day, people have to decide who they think
would be not only the best president, which is the most important
question, but who would be the better candidate against Senator
McCain.”
The nearly 800 superdelegates, members of
Congress, governors, and other party luminaries, are now crucial,
because it is all but impossible for either candidate to reach the
threshold of 2,025 pledged delegates needed for victory.
But Obama’s campaign manager David Plouffe
pointed out that his boss still led the race in every category, in
pledged delegates, the popular vote, and total nominating contests,
with only nine showdowns still to come.
“We do not believe that the structure of the
race is going to change fundamentally,” he said.
-- AFP
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