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WASHINGTON: A general election contest between Democrat Barack Obama
and Republican John McCain took shape Monday, even though Hillary
Clinton showed no inclination of abandoning the Democratic
presidential nomination race.
“If Barack Obama wants Hillary Clinton out of
this race, beat her,” Clinton Spokesman Howard Wolfson said
Sunday. “Beat her in West Virginia, beat her in Puerto Rico, beat
her in Kentucky.”
The New York senator is heavily favored to win
in all of these primaries. West Virginia will hold its contest
Tuesday.
But Democratic Party leaders clearly coalesced
behind Obama, who is now eager to take on McCain.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who has
remained neutral in the nominating epic, gave a pithy outline of the
Democrats’ three main thrusts of attack against the Arizona
senator.
“He’s wrong on the [Iraq] war. He’s wrong
on the economy. He’s a clone of George Bush,” Reid told ABC
television, while urging Democrats to “relax” and let the Obama-Clinton
battle play out until the final primaries on June 3.
Following Obama’s victory in North Carolina
and his narrow loss in Indiana last week, Obama’s chief strategist
David Axelrod said on Fox News Sunday: “We’re coming to the end
of the process.
“And I think there’s an eagerness on the
part of the party leadership and activists across the country to get
on with the general election campaign,” he said.
“Senator McCain’s been out there campaigning
as the nominee for some time, and I think people are eager to
engage,” Axelrod said.
With Obama seeking to build up irresistible
momentum against Clinton, the Democrats’ camps denied they were in
talks to end their White House race through a deal to cancel
Clinton’s campaign debts or on the vice presidency.
On NBC, Clinton’s National Campaign Chairman
Terry McAuliffe acknowledged that “something big would have to
happen” for the New York senator to beat Obama to the nomination.
But he added: “We’re not going anywhere.”
Clinton aides also denied that the candidate
last week had played the race card against the African-American
Obama when arguing that his support among “hard-working Americans,
white Americans” was fading.
Heading into Tuesday’s West Virginia primary,
Obama has for the first time pulled ahead of Clinton in support from
the superdelegates, who look set to crown the party’s champion
against McCain.
At least six more of the party grandees declared
for Obama at the weekend, taking his count on the RealClearPolitics
website to 275 to Clinton’s 271. He also has 1,591 pledged
delegates to her 1,426, according to its tally. A total of 2,025
delegates are needed for victory.
-- AFP
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