Democrats brace for more pain after Clinton win
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Democrats braced Wednesday for weeks more fighting after Hillary Clinton's solid win in the Pennsylvania presidential primaries, as pressure mounted on party elders key to ending their agony.
The former first lady claimed a groundswell of new support in her White House bid after defeating rival Barack Obama by 10 points in Tuesday's pivotal vote, and argued the tide was turning in her favor.
"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," the New York senator told NBC news on Wednesday.
She is still trailing behind Obama in the all-important delegate tally, and with neither likely to reach the 2,025 figure needed to automatically secure the nomination, the choice is set to fall on the party's superdelegates.
Clinton, 60, has sought to persuade the 795 superdelegates, party leaders who can vote for either candidate, that she alone is capable of beating Republican candidate John McCain in the November presidential polls.
And she argues that only she can win over the white working class vote in the country's big battleground states.
"More people have now voted for me than have voted for my opponent. In fact, I now have more votes than anybody has ever had in a primary contest for a nomination," she told NBC.
"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."
As proof of the fresh impetus following her Pennsylvania triumph, Clinton announced her campaign had raised some three million dollars online since Tuesday night.
And she vowed she would stay the course through the final nine nominating contests which wrap up in June, ahead of the party's August convention set to crown its November candidate.
But with all eyes on the next match-up on May 6 in Indiana and North Carolina, Obama's campaign dismissed the former first lady's chances of making a significant dent in the Illinois senator's delegate lead.
Obama is "less than 300 delegates away from securing the nomination," said campaign manager David Plouffe.
"Senator Clinton would need 70 percent of all the remaining pledged delegates to erase the lead in pledged delegates."
With nearly all votes counted after Tuesday's vote, Clinton snapped up 55 percent of the vote to 45 for Obama in her bid to be the first woman president of the United States.
But she still faces formidable obstacles as the race entered the final stretch with Obama leading by 1,713 delegates to Clinton's 1,586, according to a tally by independent website RealClearPolitics.com.
"We believe that on every measure -- there have been 46 contests so far our record is 30 and 16, we have won twice as many states, we have a very significant pledged delegate lead -- we do not believe that the structure of the race is going to change fundamentally," Plouffe argued.
Clinton's win renewed the prospect that the battle for the nomination could drag on to the Democratic convention in Denver, Colorado, despite the hopes of party leaders to avoid a divisive and very public floor fight.
Obama, 46, on his own quest to be the country's first black president, warned late Tuesday the upcoming fight was not just about re-taking the White House from the Republicans, but what kind of party the Democrats wanted to be.
"We can be a party that thinks the only way to look tough on national security is to talk, and act, and vote like George Bush and John McCain. We can use fear as a tactic, and the threat of terrorism to scare up votes," he said.
"We can be a party that says and does whatever it takes to win the next election. We can calculate and poll-test our positions and tell everyone exactly what they want to hear," the Illinois senator continued.
"Or we can be the party that doesn't just focus on how to win but why we should."
