Clinton camp sees swift end to Democratic race
WASHINGTON (AFP) — Hillary Clinton's campaign predicted Thursday a rapid end to the Democratic White House race next month as the press read the last rites to her quest to be the first woman president.
With more party elders drifting to Barack Obama's camp and the media declaring the nominating battle all but over, Clinton aides battled back with appeals for voters to be heard and for new donors to come forward.
Even as he vowed no surrender from the former first lady, Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe said party bosses known as "superdelegates" would coalesce behind a candidate once the final primaries are held on June 3.
"I think it will be all over. I don't see it going to the (August) convention. We'll have a nominee in June," the legendary fundraiser said on NBC television.
"We've all said we'll be together at the end. If Hillary doesn't win, Hillary, president (Bill) Clinton, myself, we'll be over there helping Senator Obama," McAuliffe added.
"And, likewise, Senator Obama will come together to help Hillary if she's the nominee. We'll all be together."
Obama held a private meeting with several undeclared Democratic "superdelegates" in Washington, before rejoining the campaign trial in Oregon over the next two days.
"I think our goal is going to be to try to bring this party together as soon as possible, but we still have contests remaining," the Illinois senator told reporters.
"And so in no way am I taking this for granted. We're going to have to keep on working."
McAuliffe pinned her campaign's hopes on edging ahead in the national popular vote, if the voided results of primaries in Michigan and Florida are reinstated at a May 31 meeting of the Democratic National Committee.
"She's proven she can win the blue-collar workers. She can win the states we need to win in the general election," he said.
"But why should Hillary Clinton -- until there's a nominee with the number of necessary delegates, why should she get out?"
Obama's thumping win Tuesday in North Carolina, and his narrow defeat by Clinton in Indiana, has rewritten the narrative of this gripping Democratic contest.
But Clinton herself was back in campaign harness with a full slate of campaign stops in West Virginia, South Dakota and Oregon, a day after declaring: "I am staying in this race until there is a nominee."
Editorialists, however, crowned Obama as the Democrats' champion-elect for the November election against Republican John McCain.
"And the winner is..." said Time magazine on its cover, over a photograph of Obama with a million-watt smile. "Over the Hill," blared the front page of the New York Post.
In an editorial, The Washington Post said that after the New York senator's "disappointing showing Tuesday, she has no plausible route to victory." The Los Angeles Times opined: "She has run a fine race, but she has lost."
Clinton has been forced to lend her campaign 6.4 million dollars over the past month to keep it afloat, and aides have not proclaimed any bumper take of fundraising since Tuesday, unlike after previous primaries.
In an appeal to donors, Bill Clinton wrote: "I know something about coming back to win after you've been counted out. So does Hillary.
"It's up to us to make sure that the voters in West Virginia and the other states yet to come are given a choice. I urge you to act now to help Hillary keep fighting."
Meanwhile Obama, who would be the first black nominee of a major US party, has been winning over more of the superdelegates -- nearly 800 Democratic grandees who look set to decide the nomination.
Four more have come off the fence since Tuesday to back Obama and the Democrats' 1972 presidential nominee, George McGovern, has also deserted Clinton.
David Bonior, who was the national campaign manager for failed presidential hopeful John Edwards, became the latest Democrat to join the Obama camp.
Former president Jimmy Carter remains formally neutral but on "The Tonight Show" with comedian Jay Leno late Wednesday, he dropped another heavy hint in favor of Obama.
For Democratic insiders to strip the nomination from the candidate with the most votes and states would be a "catastrophe" for the party, Carter said, while also dismissing Clinton's attempts to reinstate Florida and Michigan.
