AFTER a long, bitterly fought but evenly matched campaign, Barack Obama, the
senator for Illinois who was almost unknown a year ago, has resolved to win
the Democratic presidential nomination in the next 48 hours, putting him on
the path to becoming America’s first black president.
Sources inside his campaign said there was a co-ordinated push this weekend to
obtain the endorsements of dozens of “superdelegates”, the Democrat
officials with a casting vote at the party’s convention in August.
This would put Obama within reach of victory on Tuesday, when voters in the
two remaining primaries in Montana and South Dakota could give him the
elected delegates that he needs to secure a majority over Hillary Clinton at
the convention.
If Obama succeeds it will mark the culmination of a remarkable battle that has
pitted the might of the Clinton dynasty against an untested, 46-year-old
candidate with an inspirational message of change and the unexpected
organisational and financial muscle needed to win.
In a bold move Obama will spend Tuesday evening at a huge rally in St Paul,
Minnesota, the venue for the Republican convention, where John McCain is due
to receive his party’s nomination in September. The initiative will put
America on notice that the campaign for the November 4 general election has
begun.
David Wilhelm, an adviser to Obama who served as Bill Clinton’s presidential
campaign manager in 1992, described his impending victory in the struggle to
become the Democrats’ candidate as “one of the most remarkable occurrences
in the history of American politics”. He added: “It is an extraordinary and
unlikely achievement which really speaks to the power of his message and
personality.”
Hillary Clinton, 60, was still fighting to stave off defeat as voters went to
the polls today in Puerto Rico, a contest in which she was expected to
prevail.
Hundreds of her supporters gathered outside a hotel in Washington yesterday to
press the party’s rules and bylaws committee to allow previous Clinton
victories in the Florida and Michigan primaries to be counted. The two
states were disqualified for holding their contests early.
Rosemary Camposano of WomenCount, who had travelled from California for the
rally, said: “Many of us know Hillary personally and we have a deep belief
in her capabilities. We are going to stand with her until the final votes
are counted.”
The committee agreed to award half a vote to all the Florida delegates but
wrangling continued last night over the fate of Michigan after Obama was
awarded four extra delegates from Clinton's total. Her aides threatened to
take the battle to the credentials committee after she gained only 24 extra
total delegates from the battle.
Clinton backer Harold Ickes said: "Hijacking four delegates is not a good
way to start down the path toward unity."
The final verdict left Obama just 66 delegates short of winning the
nomination.
Democratic party leaders such as Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of
Representatives, Harry Reid, the Senate leader, and Howard Dean, chairman of
the Democratic national committee, are ready to corral superdelegates into
Obama’s camp if he has not crossed the finishing line by Tuesday night.
According to Reid, “it will be over, give or take a day”, after the last
primaries. If Clinton does not get the message, they are steeling themselves
to tell her to pack in her campaign.
The ease with which the Democratic party establishment has deserted the former
first lady has infuriated the Clintons. Pelosi, in particular, is a target
of their wrath. A Clinton adviser said Obama’s victory would ensure that
Pelosi remained “the senior skirt in the land”.
Congressman James Clyburn, the Democrats' chief whip in the House of
Representatives, intends to endorse Obama on Tuesday morning, sending a
clear signal to wavering superdelegates to follow his lead.
“It’s a realistic scenario, even a likely one, that he will win on Tuesday,”
said Tad Devine, a Democratic party strategist and veteran of primary
battles.
“The superdelegates will start moving over the weekend and on Monday so that
voters can finish the process.”
Wilhelm believes it is Clinton’s misfortune to have run against a candidate
with the supreme political gifts of her husband: “Bill Clinton was ‘the man
from Hope’ and in many ways Barack Obama’s campaign was run in his
tradition.”
Yet hard questions remain. Will Obama live up to his promise and beat McCain,
71, the veteran, combat-tested Republican? Or are the Democrats about to
hand the nomination to a political newcomer who could squander their best
chance in years?
Clinton appeared to acknowledge last week that the presidency had slipped out
of her reach while visiting Mount Rushmore in South Dakota, where the heads
of four presidents are carved into the granite.
Asked if she could see herself on the monument — as the first woman president
— she lifted her hands, said “I . . .”, sighed and fell silent.
On the campaign plane, Clinton fortified herself with a shot of bourbon while
joking with a dwindling band of journalists and smiling bravely on the eve
of a defeat that will leave her with personal debts of more than $11m
(£5.5m).
After this week, the only way she could win the nomination would be if
superdelegates reneged on their promises to endorse Obama, as they are
entitled to do. Only she knows whether she will finish her campaign this
week or whether that hope will be enough to keep her in the race.
“You can’t tell how far a frog will jump until you punch him,” she said
enigmatically, citing an old Arkansas saying.
Aides are already plotting their post-Clinton future. One of her campaign
staff called his personal trainer last week to say that he would be back in
the gym soon because “it’s over”.
Clinton is being urged by some supporters to fight on through the summer.
Camposano said: “I personally hope that she takes it to the floor of the
convention. It is not a fantastically positive way to go, but it’s a process
that has been well tested before.”
Senator Edward Kennedy took his 1980 campaign against Jimmy Carter, the
sitting president, to a vote at the convention. But after a divisive
showdown, the Democrats went on to lose the election to Ronald Reagan, the
Republican nominee.
The current battle has already divided the Democratic party between women and
men, whites and blacks and the young and old, sometimes bitterly so.
Geraldine Ferraro, a Clinton supporter and former vice-presidential nominee,
blamed sexism and anti-white racism for Clinton’s looming defeat.
“People have been stopping me to express a common sentiment,” she complained.
“If you’re white, you can’t open your mouth without being accused of being
racist.”
Clinton may still be hoping a real scandal will emerge — “Reverend Wright on
steroids”, as one pundit put it, referring to the anti-American black
supremacist comments of Obama’s former pastor.
Obama’s pastor problems rumble on. In a bid to cut off a damaging source of
controversy, Obama resigned yesterday from the Trinity United Church of
Christ in Chicago — the home of the Rev Jeremiah Wright — after another
friend and spiritual mentor, the Rev Michael Pfleger, was filmed at the
pulpit sneering at Clinton’s alleged racist mind-set.
Feigning the tears that welled up in Clinton’s eyes and helped to clinch her
victory in the New Hampshire primary, Pfleger claimed she was thinking: “I’m
white; I’m entitled; there’s a black man stealing my show.”
Obama had belonged to the church for 20 years, and Republicans have already
identified the gap between Obama’s rhetoric of unity and the rantings of his
friends as a big weak spot.
McCain, however, is beset by difficulties of his own, even though he cleared
his path to the presidential nomination back in February.
Instead of bolstering his position while the Democrats fought among
themselves, McCain’s campaign has been going backwards.
An outburst of candour by Scott McClellan, a former White House press
secretary under President George W Bush, in his memoir, What Happened,
showed the danger for McCain of being linked to Bush’s “third term” and the
Iraq war.
“History appears to confirm what most Americans today have decided: that the
decision to invade Iraq was a serious strategic blunder,” McClellan wrote.
“War should only be waged when necessary and the Iraq war was not necessary.”
News of his tell-all broke as McCain was challenging Obama’s foreign policy
expertise and knowledge of the situation on the ground in Iraq, giving the
Illinois senator a ready means of counterattack.
Only recently Mark McKinnon, one of McCain’s top aides and a former Bush
confidant, confirmed he would resign from the campaign rather than fight
Obama in the general election.
McClellan last week joined a growing list of “compassionate conservatives” who
were once close to Bush but have become sympathetic towards Obama,
volunteering in a television interview that he was “intrigued” by his
message.
In an attempt to forestall attacks by Obama, McCain has also dismissed staff
with ties to potentially damaging lobbying groups — a precedent that could
lead to more sackings, given the number of high-level lobbyists that he
employs.
“He may eventually have to throw everybody overboard just so he can say he has
no ties to ‘special interests’ but where does that leave him?” said Tom
Edmonds, a Republican consultant. “Is he cutting off his nose to spite his
face just so he can answer a question in debate?”
McCain’s efforts to replace the missing staff with former loyalists could,
moreover, replicate some of the internal rows that led to an implosion of
his campaign last summer.
He has yet to recover from that experience, according to Edmonds. “He is
totally dependent on the Republican national committee to provide a
grassroots organisation for him and what they can offer may not be a good
fit. He is buying a suit off the rack, not a custom-made one,” Edmonds said.
If anybody can win on personality alone, it is McCain, with his reputation for
heroism while a prisoner of war. However, he will be facing the most
formidable fundraiser in election history, with a battle-hardened
organisation that will have already beaten the Clinton machine.
Wilhelm believes Bill Clinton’s experience in 1992 should send a worrying
message to McCain: “At this point in the electoral cycle Bill Clinton was
running third in the polls, but he still had time to reintroduce himself to
voters.”
Obama, he said, could use the same tactics against McCain that he had deployed
against Hillary Clinton to devastating effect: “Campaigns are usually about
the future, not the past, and Obama has been able to capture the
forward-looking position in the race.”
Video: Obama
speaking Spanish in Puerto Rico
Video: Hillary
dancing in Puerto Rico
Video: John McCain
- "Obama should see Iraq for himself"
