A top Democratic
official who backed Hillary Rodham Clinton has switched
allegiance to Barack Obama, a blow to the former first lady,
who must build a big margin among superdelegates, who
are likely to cast the deciding votes in the fierce
Democratic presidential nomination fight.
Obama has cut
Clinton's advantage with crucial superdelegates by half in
two months and now has reaped backing from Joe Andrew, the
Democratic National Committee chairman from 1999 to
2001 under President Bill Clinton.
Although Obama
has a solid lead in delegates, neither he nor Hillary
Clinton can accumulate the 2,025 delegates needed to secure
the nomination without the support of superdelegates
-- senior officials and lawmakers who are free to vote
as they please.
Andrew, in
announcing his shift, called for other Democrats to join him
behind Obama to ''heal the rift in our party.'' He also said
in a letter to superdelegates that he had become
disillusioned with the primary system, noting that the
prolonged nomination battle risked alienating
Democratic voters going into the November election against
Republican presumptive nominee John McCain.
Obama scored the
coup as the two candidates fight for superdelegates and
white working class votes ahead of next Tuesday's primaries
in Indiana and North Carolina -- two battleground
states in which the first-term Illinois senator needs
wins to offset Clinton's momentum-building victory in
Pennsylvania last week.
Andrew held a
news conference Thursday in his hometown of Indianapolis to
urge Indiana voters to support Obama. As it is one of the
last big states in the primary schedule, its vote is
perhaps the most important contest left.
Clinton, who
stands virtually no chance of overcoming Obama in delegates
chosen in state primaries and caucuses, must roll up a big
lead among the nearly 800 superdelegates if she hopes
to capture the place at the top of the Democratic
ticket.
But Andrew's
defection highlighted worries that party leaders have
increasingly voiced over the past few weeks.
''I am convinced
that the primary process has devolved to the point that
it's now bad for the Democratic Party,'' Andrew said in a
telephone interview with the Associated Press.
Andrew said in
his letter to the superdelegates that he is switching his
support because ''a vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote to
continue this process, and a vote to continue this
process is a vote that assists [Republican] John
McCain.''
''While I was
hopeful that a long, contested primary season would
invigorate our party, the polls show that the tone and
temperature of the race is now hurting us,'' Andrew
wrote. ''John McCain, without doing much of anything,
is now competitive against both of our remaining candidates.
We are doing his work for him and distracting Americans from
the issues that really affect all of our lives.''
Andrew's concerns
were underscored by a new Associated Press-Ipsos poll
in which many backers of both Clinton and Obama said they
would support McCain if their candidate does not take
the nomination.
The most recent
Gallup national tracking poll among Democrats showed
Clinton with a statistically insignificant one-point lead
over Obama, down from his 10-percentage point
advantage going into last week's Pennsylvania primary,
where Clinton won handily.
The Indiana vote,
a toss-up according to pre-ballot polling, coincides
with North Carolina's primary, where Obama is expected to
win. That state's large African-American population
decisively backs Obama's bid to be America's first
black president.
Counting Andrew,
Obama snagged four superdelegates Wednesday. Clinton
picked up three, leaving her with a 264-244 advantage. But
Obama leads in the overall delegate count by 1,732.5
to 1,598.5, a margin that Clinton will be virtually
unable to overcome unless she takes all the remaining
state and territorial contests by huge margins, which was
seen as impossible. The candidates need 2,025
delegates to take the nomination.
Andrew said the
Obama campaign did not ask him to switch his support, but
he decided to do so after watching Obama's handling of two
issues in recent days. He said Obama took the
principled stand in opposing a summer gas tax holiday
that both Clinton and McCain supported, even though it
would have been easier politically to back it. And he said
he was impressed with Obama's handling of the
controversy surrounding his former pastor, the
Reverend Jeremiah Wright.
Wright's
outspoken criticisms of the United States, including
accusing the government of spreading AIDS and asking
God to damn America, have threatened Obama's
candidacy. Obama initially refused to denounce his
former pastor but did so Tuesday after Wright suggested that
Obama secretly agreed with him.
Obama was further
hurt by disclosure of his own remarks at a private
fund-raising event where he said working-class Americans
were clinging to guns and religion as their living
standards plummet.
Obama and his
wife, Michelle, said Thursday that the public is tired of
hearing about Wright's comments as they sought to put the
controversy to rest.
''We hear time
and time again voters are tired of this,'' Michelle Obama
said in an interview the couple gave to NBC's Today
show.
''They don't want
to hear about this division, they want to know what are
we going to do to move beyond these issues,'' she said.
Clinton said
Wednesday she found Wright's remarks ''offensive and
outrageous'' and noted that Obama had spoken out forcefully
against them.
''I think that he
made his views clear, finally, that he disagreed. And I
think that's what he had to do,'' Clinton said in an
interview with Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly.
It was the former
first lady's first appearance on the O'Reilly show, the
most popular Fox News program and a staple of conservative
media. Over the years, O'Reilly has been a staunch
critic of both the New York senator and her husband.
Both Obama and
Clinton are trying to make points with American consumers,
motorists especially who are facing record prices for
gasoline and diesel fuel. Clinton has joined McCain in
calling for a suspension of federal taxes on fuel
during the summer holiday season.
Obama contends
both his opponents are engaged in gimmickry that would
actually increase fuel consumption nationally, cause prices
to rise still further, and drain the treasury of tax
money needed for transportation infrastructure. He
called their plans shortsighted measures that would
save American drivers a pittance over the course of the
summer.
Instead, Obama
said he would push for a middle-class tax cut that could
save working families an average of $1,000 a
year. (Steven Hurst, AP)
