As Barack Obama
turns to concentrate on his general election challenge,
his rival Hillary Rodham Clinton is mounting a last ditch
campaign to stay relevant in what is left of the
Democratic presidential contest.
The former first
lady enters this week with an insurgent strategy not
only to win over undecided superdelegates but to peel away
Obama's support from those party leaders and elected
officials who already have committed to back him for
the nomination.
''One thing about
superdelegates is that they can change their minds,''
she told reporters aboard her campaign plane Sunday night.
Obama displays no
signs of worry, pivoting toward his new contest with
Republican John McCain and responding to Clinton with a
shrug. And some of Clinton's own backers are saying
the time is near for her to fall in behind him.
Obama,
campaigning in Mitchell, S.D., confidently predicted Clinton
''is going to be a great asset when we go into
November.''
''Whatever
differences Senator Clinton and I may have, those
differences pale in comparison to the other side,'' he
said.
South Dakota and
Montana, which hold primaries on Tuesday, are the last
Democratic nominating contests. Obama is favored in both
states and he goes into them with 2,073 delegates, 45
away from the number now needed to secure the
nomination. Clinton has 1,915.5 delegates.
Obama has made up
most of the ground he lost Saturday when the national
party's rules committee agreed to reinstate delegates from
Michigan and Florida. The party had initially refused
to seat the delegates as punishment for scheduling
their contests in violation of party rules.
With 31 delegates
at stake Tuesday, Obama could close the gap further and
cue undecided superdelegates to come to his side. He picked
up two more on Monday, Nancy DiNardo, chairwoman of
the Connecticut Democratic Party, and Virginia's
Jerome Wiley Segovia, a Democratic National Committee
member.
But Clinton
argues she now leads in the popular vote -- a debatable
point given that she relies on Michigan and Florida
outcomes. None of the candidates campaigned in either
state and Obama received no votes in Michigan because
he removed his name from the ballot. Clinton also
continues to present herself as better able to confront
McCain in the fall.
She and her
campaign's national chairman, Terry McAuliffe, made it clear
that Obama's supporters were now fair to pluck with those
arguments.
Clinton invited
Virgin Islands superdelegate Kevin Rodriguez, a recent
convert, to travel with her to South Dakota where she
planned to campaign Monday. Rodriguez had initially
supported Clinton, switched to Obama, and recently
returned to her camp.
''This has been
such an intense process,'' she said, ''I don't think
there has been a lot of time for reflection. It's only now
that we're finishing these contests that people are
going to actually reflect on who is our stronger
candidate.''
Asked Monday on
CBS's The Early Show if Clinton would take her
campaign to the convention, McAuliffe said again they
''would keep all of their options open.''
Cinton's
decision, if prolonged, is not likely to sit well with party
leaders and some of her own supporters. House speaker Nancy
Pelosi and Senate majority leader Harry Reid have both
called on the contest to end shortly after the final
primaries.
Tom Vilsack, the
former Iowa governor and a national cochairman of
Clinton's campaign, said Sunday: "It does appear to be
pretty clear that Senator Obama is going to be the
nominee. After Tuesday's contests, she needs to
acknowledge that he's going to be the nominee and quickly
get behind him."
Eager to make
amends for avoiding Michigan's primary and build general
election support, Obama on Monday planned to hold a town
hall meeting on the economy in Troy, Mich.
Clinton,
meanwhile, said she was still contemplating whether to
challenge the decision by the Democratic Party's rules
committee to split the Michigan delegates 69-59 in her
favor. Each delegate would have a half vote. The
agreement granted Obama 55 uncommitted Michigan delegates
and four who would have been assigned to Clinton based
on the state's results.
McAuliffe Sunday
night called the panel's judgment ''outrageous.''
''People are
angry,'' he said. ''This does not unify our party, this
crazy, cockamamie thing they came up with in
Michigan.'' (Jim Kuhnhenn, AP)