Clinton pushes on with uphill White House bid
05.14.08 -- 11:56 AM
Hillary Clinton's landslide West Virginia victory barely made a dent in Barack Obama's lead in the Democratic presidential race, but his renewed trouble winning white working-class support could raise warning flags for November.
Obama retains an almost unassailable advantage in delegates who will select the Democratic nominee at the party convention in August. He gained the support on Wednesday of two more superdelegates, who are free to back any candidate.
But exit polls showed Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president, won support from fewer than one-quarter of white voters without a college degree. That repeats a pattern seen in some other big Obama losses, including Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Clinton promised to push on through the last five contests. She hoped her 41-point blowout would spark a re-evaluation of Obama's candidacy and bolster her case that she is the Democrat with the best chance to beat Republican John McCain in November's election.
"I'm going to keep fighting until every last American has a chance to be heard, and as we learned last night in West Virginia, I know we can win," the New York senator and former first lady said on Wednesday in a plea for donations e-mailed to her supporters.
"I have the best chance of beating John McCain in November and putting America on the right track," said Clinton, whose campaign is at least $20 million in debt. She picked up the endorsement of one superdelegate on Wednesday.
Obama, an Illinois senator, headed to the general election battleground of Michigan on Wednesday and goes to Florida next week as he begins to turn his attention to a general election match-up with McCain, an Arizona senator.
He visited Warren, Michigan, outside Detroit to promote efforts to help the ailing manufacturing and U.S. car industry, including a $150 billion clean technologies venture capital fund to promote the production of fuel-efficient vehicles.
He said McCain was right to say during Michigan's primary in January that all the lost jobs in the car industry were not coming back, but wrong not to look for ways to replace them.
"Where he's wrong is not offering new solutions or economic policies that are different from what George Bush has given us for eight long years," he said.
RACE A FACTOR
Exit polls in West Virginia showed two of every 10 white voters said race was a factor in their decision and only a third of those said they would support Obama against McCain. Obama gained about a quarter of the white vote in West Virginia, which has a small black population.
"We think this race has got a lot more life in it and we're going to go the distance," Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said on MSNBC.
Clinton planned to take her campaign to the airwaves on Wednesday evening with appearances on six television networks.
A delegate count by MSNBC gives Obama 1,885 delegates to Clinton's 1,722. That leaves him 144 short of the 2,025 needed to clinch the nomination.
Neither candidate can win without help from superdelegates -- nearly 800 party officials who are free to back any candidate. Obama has been gaining ground among superdelegates for weeks.
There were 28 delegates at stake in West Virginia and Obama has picked up 29 superdelegates in the past week.
Three former chairmen of the Securities and Exchange Commission, including Bush appointee William Donaldson, endorsed Obama on Thursday.
Five more contests remain in the Democratic nominating battle, with a combined 189 delegates at stake. Oregon and Kentucky vote on May 20, Puerto Rico votes on June 1 and Montana and South Dakota vote on June 3.
Clinton is favored in Kentucky and Obama is expected to take Oregon.
(Additional reporting by Andy Sullivan, Ellen Wulfhorst and Jeff Mason; Editing by Vicki Allen)
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