US:BARACK OBAMA has said he is not taking the Democratic presidential nomination for granted despite mounting pressure on Hillary Clinton to withdraw. Mrs Clinton repeated yesterday that she intends to stay in the race at least until every state has voted on June 3rd but some of her own supporters are now publicly urging her to consider her position.
Mr Obama met a number of undeclared superdelegates at the House of Representatives yesterday but in a sign of his growing confidence about the nomination, he did not ask for their support.
"I wasn't campaigning, I was just saying hello to everybody," he said.
"Obviously people have been anxious about some of the sense of division in the party. I just wanted to assure them that whatever happens, we will be coming together." Mr Obama said he expected Mrs Clinton to win next week's primary in West Virginia and a contest in Kentucky a week later but he dismissed speculation about choosing her as his running mate, saying he still does not know who the nominee is going to be.
Mrs Clinton was campaigning yesterday in West Virginia, a state Mr Obama has no plans to visit before the primary. Earlier, she cited a news report as evidence that she was building a broader coalition and attracting voters the Democrats needed to win in November.
"[It] found how Senator Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me. There's a pattern emerging here," she said.
In Indiana and North Carolina this week, Mr Obama won 90 per cent of African-American votes but white voters supported Mrs Clinton by a margin of 60 per cent to 40 per cent.
Mrs Clinton's campaign says it hopes to win in West Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico and to fare better than expected in Oregon, Montana and South Dakota. Mrs Clinton is also pressing for disputed delegates from Michigan and Florida to be recognised but one of her leading supporters in Michigan said yesterday that the numbers still did not add up for her.
"I urge her to take the day off and think very seriously about doing what's best for the country and best for the party," Congressman Dale Kildee told The Hill. "I got straight As in math." Another supporter, California senator Diane Feinstein, said she wanted to know how Mrs Clinton now expects to win the nomination.
"I, as you know, have great fondness and great respect for Senator Clinton and I'm very loyal to her," she said.
"Having said that, I'd like to talk with her and [get] her view on the rest of the race and what the strategy is. I think the race is reaching the point now where there are negative dividends from it, in terms of strife within the party." Former vice-presidential candidate John Edwards is planning a major television interview today amid speculation that he will endorse Mr Obama.
Mrs Clinton's exit from the race may be determined by her campaign's increasingly parlous financial position and aides admitted yesterday that donations after this week's primaries came in a trickle rather than a torrent. When Mrs Clinton won Pennsylvania last month, she raised $10 million within three days of the result. Campaign officials declined to disclose how much she has raised since Tuesday's primaries, saying only that it was in "seven figures". Mrs Clinton's campaign debt is believed to be close to $20 million, including more than $11 million she lent to the campaign herself.
