by Rick Pearson
HAMMOND, Ind.—Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said party leaders are free to voice their feelings about the prolonged race for the nomination but she has no intention to drop her bid and she disagrees that it will take a toll on the eventual nominee.
“There are millions of reasons to continue this race–people in Pennsylvania and Indiana and North Carolina and all of the contests yet to come,” Clinton told reporters after addressing a rally at the Hammond Civic Center.
“This is a very close race and clearly I believe strongly that everyone should have their voices heard and their votes counted, and that includes Michigan and Florida. We have got to resolve the votes of those two states and I think that is imperative. So there is a lot still to be done and I’m looking forward to campaigning hard over the next several months.”
Michigan and Florida lost their convention nominating delegates when their party primaries were moved up in advance of the Feb. 5 “Super Tuesday” contests. Clinton “won” in both states but efforts between the camps of Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois to try to reach agreement with Democratic officials in both states on how to make their delegations count at the national convention in Denver have come to naught.
Clinton maintained that the nearly 800 top party officials and members of Congress who make up the superdelegates to the national convention will ultimately decide the nominee since neither the New York senator nor Obama will have crossed the 2,024 delegate threshold needed to sew up the nomination.”I think that’s a very important fact: Neither one of us can be nominated without super delegates and super delegates should exercise their right and their responsibility to determine who they think would be the best president and who would be the best nominee to defeat John McCain in the fall,” she said. “That’s the way our process is set up. That’s the way it will operate.”
Clinton said the rules applying to super delegates having a right and responsibility to pick the best candidate for president also applies to the regularly elected delegates—those who are pledged to support a particular candidate for nomination. She indicated that delegates elected to support Obama, who outnumber those elected to back Clinton, could end up supporting her based on the outcome of upcoming state contests.
“Every delegate has a responsibility to vote for the person that they believe would be the best candidate and the best president, however they define it,” she said. “That’s what the delegates are going to do and that is something that will evolve over the next several months and I think there will be additional information that will inform those decisions coming from these upcoming contests.”
Clinton disagreed with those who have said the continued contest could end up tearing the Democratic Party apart and said it will “strengthen our eventual nominee.”
‘I just think this spirited exciting contest is a real plus for us and I just don’t have the worries that some people either are talking about or feeling. I think we’ll go on until it’s clear who the nominee is,” she said.
Clinton also disagreed with the assessment that Obama has slowly been gathering support from super delegates in recent weeks while she has not shown significant improvement in her lead among the top party officials.
“I don’t feel that at all. I just see this very differently than all of you apparently do,” she told reporters. While Obama picked up the backing of Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.), a super delegate, she noted she has the support of Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, the recent backing of Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.) and the mayors of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
“I’m thrilled at the support I have,” she said. “I’m pleased that apparently Sen. Obama is going to pay a lot of attention to Pennsylvania and campaign hard. I think that’s good. We’ll have a real spirited election.”
And as for Obama’s description that the Democratic presidential contest has been like a movie that’s gone on too long, Clinton replied, “I like long movies.”
Reacting to the decline of Northwest Indiana’s steel mills, Clinton promised to get tough on foreign dumping of steel, particularly from China. She compared the Bush administration’s fiscal policies as signing a “subprime mortgage on our economy with China as our banker.” China, she said, should be a “trade partner, not a trade master.”
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In speaking to Bloomberg television, Clinton also contended she would do a better job of managing the nation’s economy, particularly as it teeters on recession. McCain, she said, “is taking a hands-off approach, which is part of the reason we’re in the mess we’re in” while Obama “hasn’t really added much to the debate.”