Vowing that she is “just getting warmed up,” Hillary Clinton is resisting pressure to drop out of the presidential race, even if she loses crucial contests today in Texas and Ohio.
“I think we’re going to do well tomorrow,” Clinton told reporters in Ohio Monday. “Then it’s on to Pennsylvania and the states still ahead. I’m just getting warmed up.”
Clinton was leading rival Democrat Barack Obama by 6.4 points in Ohio, according to Real Clear Politics, which averages major polls. But just weeks ago, she had a double-digit lead in both Ohio and Texas, where she is now tied with Obama.
“If we do well in Texas and Ohio, I think the math is such where it’s going to be hard for her to win the nomination,” Obama told ABC. “And they’ll have to make a decision about how much longer they want to
pursue it.”
Responding to questions from The Examiner, Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said Clinton should do “a sober analysis of where the race stands on Wednesday and not allow bluster … to obscure the cold hard reality of where the race stands.”
He noted that Clinton’s campaign is “making very aggressive comments that regardless of what happens tomorrow, they’ll go on. So we’ve planned all along that this could go on for some time.”
That means a respectable showing by Clinton could extend the race another seven weeks, until the Pennsylvania primary on April 22. That would entail seven more weeks of Democratic infighting, which could give an advantage to the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain, who has all but eliminated his last GOPchallenger, Mike Huckabee.
Asked by The Examiner whether such infighting might damage the eventual Democratic nominee, Plouffe declined to answer.
Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson told reporters in a conference call that “we just flatly reject” calls for the former first lady to abandon her presidential quest. He also sought to raise expectations on Obama’s performance today.
“If Senator Obama can’t win Ohio and Texas, with all the resource advantages that he has, with all of the good press that he has, with the constant reminders from his campaign that the race is essentially over, then I think Democrats are going to have to take a second look at this,” Wolfson said. “We wake up on Wednesday and the newspaper headline says that Clinton wins Ohio and Texas, we have a whole new ball game here.”
Not to be outdone in the expectations game, Plouffe said Clinton would have to win not just the popular vote in those states, but also the majority of delegates. Obama has already amassed 1,386 delegates, or 110 more than Clinton’s 1,276.
