Thursday, Jun. 05, 2008

Clinton bowing out

Aides say she’ll support Obama, party unity

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton will endorse Sen. Barack Obama Friday, bringing to a close her 17-month campaign for the White House, aides said Wednesday night.

As Obama turned in earnest to the general election and the hunt for a running mate, Clinton made her decision after Democrats urged her to leave the race and allow the party to coalesce around the senator from Illinois.

Clinton’s aides said she would “express her support for Sen. Obama and party unity” at an event in Washington, D.C. One adviser said Clinton would concede defeat, congratulate Obama and proclaim him the party’s nominee, while pledging to do what was needed to assure his victory.

Her decision came after a day of conversations with supporters on Capitol Hill about her future now that Obama had clinched the nomination.

“We pledged to support her to the end,” Rep. Charles B. Rangel, D-N.Y., who has been a patron of Clinton since she first ran for the Senate, said. “Our problem is not being able to determine when ... the end is.”

Clinton’s decision came as some of her most prominent supporters — including former Vice President Walter F. Mondale — announced they were backing Obama.

One of Clinton’s aides said they were told that except for her senior advisers, there was no reason to report to work after Friday, and they were invited to Clinton’s house for a farewell celebration that afternoon.

Obama, not waiting for a formal concession from Clinton, turned to the fall election.

With some Democrats promoting Clinton as Obama’s No. 2, his aides said they would move slowly in the search for a vice president, allowing passions from the bruising primary battles to cool.

Obama and Clinton crossed paths briefly in Washington on Wednesday, but aides said they did not linger long enough to discuss the unfinished business hanging over them. As he left the Capitol, Obama told reporters, “We’re going to have a conversation in the coming weeks.”

Obama appeared before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, where, tacking to the right, he described a far tougher series of sanctions he would be willing to impose on Iran than he had outlined during the primaries campaign.

Aides to Obama and Clinton said that in the days ahead, at least some of Clinton’s fundraisers would move to join the ranks of the Obama campaign. Still, with the realization of defeat just settling in, it appeared most of her major financial backers were holding back until they got a clearer signal from Clinton of her intentions.

“I’m being aggressively courted by folks in the Obama campaign,” said Mark Aronchick, a Philadelphia lawyer who is Clinton’s Pennsylvania finance chairman. “I’ve told them all, ‘Everybody relax. Take a deep breath. There’s time enough here.”’

Today, Obama planned to head to the southwestern tip of Virginia, the heart of Appalachia, to begin courting voters in a state that traditionally goes Republican, but could be a fall battleground. Then, Obama intends to take a few days away from his public schedule to strategize privately about the general election campaign.

Clinton’s decision to suspend her campaign, which was first reported by ABC News, was a bow to the emerging political reality. No one in her campaign — including by all reports Clinton herself — saw a viable road to the nomination. A suspension of the campaign allows her to continue raising money and pay off her millions of dollars in debt.

The party’s desire for Clinton to leave the race was signaled — if politely — as four top Democratic leaders issued an early morning statement asking all uncommitted delegates to make their decisions by Friday.

The statement from the Democratic chairman, Howard Dean, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Harry Reid and West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin, stopped short of endorsing Obama, but aides said they would likely move in that direction if Clinton lingered in the race.

“The voters have spoken,” they said in a joint statement released before 7 a.m. “Democrats must now turn our full attention to the general election.”

David Plouffe, campaign manager for Obama, said the senator feels no pressure to swiftly name a vice presidential candidate. The passage of time, he said, would heal the fissures and hard feelings that developed during the primary fight as Democrats turned their complete focus to McCain.

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