Obama, Clinton battle coast to coast

Tuesday 05 February 2008

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton entered the 'Super Tuesday' battle, the toughest test yet in the most expensive, intense, prolonged and unpredictable White House race. Catherine Galloway reports.

Tuesday 05 February 2008

A surging Barack Obama and weary White House rival Hillary Clinton battled coast-to-coast Tuesday, while John McCain tried to lock down the Republican ticket, in a historic 24-state nominating showdown.

After a clutch of single-state contests, "Super Tuesday" embraces millions of voters from across racial, religious, social and income barriers, in states as diverse as liberal Massachusetts and "deep south" conservative bastions.

It is the toughest test yet in the most expensive, intense, prolonged and unpredictable White House race, which will see Democrats eventually break a deadlock and pick the first black or woman presidential nominee.

First polls were to open before dawn in New York state, at 6:00 am (1100 GMT), and last voting will wrap up in California 17 hours later, leaving candidates with a late-night vigil to learn their fates.

Clinton and Obama dueled with campaign rallies and television advertising blitzes across the political map, with the race narrowing in her stronghold, California, tight in heartland Missouri and Tennessee, and up for grabs in northeastern New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts.

"I don't believe that you can rest until the last vote is counted, and so I'm going to keep working, reaching out to the voters ... during the rest of today and tomorrow," Clinton told CBS News late Monday.

Barring a major surprise, even "Super Tuesday," the biggest one-day nominating bonanza so far, is unlikely to install Clinton or Obama just yet: their close state-by-state race looks set to go on until at least March.

"I think we're bringing a lot of new voters into the process and we'll see a split decision, basically, coming out of tomorrow, with both of us having won sizable numbers of delegates," Obama said on the same CBS program.

"I think we'll have to continue on," he said.

Clinton was to vote early Tuesday at her home state of New York, while Obama was returning to his home patch in Chicago to watch results roll in.

Monday, her voice raw and fatigue creasing her face, the former first lady brushed away a tear as she visited Yale University, where her political odyssey started as an earnest 1970s student in bell-bottom pants.

Clinton, 60, held an online town hall meeting also broadcast on a cable television channel, taking questions from across "Super Tuesday" states.

"It's going to take someone with experience in running and winning campaigns to take the White House in November," Clinton said.

On talk show host David Letterman's couch, she said she, not former president Bill Clinton, would be the boss if she wins November's election.

"In my White House we will know who wears the pant suits," she quipped.

To wild chants of "O-ba-ma" and "We can't wait," the 46-year-old Illinois senator rocked an indoor arena packed with 16,000 supporters in the closely-fought state of Connecticut, then repeated the trick in Boston.

Musing on his presidential odyssey, Obama said Americans "don't want spin, they don't want PR, they want straight talk."

A clutch of new polls showed the Democratic race a neck-and-neck struggle.

Clinton clung to a 45-44 point lead in a USA Today/Gallup national poll. A CBS/New York Times poll had the race deadlocked at 41 percent.

The cliffhanger Democratic race contrasted with signs that McCain, a Vietnam war hero, would all but settle the Republican nominating fight Tuesday, to complete one of the most staggering comebacks in recent US political history.

"I'm guardedly optimistic," the Arizona senator told reporters in Massachusetts, the home state of his top rival Mitt Romney, who hoped late polls showing him moving in California would stall McCain's momentum.

A USA Today national poll gave McCain a 42 percent to 24 percent lead over Romney, with former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee on 18 percent.

But Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, refused to admit defeat. "This is going to come down to a real battle and I think I'm going to win it," he said in Nashville, Tennessee.

"Super Tuesday" states account for more than half the Democratic delegates and almost half of Republican delegates at party conventions in August and September, which formally nominate candidates for November's general election.

There are Democratic contests in 22 states, Republican contests in 21 states, and 19 states are holding nominating clashes for both parties.

Democrats are also hosting two additional primaries starting Tuesday: one in American Samoa and one for "Democrats abroad." Voting for expat Democrats is taking place across the world until February 12, as well as online.

In Jakarta, where Obama spent part of his youth, Democrats handed him a win over Clinton in the first result announced, party officials said.

Seventy-five percent of nearly 100 votes cast by expatriate Americans went to Obama and 25 percent went to Clinton, according to Democrats Abroad officials in the Indonesian capital.