Marking the end of her historic presidential candidacy Saturday, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton urged her teary, angry, disappointed but finally cheering supporters to unite behind rival Sen. Barack Obama, for whom she gave a full-throated promise to “work my heart out” to win the White House in November for Democrats. Clinton gave thanks to her disappointed supporters, especially women, many of whom felt their candidate was diminished by a subtle sexism in the press and a party that diminished her candidacy, mocking her pantsuits and downplaying her achievements.
Many Clinton supporters are convinced that the strength she showed toward the end of the primaries, winning nine of the last 14 contests, including big swing states such as Pennsylvania and Ohio, exposed serious weaknesses in the Obama candidacy among core Democratic voters – seniors, older women, Latinos and blue-collar whites. Some believe having Clinton on the ticket would reel these voters back to the Democratic fold, while others think she should stay off, thinking it would be a losing Democratic campaign.

This will still be a long election. What must be worrying for the Obama camp is that even when it was clear that Hillary did not have a chance, even then there were states that voted for Hillary; and the swing state of Ohio must be even more worrying. Clinton won those voters who would also be strongly wooed by McCain as potential swing voters, attracted by a Republican candidate who does not seem a religious conservative, and who in fact could have been deemed as a candidate just a bit more to the right of Bill Clinton. One option is for Obama to co-opt Hillary as a Vice-Presidential candidate, but that is nowhere being decided right now.

Veteran Democratic Party figure George McGovern dropped his support for Hillary Clinton on Wednesday and endorsed Barack Obama, saying the Illinois senator seemed certain to win the party’s nomination for the November presidential election. McGovern, 85, said he told Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, of his surprise decision in a telephone call, and that Clinton made no attempt to change his mind.
With Obama within 200 delegates of wrapping up the nomination, said, “All the mathematics seem to be on his side.” “Barack Obama has waged a very effective campaign. He’s an unusually capable and talented man. I didn’t frankly know him when I endorsed Hillary last October,” he said.

This will continue as time progresses; it is almost mathematically impossible for Hillary to catch up in the elected delegates number, and when the super-delegates who are either on Clinton’s side or uncommitted ones eventually see the time to vote, an increasing number will get swayed by the push from the Obama side to respect the popular elected delegate mandate. This is an election that Hillary Clinton has lost; what she needs to do is to maybe work out how she can stay in the race and become a Vice-President.

Clinton shot first, using Obama’s opposition to her gas tax holiday plan as a vehicle to smack him for doing nothing to help Americans hammered by soaring prices. “What has happened to Barack Obama?” the Clinton spot asks. “He is attacking Hillary’s plan to give you a break on gas prices because he doesn’t have one.”
“More of the same, old negative politics,” his ad rips. “Her attacks do nothing but harm. … We need honest answers. And a President we can trust.” In Merrillville, Ind., Clinton insisted her summer-long tax gift was a way to help people now, while she pursues a long-range energy plan – a plan she broadened to include an all-out attack on oil-producing countries.

This proposal by Hillary is more of a political stunt. The amount of money that would be available to an average family as saving would be negligible, and the message that all Americans should try to reduce their gas usage will be totally lost. America needs to reduce its gas usage and dependence on foreign oil rather than tell citizens that they can continue with their same massive oil consumption and patronage of gas-guzzler vehicles. Obama has the far more principled policy in this regard.

In his speech at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars in Washington, D.C., Obama said “if Pakistani leaders were to fail to take action against the known terrorists within their borders,” he would dispatch forces as president, removing troops from Iraq and put them on the right battlefield in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
His chief Democratic rival, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who leads by about 15 percent in national polls, blasted Obama as “irresponsible” for his speech Wednesday. Obama’s speech came a week after he was described as naive by Clinton, for saying he’d been willing to meet with “leaders of Cuba, Iran and North Korea without conditions.” A poll by The Wall Street Journal and NBC News said Clinton has widened her lead over Obama, going up to 43 percent in July from 39 percent in June. Obama tallied 22 percent, down from 25 percent in June.

In some respects, this was exactly the sort of operation that Obama would have accused Bush of doing. He would have ordered American intervention in a country irrespective of other factors, similar to what Obama is claiming as a future course of action. To invade a country, especially an area where the Pakistani military itself is not able to capture, and then expect a clean operation seems laughable. And the Pakistanis certainly will not remain quiet if something like this happens. This statement was a political statement, an attempt to appear macho, but was not very wise.