Party leaders back Obama as Clinton's funds dwindle

Howard Dean asked that super delegates step up to the plate and bring to an end Hillary's threat to take this election all the way to the convention floor, and the signs are that the super delegates are certainly leaning in that direction, even if they are so far not declaring.

At the same time, more and more super-delegates – the Democratic Party bosses who hold the balance of power in the nomination process – have backed Barack Obama or indicated that they intend to do so in the weeks ahead.

Prominent figures such as former president Jimmy Carter have all but declared for Mr Obama.

"My children and their spouses are pro-Obama. My grandchildren are also pro-Obama," Mr Carter told a Nigerian newspaper while in Africa. "As a super-delegate, I would not disclose who I am rooting for, but I leave you to make that guess."

There are also stories in the press which indicate that Hillary's war chest is becoming increasingly bare.

Mr Obama's fundraising continues to outpace that of Mrs Clinton, and he is now outspending her in political advertising by a rate of more than two to one in Pennsylvania, and doing better in the polls as a result.

The latest New York Times national poll indicates that Mr Obama has maintained a narrow lead of 46 per cent to 43 per cent over Mrs Clinton. But the survey also shows that his support among Democrats has grown weaker over the past month as the crisis over his controversial former pastor reached fever pitch. Men and upper-income voters have taken an increasingly dim view of Mr Obama since his surge of victories in February.

The poll found that Mr Obama's popularity rating since those successes has dropped by seven points, to 62 per cent.

But the fall is nowhere near the collapse that the Clinton campaign was hoping for as it seeks to make the case that Mr Obama is unelectable.

The poll reveals that 56 per cent of Democratic primary voters say he can beat the Republican John McCain in November, compared to just 32 per cent who think Mrs Clinton is the more electable.

Hillary set out to portray Obama as unelectable and, as I feared, did not succeed in doing so, but did succeed in damaging the probable democratic nominee. This is why many people will find it very hard to ever forgive Clinton for the kind of campaign which she fought, concentrating on attacking Obama much more than McCain.

There have also been people like Taylor Marsh, who have applauded Clinton whilst she tore the Democratic party apart. It will be very hard to ever listen to her again and to forgive and forget what she has supported.

For this was not simply an attempt to elect their own candidate. It has long been clear that Hillary had no way of overcoming what even her supporters called "the maths problem". So they set out to destroy Obama as the only way they could see of obtaining victory.

It was a truly disgusting spectacle. And even now, with the super delegates indicating that they will vote against her, there is no sure sign that Hillary will accept her inevitable defeat and withdraw.

She has long put her personal ambition before the good of the party, and there is no indication that this will stop anytime soon. Or that her insane supporters will ever concede that the game is up.

This is from a heated exchange which took place between Howard Dean and Clinton supporters during the recent meeting on Fifth Avenue in which Clinton's people argued that Dean had been too soft on the issue of Michigan and Florida:

Here’s how one attendee, a Dean sympathizer, reconstructed Dean’s riposte to Nemazee: “You've been blunt with me, now let me blunt with you: people say they want leadership if it favors their argument and their candidate. You can't change the rules right now to do what you want without it seeming unfair to the other side."

Dean’s point, the attendee said, was that the most important thing for the party was that the loser feel that he or she had lost fairly, so that when it came time to rally around the nominee, the loser's donors would have no reservations about helping fund the campaign and the DNC.

After his response, Dean received applause -- primarily, one would suspect, from the Obama supporters in the room.

The Clinton side have lost the debate and have lost the election. The only real question left is when are they going to accept their defeat. And how much damage are they going to cause before they do so?

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Tags: Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, US election 2008, Democratic presidential nominee