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Obama Begins Mapping Out General Election
Strategy
by The Associated Press
Posted: May 8, 2008 - 8:00 am ET
(Chicago, Illinois) Barack Obama's campaign on
Wednesday sought to increase pressure on Hillary Rodham Clinton to wrap up the
drawn-out Democratic nomination race as it mapped out a general-election
strategy that will involve early campaigning in battleground states that have
already held primaries.
"We're going to put a lot of states in
play," said David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager. He suggested this
would include stepped up efforts in Florida and Michigan "to get them up to
par with the other states."
Neither Obama nor Clinton campaigned in those two
states because of Democratic party sanctions on them for holding
earlier-than-authorized primaries. The seating of delegates from those states
remains a matter of dispute between the two camps.
But in the meantime, neither Obama nor Clinton
has actively campaigned there.
Obama's drive to nail down the party nod was
buoyed with a double-digit win in North Carolina and a stronger-than-expected
run in Indiana on Tuesday, where he almost overcame rival Hillary Rodham
Clinton.
Obama was expected to compete for the six
remaining Democratic contests, which offer a total of 217 delegates, but to also
turn attention to general election states, aides said.
Obama was enjoying a rare down day in his
hometown before returning to Washington, D.C., late Wednesday
He was expected to travel later in the week to
Oregon, where he appears to hold the advantage, and then head to the Appalachian
coal-states of West Virginia and Kentucky, where Clinton seems to have the edge.
Likely Republican presidential nominee John
McCain has "run free for some time now" because of Democratic
preoccupation with the ongoing primary fight, said Obama strategist David
Axelrod. "I don't think we're going to spend time solely in primary
states," he said. "We have multiple tasks here."
Obama's campaign arranged a conference call for
reporters with prominent Democratic elected officials who are Obama supporters
in a clear effort to nudge Clinton to step aside as she faces a daunting
mathematic challenge to wrest the nomination from Obama.
"Now is the time for superdelegates to start
bringing this process to a close and announcing their preferences," said
Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., told reporters the
message of Tuesday night's primary votes was that Obama's march "cannot be
contained."
At the same time, the Obama supporters stopped
short of directly calling for Clinton to step down. "It is her decision and
only her decision," said Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo. Still, McCaskill
added, "We're confident she'll do the right thing."
"We don't want to be disrespectful,"
McCaskill said.
Meanwhile, in an e-mail to supporters soliciting
contributions, Obama called his North Carolina showing "a decisive
victory."
As for Indiana, "we did much better than all
the pundits predicted, despite Republicans changing parties to support Senator
Clinton, believing she would be easier for Senator McCain to defeat," Obama
wrote. "Now is the time for each one of us to step up and do what we can to
close out this primary."
Obama was 184.5 delegates shy of the 2,025 needed
to secure the Democratic nomination.
The remaining 270 unaligned superdelegates will
clearly determine the outcome of the race. And the Obama campaign was doing its
utmost to persuade them to get off the fence.
"We think the Clinton camp has gotten away
with a little bit of creating these alternative views of reality," said
Plouffe, the Obama campaign manager.
©365Gay.com 2008
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