US News
LA Times adds to calls for Clinton to quit race
By DPA
May 8, 2008, 16:35 GMT

Washington - Pressure was mounting Thursday on Hillary Clinton to quit the Democratic presidential race and give Barack Obama time to unite the party ahead of a general election fight in November.

The Los Angeles Times carried an editorial with the headline 'Clinton can't win' and the Washington Post wrote that Clinton has 'no plausible route to victory' after unfavourable primary results in North Carolina and Indiana.

Obama on Tuesday handily won North Carolina, while Clinton barely edged him out in Indiana - an outcome that allowed Obama to add to his delegate lead with only six smaller contests remaining.

The Illinois senator has also picked up the support of five super delegates - party elite and elected officials who hold about one- fifth of the total delegate votes to the nominating convention in August - since Tuesday, according to media reports.

A candidate needs 2,025 delegates to secure the Democratic nomination. Obama leads by 1,848 to 1,693 for Clinton, according to realclearpolitics.com.

Clinton's campaign remained defiant Thursday, promising that the race would move on to West Virginia's primary on Tuesday and beyond.

'If tough newspaper headlines made (Clinton) give up, she would have given up a long time ago,' communications director Howard Wolfson told MSNBC. 'We've been counted out so many times by the pundits that I can't even count.'

George McGovern, the Democrats' 1972 presidential candidate who lost to Richard Nixon, switched his support from Clinton to Obama on Wednesday and called on the former first lady to quit the race.

McGovern said it was time for the Democratic Party to unite ahead of a difficult general election race against presumptive Republican nominee John McCain.

New York Senator Clinton on Wednesday promised to remain in the race 'until there is a nominee.'

She was holding rallies across three states on Thursday - West Virginia, South Dakota and Oregon. On Friday she planned stops in Kentucky, which votes along with Oregon on May 20.

Obama was holding fundraising events in Washington on Thursday before heading to Oregon for the weekend.

The final primaries in the four-month-old contest are in Puerto Rico on June 1 and South Dakota and Montana on June 3.