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WASHINGTON: Democratic front-runner Barack Obama scored a coup on Wednesday in his White House nominating battle against Hillary Clinton with the endorsement of former candidate John Edwards.
The party's 2004 vice presidential nominee formally backed the Illinois senator on Wednesday evening, an Obama campaign source told AFP, reinforcing signs of the Democratic establishment closing ranks behind Obama.
Tom Daschle, the Obama-supporting former majority leader of the Senate, said Edwards was a "tremendous national leader."
"And obviously it's no secret that we've been trying to get his support and his endorsement, his supporters and his counsel as we go through the balance of this campaign for a long period of time," he told CNN.
The announcement underlined Clinton's failure to translate her landslide win in Tuesday's West Virginia primary into a meaningful dent on Obama's seemingly impregnable lead in numbers of Democratic delegates.
Edwards, a former senator for North Carolina, quit this year's White House nominating race in late January but remains an outspoken voice in the party on the need to confront America's growing rich-poor divide.
He could now release his 19 pledged delegates to Obama, and help him reach out to the white, working-class voters who have flocked to Clinton's flag and who will play a key role in November's general election.
The former first lady routed Obama by 67 to 26 percent in West Virginia, and was the runaway leader with white and lower-income voters.
Asked on CNN if she would fight to the end of the primary season on June 3, Clinton said: "I'm not going anywhere, except to Kentucky and Oregon, and Montana, South Dakota, and Puerto Rico."
"I don't believe in quitting. You may not win in life, but you do the best you can. You go the distance," she said, after scooping 20 of West Virginia's 28 delegates on Tuesday.
However, far more significant than West Virginia is the bloc of nearly 800 Democratic "superdelegates" who could have the casting vote to decide the party's White House standard-bearer against Republican John McCain.
Obama won the support of at least five more superdelegates on Wednesday - six, counting Edwards. Clinton secured the backing of one, a party leader in Tennessee.
Obama was also endorsed by three former chairmen of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who joined ex-Federal Reserve chief Paul Volcker in extolling the Democrat's capacity to take on "monumental economic challenges."
And Clinton, bidding to be the first female president, suffered a body-blow with the endorsement of Obama by the million-strong NARAL Pro-Choice America, which advocates abortion rights for women.
The group's president Nancy Keenan said its vaunted grassroots strength was going to "the pro-choice candidate whom we believe will secure the Democratic nomination and advance to the general election."
"That candidate is Senator Obama," she said.
A new national poll by Quinnipiac University said 60 percent of Democrats want the Illinois senator to pick Clinton as his vice presidential running mate. Both candidates have declared such talk to be premature.
The poll also showed Obama leading McCain in a November match-up, by 47 percent to 40. But 63 percent of Democrats wanted Clinton to stay in the primary race.
Clinton took stock in Washington on Wednesday with key donors and supporters, before delivering her no-surrender message on an evening blitz of TV news shows.
Obama was already looking past the Democratic primary race with campaign stops in Michigan. Along with Florida, the state's delegates have been stripped by Democratic leaders in a scheduling row.
In Michigan, Obama rolled out proposals to kick-start US manufacturing including Detroit's beleaguered auto industry, featuring 210 billion dollars of investment in clean technologies and transport infrastructure.
He said McCain had been right to state in January that lost manufacturing jobs would not be regained.
"Where he's wrong is in not offering new solutions or economic policies that are different from what (President) George Bush has given us for eight long years. That's wrong. That's giving up," he said. - AFP/de
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