As race heads to Mississippi, Obama mocks VP talk
by Evelina Shmukler 1 hour, 31 minutes ago
BILOXI, Mississippi (AFP) - Democratic front-runner Barack Obama headed into Tuesday's primary in Mississippi, a state he is tipped to win, mocking talk of a "dream ticket" headed by his White House rival Hillary Clinton.
BILOXI, Mississippi (AFP) - Democratic front-runner Barack Obama headed into Tuesday's primary in Mississippi, a state he is tipped to win, mocking talk of a "dream ticket" headed by his White House rival Hillary Clinton.
Obama, who leads by about 100 delegates after 45 Democratic contests, ridiculed verbal gymnastics by the Clinton camp arguing that he is not ready to be commander-in-chief, but could be her number two.
"If I'm not ready, how is it that you think I should be such a great vice president?" he said, drawing laughter from raucous supporters at a rally Monday in Columbus, Mississippi.The Illinois senator said the Clinton team was "trying to hoodwink you.""With all due respect, I've won twice as many states as Senator Clinton. I've won more of the popular vote than Senator Clinton. I have more delegates than Senator Clinton," he said.
"So I don't know how somebody who is in second place is offering the vice presidency to the person who's in first place.
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Heaping psychological pressure on Obama, Clinton surrogates are pushing the "dream ticket" scenario as a way of resolving a nailbiting race that risks going down to the wire at the Democrats' nominating convention in August.
Speaking here Saturday, former president Bill Clinton argued that a presidential ballot headed by his wife, with Obama in the junior role, would be an "almost unstoppable force."But the former first lady has also sought to undermine Obama's bid by casting doubt on his credentials to be supremo of the world's most powerful military.
Clinton backers including General Wesley Clark, an ex-commander of NATO, went on a conference call Monday to belittle Obama's ability to take on Republican John McCain, a senator and Vietnam war hero, in November's election.Having sealed the Republican nomination last week, McCain is heading to Israel, Britain and France next week to hone his national-security credentials while the Democrats slug it out.
Obama's campaign, stressing Clinton's vote in 2002 authorizing military force in Iraq, hit back by parading former secretaries of the navy, army and air force at a Washington press conference in support of his White House bid.Clinton aides were pressed on how she could argue that Obama might be fit for vice president -- and just a heartbeat from promotion to the Oval Office -- but incompetent for the top job.
"The answer to that is that Senator Clinton will not choose any candidate who has not at the time of choosing passed the national security threshold. Period," spokesman Howard Wolfson said.
"But we have a long way to go between now and Denver, and it is not something that she would rule out at this point," he said, while not spelling out how Obama might pass the commander test in time for the convention.
"But we have a long way to go between now and Denver, and it is not something that she would rule out at this point," he said, while not spelling out how Obama might pass the commander test in time for the convention.
Clinton breathed new life into her faltering campaign with wins last week in Ohio and Texas, helped by an ominous television advertisement that questioned whether Obama was ready to deal with a hypothetical crisis in the dead of the night.Obama grabbed some momentum back on Saturday with a landslide win in Wyoming, but emerged from the caucuses with a net gain of only two delegates over Clinton.Neither can reach the winning line of 2,025 delegates, even if Florida and Michigan go ahead with emerging plans to repeat their contests after running afoul of the national party for holding their primaries early.
So barring a backroom deal prior to the convention, the nomination will rest in the hands of nearly 800 "superdelegates," Democratic luminaries who are under enormous pressure from the two campaigns to sway one way or another
Polls give the African-American Obama anything from a six- to 24-point edge in Mississippi, where more than half of Democratic voters are black. Voting to elect the state's 33 delegates was to open at 1200 GMT and end 12 hours later.
Both Obama and Clinton have outlined plans to help rebuild communities on Mississippi's Gulf Coast that were obliterated by Hurricane Katrina in mid-2005. The former first lady is already looking past the Magnolia State to the far bigger battleground of Pennsylvania, a blue-collar state whose 158 delegates are up for grabs on April 22.
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