Party chief: 'Obama or Clinton must quit race by June'

4/28/2008 - 1:52:27 PM

Either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama must drop out of the Democratic presidential race after the June primaries in order to unify the party in time for November’s election, Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean said today.

But Mr Dean did not say which candidate should drop out, only that it should happen after primary voters have been to the polls.

“We want the voters to have their say. That’s over on June 3,” Mr Dean told ABC’s Good Morning America.

Mr Dean also said that while the party rules say Democratic superdelegates can wait until the party’s August 25 convention to make up their minds, that would be too late to unify the party and defeat the Republican nominee, John McCain.

“We really can’t have a divided convention. If we do it’s going to be very hard to heal the party afterwards,” Mr Dean said. “So we’ll know who the nominee is and that’ll give us an extra two-and-a-half months to get our party together, heal the wounds of having a very closely divided race and take on Senator McCain.”

Mr Dean said he won’t have to tell either Mrs Clinton or Mr Obama when it is time to leave the race.

“Either of these candidates, if it’s time for them to go, they’ll know it and they will go,” Mr Dean said. “They don’t need any pushing from me. You know when to get in and you know when to get out. That’s just part of the deal.”

Mr Obama has more delegates and popular votes than Mrs Clinton, but she recently won the important vote in Pennsylvania.

Mr Dean said that “none of the so-called party elders I talked to” think the contest should go until the convention. “I agree with that,” he said.

“We’ve got nine more primaries... 500 of the 800 unpledged delegates have already said who they are for. The remaining 300 will do that by the end of June and we’ll know who our nominee is and that’s what we need to do,” Mr Dean added.