Obama forsakes debate in favour of the canvass trail

DEMOCRATIC presidential candidate Barack Obama yesterday brushed aside a challenge from Hillary Rodham Clinton to debate before the May 6 primaries in Indiana and North Carolina.

On Saturday, Clinton said she wanted Obama to face off with her in a debate without a moderator, Lincoln-Douglas style.

“I’m not ducking. We’ve had 21 debates,” Obama said yesterday in a reply to Fox News.

“For two weeks, two big states, we want to make sure we’re talking to as many voters on the ground, taking questions from voters,” he said. “We’re not going to have debates between now and Indiana.”

The more open style of debating, where each side presents an argument, gets its name from the famed debates that took place during the 1858 US Senate race in Illinois, between Republican Abraham Lincoln and Democrat Stephen Douglas.

Trailing in delegates and the popular vote, Clinton has been stepping up the pressure on Obama for more debates in advance of the May 6 primaries.

Obama was planning to return to his home in Chicago yesterday, and had no public events scheduled.

Clinton was spending the day campaigning in North Carolina.

The chairman of the Democratic National Committee Howard Dean said superdelegates should make known their choices on the Democratic nominee for president by the end of June.

Ultimately, he said he believes their decisions will be based on who is more electable, rather than necessarily who has the most pledged delegates, because that is what the party rules stipulate.

“What’s going to happen in the last nine primaries is there’s going to be some feeling at some point that one of these candidates is more likely to win than the other, and that person will get the nomination,” he said. “I have no idea who that is, but that’s what’s going to happen.”