Clinton looks to build on comeback win

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will rally support in North Carolina today after claiming she was better placed than rival Barack Obama to take on the Republicans in the race to the White House.

The former first lady said her victory in Pennsylvania on Tuesday night, where she beat Mr Obama by more than nine points, showed she was best placed to deliver the biggest US states for the Democrats in November’s general election.

Her success in the Keystone State was not the 15-point victory which many pundits predicted would have dented Mr Obama’s national lead, but it was enough to keep her in contention and prolong the race for the Democratic party’s presidential nomination for a few more weeks.

In a series of television interviews with US networks, the 60-year-old New York senator turned her attention to Republican John McCain before returning to the campaign trail.

“At the end of the day, people have to decide who they think would be not only the best president, which is the most important question, but who would be the better candidate against Senator McCain,” Mrs Clinton told NBC’s Today.

“And I think the coalition that I’ve put together… is a very strong base for us to beat Senator McCain.”

Mrs Clinton, who used her victory speech to appeal for financial support for her troubled campaign, also revealed she had raised USD$3.5m (€2.18m) and was on track to raise US$10m (€6.2m) in the 24 hours since her Pennsylvania win.

Asked about her negative tactics after the in the intense six-week campaign before Pennsylvanians went to the polls, she told NBC’s Morning Joe: “This is a very civil campaign by any objective standard.

“That’s just the way campaigns are run.”

Mrs Clinton also insisted she intends to stay in the race.

“We’re going to go through the next nine contests and I hope to do well in many of them... but I’m confident that when delegates – as well as voters, like the voters of Pennsylvania just did – ask themselves who’s the stronger candidate against John McCain that I will be the nominee of the Democratic party,” she said.

The next key contests in the 16-month primary season will take place in Indiana and North Carolina on May 6.

Mr Obama remains in the lead in the national contest, with 1,723.5 delegates, including superdelegates, compared to Mrs Clinton’s 1,592.5, according to the latest Associated Press figures.

The young Illinois senator is expected to perform well among the large African American population of North Carolina, but polls in Indiana are split.

Speaking in Evansville, Indiana, after Tuesday night’s results, Mr Obama, 46, urged America to make this election about making the nation “a beacon of all that is good and of all that is possible for all of mankind”.

He said his campaign’s task was not simply to win the nomination, or the general election, but to “keep this country’s promise alive in the 21st century”.

He added it was easy to “get caught up in the distractions, the silliness, and the tit-for tat that consumes our politics”.

Mr Obama said the bickering, which no-one was immune to, trivialised the key issues of “two wars, an economy in recession, (and) a planet in peril”.

He said his campaign had “closed the gap” on Mrs Clinton in Pennsylvania and added: “Now it’s up to you Indiana.”