Obama 'best placed to sort out economic mess'

The US financial crisis will help Barack Obama to win the race to the White House, his former rival Hillary Clinton said today.

Mrs Clinton said the Illinois senator who beat her in the Democratic primary season was best placed to haul the United States out of the “mess” it was in.

The former first lady said his Republican rival John McCain, who has admitted that the economy is not his strongest suit, had a history of supporting deregulation of business, one of the factors being blamed for the current crisis.

“Barack Obama’s going to win,” she told CBS’s 'The Early Show'.

“No doubt ... if anybody looks at the mess we’re in today.

“Barack Obama is being advised by the same people who got us out of the ditch in 1993.

“I think our ticket is well-equipped for handling the mess that they’re going to inherit.

“Let’s make no mistake about it: this is going to be one of the most difficult presidential transitions.”

The 60-year-old New York senator added that while she recognised that race and gender play a role in the minds of voters as they make their presidential choices, she believed enough people wanted change from Republican policies to put Mr Obama over the top in November.

Yesterday, an AP-Yahoo News poll, conducted with Stanford University, said that being black could cost Mr Obama six percentage points on November 4.

“There’s a penalty for prejudice, and it’s not trivial,” said Stanford University political scientist Paul Sniderman.

He added that racism “might be enough to tip the election” in a close contest.

The poll of 2,227 adults was conducted August 27-September 5, and was designed to probe people’s racial attitudes and how those attitudes affect voting.

Today, Mr Obama said the proposed 700 billion dollar (£380bn) US government bail-out meant he would probably have to delay the spending programmes he has called for during his campaign.

“Although we are potentially providing 700 billion dollars in available money to the Treasury, we don’t anticipate that all that money gets spent right away and we don’t anticipate that all that money is lost,” he told NBC’s Today show.

“How we’re going to structure that in budget terms still has to be decided.

“Does that mean I can do everything that I’ve called for in this campaign right away? Probably not. I think we’re going to have to phase it in.”

The Illinois senator has proposed expensive initiatives aimed at health care, education, infrastructure, alternative energy and other concerns.

He did not say which proposals might be delayed first, but added that tax revenues would play a role in any budget decisions.

Mr Obama made no reference to the rescue plan’s impact on his call for tax cuts for most taxpayers and tax increases for wealthier Americans.

Last week, he said a bail-out would not bar him from pushing for middle-class tax cuts, a central proposal in his campaign.

Mr McCain’s campaign released an advert which criticised Mr Obama and his allies as being “mum” during the financial crisis “because no one knows what to do”.

On the campaign trail in Strongsville, Ohio, today, the 72-year-old Arizona senator said he would help create jobs in the battleground state by calling for more nuclear power plants and developing so-called clean coal technology.