Could the 71-year-old grandfather possibly have a shot?

Several polls, including a recent AP-Ipsos survey, show Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton faring far better with that age bracket when pitted individually against McCain.

But in the last month or so, there have been blips in McCain’s favor. One recent AP-Yahoo News poll found that 38 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds supported McCain, while 37 percent were for Obama. When pitted against Clinton, it was McCain 43 percent, Clinton 28 percent. The margin of error was plus or minus 4.9 percentage points.

The varying outcomes may indicate the difficulty pollsters have in getting a good sample of youth, particularly when many have cell phones and no land lines. Some political scientists also note that young voters have historically been among the most “fickle” or “soft” — more willing than some to change their minds right up to the election.

Either way, McCain is seizing the opportunity to challenge the Democrats for a group that hasn’t gone strongly Republican since the Ronald Reagan era.

McCain appeared on MSNBC’s “Hardball” college tour with commentator Chris Matthews. He has launched his own YouTube channel and various social networking pages — though, so far, his numbers of “friends” and supporters on Facebook and MySpace are far fewer than Obama’s. Clinton is somewhere between the two.

So far, one political analyst says, McCain has managed to avoid looking like he’s trying too hard to be hip.

“He’s not going to blow the saxophone on MTV or talk about boxers or briefs,” says Christopher Malone, an associate professor of political science at Pace University in New York. “But that’s part of the allure. There’s a real dignity about him in terms of his patriotism and war record.”

It means that McCain has unapologetically stuck to his support for the Iraq war, even if it’s unpopular, says Joe Pounder, a McCain campaign spokesman. But he’s also been willing to take on issues not necessarily associated with Republicans. Those include global warming, a top concern for many young voters.

That reputation for standing tough has resonated with some young people.

Zach Bennett, a freshman at Davidson College in North Carolina, says he admires McCain for being “honest and rebellious.”

So does Matt Woods, a 26-year-old financial analyst from Tampa, Florida.

“I like to consider him a fiery little fellow,” says Woods, a former chairman of the student Republican group at the University of Tampa who now considers himself “more conservative than Republican.”

Though he doesn’t agree with McCain’s stance on the war, he says he trusts him enough to vote for him. “He seems to be a thorn in people’s side, but in a good way,” Woods says.

The tough-guy war hero image might not appeal to everyone, though. And some election watchers wonder if McCain’s reputation for having a temper might turn off some young voters.

Chelsea Dodd, a 23-year-old Republican in Hoboken, New Jersey, recently met McCain.

She concedes that he lacks the charisma of Obama, or even Clinton. But, she says, he still “holds a certain appearance of wisdom.” So in that sense, she thinks his age works for him.

“While I dislike how he reminds everyone he’s a veteran in every speech and that he’s not as personable as his rivals, he definitely has involved himself in enough international affairs to be better equipped to deal with them,” says Dodd, who has family in the military, including a cousin who died in Iraq.

Pounder, McCain’s spokesman, says the campaign will grow its ranks of young Republican volunteers as the campaign heats up.

The Obama campaign, too, is continuing its own outreach with a summer “fellows” program, enlisting thousands of students to work for the campaign.

“No one should assume that young voters, older voters — voters of all backgrounds — are going to side with any one candidate,” says Steve Hildebrand, Obama’s deputy national campaign manager. “So we certainly don’t feel any ownership over young voters.”

It also means they will take nothing for granted, even if Obama has already drawn young primary voters in large, sometimes unprecedented numbers.

Such outcomes have some political pundits wondering if McCain has any real chance of winning over young voters.

“He should not concede these voters, but he can’t count on making big headway with them,” says Steven Schier, a political scientist at Carleton College in Minnesota. He says McCain’s age and the overall “unpopularity” of the Republican Party with young voters will be difficult to overcome.

And even some young Republicans are doubtful.

“Frankly, I don’t have much faith in the majority of this country’s young voters,” says Laura Loffredo, who is 19 and a member of the Republican Campaign Committee at Babson College in Massachusetts. “As much as I support McCain for president, unfortunately, I don’t believe its very realistic that a significant amount of young voters — particularly college students — will be persuaded into rethinking their choice of candidate.”

Time will tell, says Malone at Pace University. But he gives McCain credit for trying.

“You got to hand it to him — at least at the initial part of his campaign, he has certainly not gone to his base to shore that up,” Malone says, noting the Arizona senator’s recent trips to New Orleans and other struggling regions of the country.

“My sense is that he’s going to use the next month or so continuing to appeal to the groups Republicans have written off.”

Obama, inching closer day by day to claiming enough delegates to secure the nomination, was spending the Mother’s Day holiday off the campaign trail at home in Chicago.

Obama’s chief strategist said in a television interview Sunday that his campaign is considering a suggestion from McCain’s campaign for the two presidential hopefuls to participate in joint town meetings and debates around America starting this summer.

Asked on “Fox News Sunday” about the suggestion and how seriously it was being considered, David Axelrod said: “Very seriously. … We believe that is the most significant election we’ve faced in a long time.”

“We’re at war. Our economy is in turmoil. And we’ve got so many challenges that the people of this country deserve a serious discourse, and it shouldn’t be limited necessarily to three kind of very regimented debates in the fall,” he added, referring to those sanctioned by a presidential commission.

Axelrod declined to discuss details. So did aides to McCain, saying they would rather wait until they have an official opponent.

But Clinton showed no signs that she was going to quit the race anytime soon.

She toured the birthplace of Mother’s Day in rural West Virginia, offering Democrats a subtle reminder that her candidacy remains strong among women and blue-collar, white voters.

Clinton made a brief afternoon visit to the home of Anna Jarvis, who is credited with founding Mother’s Day 100 years ago. Clinton afterward told stories about women who have changed history by pressing for equal rights and breaking into male-dominated careers.

She highlighted her own mother’s working-class upbringing and quoted from letters she said mothers have written her recently.

Clinton said her favorite letter ended, “It’s not over until the lady in the pantsuit says it is.”

At an evening campaign stop in Eleanor, West Virginia, Clinton quoted Eleanor Roosevelt: “A woman is like a tea bag. you never know how strong she is until she’s in hot water.”

Clinton, who is vying to be America’s first woman president, started the year with a lead of 169-63 among superdelegates. Now, after adding five superdelegates to his column over the weekend, Obama has endorsements from 276 superdelegates, according to the latest tally by The Associated Press. Clinton has 271.5.

Superdelegates are the nearly 800 party and elected officials who attend the Democratic national convention this August in Denver and are free to support whomever they choose, regardless of the primary results.

They are key because the Democratic race has been so close that neither Obama nor Clinton can win the nomination without them.

Clinton is trying to highlight her support among women, white working-class voters, and older voters. Those demographics make West Virginia friendly territory where polls show her leading Obama by as much as 40 percentage points. Obama planned to campaign in West Virginia and Kentucky on Monday.

Her chief strategist Howard Wolfson said West Virginia is a key swing state that Republicans won in 2000 and 2004, and that the former first lady will put back in the Democratic column. He said Obama should beat her there if he wants her out of the race.

“Why can’t Senator Obama beat Senator Clinton in West Virginia? Voters there have heard that he’s the presumptive nominee,” Wolfson said on “Fox News Sunday.”

“They’ve seen the great press he’s gotten in the past couple of days. Let’s let them decide. They have an opportunity. They want to end this on Tuesday, they’re perfectly capable of it.”

But even a dramatic primary win by Clinton in West Virginia won’t make much of a dent in Obama’s overall lead in the delegate count. Only 28 delegates are at stake in West Virginia.

In the overall race for the nomination, Obama has 1,864.5 delegates and Clinton has 1,697, according to the latest AP tally; 2,025 are needed to secure the Democratic nomination.

Clinton has struggled to raise money in recent weeks, and was set back further last Tuesday when she squeaked by with a narrow win in Indiana while Obama won handily in North Carolina.

Obama campaigned Saturday in Oregon, which holds its primary on May 20.

Barely mentioning Clinton, Obama, who is bidding to be the first black president, warned that he won’t stay away from controversial issues and he attacked McCain’s proposal for a temporary halt in the federal gasoline tax as a “pander.”

In a sign of his new focus on McCain, Obama is beginning to campaign in states without upcoming primaries. He said he will soon visit Michigan and Florida, two battleground states whose Democratic primaries were essentially nullified by party disputes, and Tuesday he is slated to visit Missouri for a campaign event focusing on economic issues.

Obama said he realizes he must continue introducing himself to millions of Americans who do not know him well, and acknowledged that some question his patriotism because he no longer wears a lapel flag pin.

He said the test of patriotism “is whether we are true to the ideals and values upon which this country was founded,” and willing to fight for them “even when it’s politically inconvenient.”

The New York senator started the day braving thunderstorms in Huntington, W.Va., to listen to a church sermon on Mother’s Day delivered by Dr. Paul Russell of First United Methodist Church. Clinton shook hands with congregants after the service.

Clinton followed that with an afternoon appearance at the home of Anna Jarvis in Grafton, W.Va., site of the original Mother’s Day celebration 100 years ago. West Virginia Democrats vote on Tuesday. Speaking afterward to a group of about 150 people in a train station, Clinton quoted some of the e-mails of support she’s gotten from people around the country.

“I guess my favorite message was from a woman named Angela. ‘Keep strong,’ she said. ‘It’s not over until the lady in the pantsuit says it is,’” Clinton said.

The strength of moms, and women in general, is a theme Clinton wants to play up as she reminds Democrats of her strong support among female voters. They have been a major source of backing for the New York senator, who wants to become the first woman president in the U.S.

Overall, white women voters have carried Clinton over Barack Obama by a 60 to 36 percent, according to exit polls. However, that lead shrinks to 54-43 percent among college-educated, white women.

Clinton’s argument in West Virginia — as well as Kentucky and Oregon, which vote in 10 days — is that she is a better candidate against presumptive Republican nominee John McCain than is her Democratic opponent, Barack Obama.

“On Tuesday, voters in West Virginia, which is a key swing state, are going to get to weigh in. We’re going to have primaries upcoming in other states after that. They’re going to have their say, too. Senator Clinton is committed to her supporters and to the voters in the upcoming states to carry this through and secure the nomination,” Clinton strategist Howard Wolfson told “FOX News Sunday.”

But even as Clinton and her team says they will fight to the finish, The Associated Press is running stories headlined “Clinton’s Fall” and ‘Clinton’s Moments,” recapping her race for the presidency with a decidedly past-tense tone.

While the wire service writes Clinton “is fighting on for a prize few believe she can win anymore,” Obama surrogates are suggesting ways in which she could politely bow out of the race while keeping the party together and not damaging Obama’s chances in the Fall.

“I know Hillary Clinton well, I know her husband well. These are great Democrats, they care about the country very much, and I’m, I’m entirely confident as I speak to you this morning that we’re going to be a very united party behind Barack Obama very, very quickly and to face the challenges that John McCain and the Republicans pose in the election in November,” Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, who briefly ran for the nomination and now backs Obama, told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

Campaigning in Oregon over the weekend, Obama reveled in his new lead in superdelegates — 276-271 — but was careful to avoid any outward sign of overconfidence. He told reporters it is premature to ask whether he would offer Clinton a spot on the Fall ticket or help her erase her campaign debt, positions repeated Sunday by his chief strategist David Axelrod.

Obama did say he would want Clinton to “feel good about the process” and be “on his team,” a notion Axelrod undercut by suggesting that most superdelegates will break for Obama quickly.

“I think people, out of respect for the process and the candidates — some may withhold their judgment. But I think we’re going to — we’ve been announcing several, you know, each day for the last few days. I think we’re going to continue to — we’re going to continue to unfurl these endorsements on a regular basis here,” he said.

Even a dramatic primary win by Clinton will do little to put a dent in Obama’s overall lead in delegates.

“There’s just no math right now for Hillary Clinton. She has a case for her strategy, but doesn’t have a case for the arithmetic of it,” said FOX News contributor Susan Estrich.

Still, Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe argued the race won’t be over until June 3.

“No one is the nominee. Everyone needs to be clear, until someone gets the magic number of the delegates, 2209, you are not the nominee of the Democratic Party,” McAuliffe told CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

“I think most of the superdelegates will wait until the end, until everybody has voted. They want everybody to be voting in this process. And then, at that point, I think, you know who is going to make the decision. I believe we’ll be ahead in the popular vote. We’ll be within 100 on the delegates, and then who is the best to win the general election?” he asked.

FOX News’ James Rosen and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Doug Davenport, McCain’s regional campaign manager for the mid-Atlantic states, reportedly founded the DCI Group’s lobbying practice and supervised a contract with the Burmese military junta in 2002.

“Doug Davenport has resigned from his position with the campaign,” McCain spokeswoman Brooke Buchanan said in a statement.

His resignation follows the decision by Doug Goodyear—the man picked by McCain’s campaign to run the 2008 Republican National Convention — to step down after a report that DCI, where Goodyear is chief executive, used to represent the military regime in Burma, renamed Myanmar by the ruling military junta.

“Today I offered the convention my resignation so as not to become a distraction in this campaign. I continue to strongly support John McCain for president, and wish him the best of luck in this campaign,” Goodyear said in a two sentence statement.

The resignation came after Newsweek posted a story online that the company was paid $348,000 in 2002 and 2003 to represent Burma’s junta.

“We respect Mr. Goodyear’s decision, and look forward to the convention in September,” said Brian Rogers, a spokesman for the McCain campaign.

Burma suffered a devastating cyclone a week and a half ago. Cyclone Nargis left more than 60,000 people dead or missing, and the U.N. estimates that at least 1.5 million people have been severely affected. Human rights organizations and dissident groups have bitterly criticized the junta for neglecting disaster victims and blocking foreign donations of relief supplies.

Justice Department records covering agents of foreign agents that are required to register with the U.S. government show DCI signed a contract to work to “improve relations between the United States and Myanmar” and to act as the junta’s public relations agent in Washington.

Newsweek said the firm drafted news releases praising Burma’s efforts to curb the drug trade and denouncing claims by the Bush administration that the regime engaged in rape and other abuses.

“It was our only foreign representation, it was for a short tenure, and it was six years ago,” Newsweek quoted Goodyear as saying. The magazine said Goodyear added that the junta’s record in the current cyclone crisis is “reprehensible.”

The Newsweek article also reported that some of Goodyear’s allies worry that worry the choice of Goodyear could fuel perceptions that McCain is surrounded by lobbyists. DCI Group earned $3 million last year lobbying for ExxonMobil, General Motors and other clients, the report said.

Newsweek also reported DCI has been a pioneer in running “independent” expenditure campaigns by so-called 527 groups, the kind of operations that McCain has denounced in his battle for campaign finance reform.

The convention runs Sept. 1-4 at the Xcel Energy Center in downtown St. Paul.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Edwards also hedged on whether he might still endorse one of his former rivals, but said he thinks Obama will be the nominee. He cautioned that in Clinton’s continued push for the nomination, she “has to be really careful” not to damage the Democratic Party’s prospects in November.

“I know how hard it is to get up and go out there every day, speak to the media, speak to crowds, when people are urging you to get out of the race. I mean, it’s a very hard place to be in. But she’s shown a lot of strength about that,” said Edwards, a former North Carolina senator who dropped out of the race in January.

“But I think the one thing that she has to be careful about … going forward, is that, if she makes the case for herself, which she’s completely entitled to do, she has to be really careful that she’s not damaging our prospects, the Democratic Party, and our cause, for the fall,” he said in a taped interview broadcast on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”

Clinton pledged to stay in the race after losing to Obama by a wide margin in North Carolina and barely winning in Indiana, which cemented his status as the front-runner. She touts her overall electability in a general election and, pointing to demographics, she recently told USA Today in an interview:

“There was just an AP article posted that found how Senator Obama’s support among working — hardworking Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how the, you know, whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

Some accused Clinton of reintroducing race into the campaign. Edwards seemed to give her a pass.

“She’s in a very tough, very competitive race that’s been going on a long, long time. And you know, she didn’t probably — I’m sure she feels like she didn’t choose her words very well there,” he said.

“What I think is, at the end of the day, when this is over — and I think it is likely, certainly, at this point, that Senator Obama will be the nominee — that the Democrats will unite. We’ll all be behind our nominee. And we’ll be out there campaigning our hearts out,” Edwards said.

David Axelrod, Obama’s chief campaign strategist, disputed Clinton’s assertion.

Axelrod said Obama and Clinton split Indiana voters who make $50,000 a year or less, and that Obama performed better among non-college-educated voters there. He said the same was true in North Carolina.

“The words weren’t well chosen, but the thesis was wrong,” Axeldrod said on “Fox News Sunday.”

Meanwhile, on the subject of an endorsement, Edwards said he “might” still, but “I don’t think it’s a big deal, to be honest with you.”

But as Franken moves to consolidate Democrats behind his challenge to Republican Sen. Norm Coleman, another Democrat is chipping into his support — one whose background and beliefs spark even greater Wellstone nostalgia for some voters.

Like Wellstone, Jack Nelson-Pallmeyer is a college professor with a long history of political activism and fearless liberalism. His green-and-white campaign signs mimic the Wellstone placards that still hang in the front window of many a Democratic household, and that’s not an accident.

“I love it when other people make the parallel,” Nelson-Pallmeyer said in an interview, during a day of courting the party activists who will decide next month whether he or Franken is the Democratic candidate.

Franken, the former “Saturday Night Live” comedian and liberal commentator, has far more money and name recognition, and is seen as the Democratic favorite to take on Coleman — who holds the seat Wellstone occupied until his death in a plane crash in 2002.

But after several weeks in which Franken’s muddled personal finances have dominated campaign coverage, Nelson-Pallmeyer’s underdog effort is getting a new look.

Both Franken and Nelson-Pallmeyer have said they won’t run in the September primary if they’re not endorsed by the 2,600 Democratic delegates and alternates at the state convention — a group that tends to be more liberal than the broader Democratic electorate.

For months, Nelson-Pallmeyer rarely got more than passing mention in coverage of Franken’s Senate aspirations. The main Democratic fight was thought to be between Franken and wealthy lawyer Mike Ciresi. But in early March, the Nelson-Pallmeyer campaign began to claim it had surpassed Ciresi in delegate support; within a few days, Ciresi dropped out of the race.

That seemed to clear the field for Franken, but he was soon hit by damaging reports of sloppiness in the finances of his personal corporation. Franken ultimately said he would pay $70,000 in back taxes to 17 states, though he maintained his accountant had reported the income elsewhere.

“I hate to see a man stumble on something like that, but I think it has had an effect,” said Tom Jones, a Nelson-Pallmeyer backer. “It kind of feeds into the idea that the guy isn’t paying attention, and Coleman will hammer him on that.”

Neither campaign is releasing their current tally of delegates. Nelson-Pallmeyer said his support is “definitely climbing,” while Franken spokesman Andy Barr said the campaign is “very confident” that Franken will prevail.

Both campaigns have worked the delegates hard for months. Perhaps because of that, many are shrugging off Franken’s accounting problems.

“I don’t hear my fellow delegates talking about” Franken’s finances, said John Schwetman, a Franken supporter. “I think those who never made a mistake on their taxes should throw the first stone. There’s a lot of things people are more concerned about than a mistake by Al Franken’s accountant.”

Nelson-Pallmeyer hasn’t pressed the issue.

“My sense is people are attracted to my candidacy because of the person behind my campaign,” Nelson-Pallmeyer said. “I’m not a negative person. I’m sick of politics that are about attacks. I don’t think we have time for more division.”

At a recent congressional district convention in the southern Minnesota city of Albert Lea, Nelson-Pallmeyer mingled with delegates at the back of the hall.

The 57-year-old Minneapolis resident with a shock of white hair describes himself as “something of a recovering introvert,” and he doesn’t have Wellstone’s energetic charisma in person. But he can bring a crowd of Democrats to their feet with fiery speeches focused on his opposition to the Iraq war and Republican foreign policy.

A professor of Justice and Peace Studies at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, Nelson-Pallmeyer’s campaign platform is fueled by his lifelong focus on social justice and economic equality. He often leans on his life experience, from teaching in inner city Chicago to living in Central America to leading large Iraq war protests.

“What we really need if we’re going to have a world that is secure is a world that’s more just and more peaceful,” Nelson-Pallmeyer said.

Nelson-Pallmeyer is to Franken’s left on just about everything. He’s opposed to the death penalty in all circumstances, for nationwide legalization of same-sex marriages, a full withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq in the next nine months, universal single-payer health insurance and a massive reduction in defense spending.

“I certainly think, if the general election were happening today, that Al’s made more progress to reaching out to people outside the Democratic base,” said Barr, Franken’s spokesman.

But Nelson-Pallmeyer’s supporters, like Yvonne Leiser, point out that there was another Democrat once considered too liberal for Minnesota voters.

“Paul Wellstone carried this state, and he did it twice,” Leiser said.

Promoted by the McCain campaign, the events would unfold as joint debates, perhaps without a moderator, and resemble the approach taken during the Abraham Lincoln-Stephen A. Douglas presidential race of 1860. They’d been seen as an opportunity for the presumptive Republican presidential nominee to travel the country with his Democratic counterpart — whoever that may be.

Asked how seriously Obama is considering joint appearances, campaign adviser David Axelrod responded, “Very seriously. We take that as a serious idea. And again, we believe that is the most significant election we’ve faced in a long time.

“We’re at war. Our economy is in turmoil. And we’ve got so many challenges that the people of this country deserve a serious discourse, and it shouldn’t be limited necessarily to three kind of very regimented debates in the fall. We ought to begin sooner, and we ought to have a free-flowing conversation about where we want to take this country. So you know, we’re interested in that proposal and eager to sit down and talk about it,” he told “FOX News Sunday.”

But cordiality between McCain and Obama may be limited to logistics. Earlier this week, McCain noted that a Hamas spokesman said the terror group is hoping Obama is the next president. Obama responded to that by suggesting McCain is “losing his bearings,” language that the McCain camp called a dig at the Arizona senator’s age.

Axelrod contended the McCain camp was being oversensitive and denied Obama was touching on the age issue.

“When we say ‘losing his bearings,’ we’re talking about the fact that he promised an elevated campaign, a campaign on issues and so on, and he’s been engaged in a series of kind of gratuitous, ad hominem attacks lately. … Let’s not engage in the nonsense that he knows isn’t the fact, that he knows demeans not just Senator Obama but himself in the process. That’s what Senator Obama was referring to,” he said.

With just six contests remaining until Democratic primary season ends on June 3rd, many are counting the number of pledged delegates, superdelegates and popular vote tally to say that Obama has wrapped up the race against Hillary Clinton.

Clinton is likely to win West Virginia on Tuesday and Kentucky the following week if polls are anywhere near accurate. Her spokesman Howard Wolfson said Sunday that the race isn’t over. Clinton’s victory in the swing state of West Virginia proves once more that she is more electable than McCain in a general election.

But it was the rationale behind her argument that had drew considerable criticism this week. In an interview with USA Today, Clinton said she attracts more “hard-working Americans, white Americans” and that makes her more electable than McCain in the Fall. Critics pounded Clinton, suggesting her implication is that black Americans aren’t hard-working.

The Clinton campaign said that criticism couldn’t be further from the truth, and Axelrod also gave Clinton a pass on Sunday, calling the supposed intent of her argument not only misstated but also factually inaccurate.

“The words weren’t well chosen, but the thesis was wrong,” Axelrod said. “I don’t imagine that she chose the words as she would if you asked her that question again. And the truth is that that isn’t even the fact. In Indiana, we split voters who make $50,000 a year or less evenly. We did better among non-college-educated voters there. And the same is true in North Carolina.”

He added that he doesn’t think Clinton wants to hurt Obama’s chances for winning in the fall by turning the Democratic contest into a debate on race. He would not say whether Clinton would be considered as a possible vice presidential candidate, a scenario that Wolfson also refused to discuss.

“I think all of this discussion about V.P. is premature. We think Senator Clinton is going to be the nominee. If she’s not, it’ll be up to Senator Obama who he decides to choose. If it’s Senator Clinton, it’ll be up to her,” Wolfson said. “I haven’t discussed it with her, she hasn’t discussed it with me. I have seen no evidence of her interest in it.”

Wolfson also confirmed that the Clinton campaign is about $20 million in debt, but would not discuss efforts to retire the debt, perhaps with the help of Obama.

“Senator Clinton is going to be the nominee. When she is in the nominee, we will be in the position to retire our own debt,” Wolfson said.

Axelrod also rejected the idea that the Obama campaign would retire Clinton’s debt, saying that Obama will need the resources to run in the general election.

“She hasn’t asked, and we haven’t offered,” he said.

McConnell has already raised over $12 million to bolster his re-election campaign, and ads highlighting his accomplishments on Capitol Hill are running almost nonstop on state TV stations.

McConnell has been targeted by opponents as being past his prime, but the Senate Republican leader says if opponents throw a pebble at him, he’ll throw a boulder back.

Seven Democrats will face-off in a primary on May 20 for the right to take on McConnell in the fall.

But no one really knows what the Clinton brand will be worth once the 2008 primary race is over.

The Clintons together have run a tireless presidential campaign that projected an image of political might, even as Hillary Clinton’s Democratic nomination went from inevitable to unlikely. In doing so, however, the couple has rattled party elders and alienated voting blocs that once held them in the highest esteem.

As Barack Obama appears poised to clinch the Democratic nomination, many ponder if the Clintons will ever bounce back to be the power duo they were at the start of the campaign.

“It’s never gonna be the same, it’s never gonna be what it was,” Democratic strategist Dan Gerstein said. “The name is never gonna be hallowed the way it was in African American communities.”

The Clintons are still ruffling feathers. Bill Clinton lashed out at a critic who challenged him and his wife on health care earlier this week in West Virginia. And after Hillary Clinton lost the North Carolina primary to Obama Tuesday by double digits, she turned to race as a way of explaining her electoral appeal.

“I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on,” she told USA Today on Wednesday. Then she declared “a pattern is emerging here” and cited an Associated Press article “that found how Senator Obama’s support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me.”

New York Rep. Charles Rangel, who is black and a Clinton supporter, told The New York Daily News, “I can’t believe Senator Clinton would say anything that dumb.”

The term “graceful exit” is one that’s thrown out a lot these days by political pundits.

“If she bows out gracefully … she can in fairly short order repair some of the damage that’s been done to her reputation and standing in the party,” Gerstein said.

Though he noted the ground Clinton and her husband have lost among black voters, he said she has galvanized support among women voters, a trend that could lead her into her political future.

“If she does this the right way, (she) would be in a very powerful position … to be a real advocate and a voice for women in Washington,” he said.

Pollster Scott Rasmussen, too, said Clinton is “looking for a graceful exit point.”

He said he’s done the math, and “it’s done.” He said the only way Clinton can win is if Obama makes such a “serious mistake” that he alienates his own supporters, which Rasmussen doubts will happen.

South Carolina Rep. James Clyburn, the highest ranking black member of Congress, has already warned that the racially charged Democratic contest could turn away black voters, and he said Bill Clinton’s conduct on the trail had “incensed” the black community.

The former president’s most criticized moment was probably when he equated Obama’s victory in the January South Carolina primary to Jesse Jackson’s win in the state 20 years ago.

A FOX News poll in late April showed the former president was still viewed favorably by 52 percent of Americans, but not every survey is so rosy. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll in late March found that more Americans viewed him unfavorably than favorably, 45 to 42 percent.

Hillary Clinton loses about 90 percent of the black vote to Obama in just about every contest now, but she wasn’t always polling so low. A survey of black primary voters taken by the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies in October and November found that 51 percent viewed Clinton very favorably, compared with the 40 percent who viewed Obama the same way.

But once the dust settles on the primary race, Democrats may just be willing to forgive and forget.

Democratic pollster Doug Schoen believes Hillary Clinton still has a bright future in the party, and that her near-50 percent haul in the popular vote this primary cycle qualifies her for an influential role among Democrats. He’s advocated for a joint Obama-Clinton ticket, though other strategists aren’t so sure.

“She’ll be a voice in this party … in years to come,” he told FOX News on Saturday.

After all, national polls still show her almost pulling even with Obama.

If post-primary unity is an issue, Obama said Saturday in Oregon: “I know there is a lot of concern about division but let me assure you: this party will be united come November.”

Clinton last week told North Carolina Democrats that she will gladly support Obama and campaign for him if he is the nominee. Obama made the same pledge to her.

Even Rangel is holding nothing against Clinton.

“We were with Hillary Clinton before, we’re with Hillary Clinton now,” he said at her New York fundraiser Saturday, firing back at reporters who repeatedly asked him when Clinton is dropping out.

“When in the history of this country or the world did winners quit?” he asked.

FOX News’ Aaron Bruns, Shushannah Walshe and Judson Berger contributed to this report.

Barely mentioning Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama said he was open to campaigning with McCain in “town hall” events. But he also warned that controversial issues such as McCain’s ties to the Keating Five savings and loan scandal are fair game, and he called McCain’s proposal for a temporary halt in the federal gasoline tax a pander and a gimmick.

He did not mention that Clinton supports a similar plan.

Obama also said he soon will campaign in Michigan and Florida, two battleground states whose Democratic primaries were essentially nullified by party disputes, angering many voters.

Saying he still has not secured the nomination, Obama nonetheless entertained several questions about the likely outlines of a contest against McCain. As he campaigned in Oregon, whose primary is May 20, Obama picked up four superdelegate endorsements, erasing Clinton’s once-substantial lead among the party leaders who will determine the nominee.

Many party leaders feel it is only a matter of time before the former first lady must concede defeat. But Clinton forged ahead Saturday, holding a fundraiser in New York.

“Let’s keep going, stay with me, this is a great adventure and we’re going to make history,” she told the crowd.

Speaking with reporters in Bend, Ore., Obama brushed aside suggestions that the fall campaign may be largely about his race, liberalism or patriotism.

“In a contest between myself and John McCain,” he said, “there is going to be a very clear choice on policy that I don’t think is going to have to do with ideology and who theoretically is more liberal or who’s more conservative. I think it is going to have to do with who has a plan to provide relief to people when it comes to their gas prices, who has a real plan to make sure that everybody has health insurance, who’s got a real plan to deal with college affordability.”

“So rather than an abstract set of questions about, ‘Is he too liberal, is he too conservative, how do voters handle an African American, etcetera,’ I think this is going to be a very concrete contest around very specific plans for how we improve the lives of Americans and our vision for the future,” he said.

Obama said he realizes he must continue introducing himself to millions of Americans who do not know him well, and acknowledged that some question his patriotism because he no longer wears a lapel flag pin.

He said the test of patriotism “is whether we are true to the ideals and values upon which this country was founded,” and willing to fight for them “even when it’s politically inconvenient.”

Obama said McCain has received “a free pass” while he and Clinton have battled for months.

McCain, he said, “has a straight-talker image, but it’s not clear that lately he’s been following through on that image. I mean, this gas tax holiday was a pander. He didn’t even have a way of paying for it.”

Obama was asked if the fall campaign might touch on the 1987 Keating Five scandal, in which the Senate Ethics Committee said McCain used “poor judgment” for allegedly pressing regulators to go easy on the owner of a failed Arizona savings and loan who was also a campaign contributor.

Obama said there is no doubt the Keating Five case is “germane to the presidency.”

“I can’t quarrel with the American people wanting to know more about that,” he said.

Clinton, meanwhile, spent the afternoon in Manhattan raising money for her cash-strapped campaign.

She made her pitch to a crowd of several hundred people, most of them women — appealing to the group that has largely been responsible for keeping her in the race this long. In the primaries to date, Clinton has held a 60 percent to 36 percent edge over Obama among white female voters.

Appearing with her daughter, Chelsea, Clinton took questions from the audience after a short speech that touched on issues like equal pay for women and balancing work outside the home with family responsibilities. She barely mentioned Obama, only noting their differences on health care and the gas tax.

She said it would be “exciting to have the first mother in the White House.”

“Part of what that would mean is that we would have someone who has lived the experiences that many of us share,” she said.

Clinton has struggled to raise money in recent weeks, and was set back further this week when she squeaked by with a narrow win in Indiana while Obama won handily in North Carolina. Aides also disclosed that Clinton had lent her campaign $6.4 million since mid-April, and said she had not ruled out doing so again. The recent loans come after a separate $5 million loan in February.

Clinton is favored to win Tuesday’s primary in West Virginia, and on Saturday she implored her audience to stick with her.

Obama picked up five superdelegates Saturday, after rounding up nine such endorsements the day before. The gains erased Hillary Clinton’s once-imposing lead among the party officials and insiders who play a key part in selecting the nominee.

“I think it is an encouraging sign that our camp is making progress that superdelegates are moving in our direction,” Obama said Saturday in Bend, Ore. “They are looking forward to resolving this contest as soon as we can so we can pivot and start talking about John McCain and the general election.”

Clinton added one superdelegate in Massachusetts, but lost two in the Virgin Islands, putting the count as of Saturday afternoon at 276 for Obama, 271.5 for Clinton.

The milestone is important because these are the Democrats who will decide the nomination for president, and Clinton would need their support by a wide margin to win. Obama has a big lead among pledged delegates, but neither candidate can win the nomination without support from the superdelegates.

Superdelegates, who make up 20 percent of the total available delegates, are free to support whomever they choose, while pledged delegates are awarded based on the outcome of primaries and caucuses.

Even as Obama steadily racked up pledged delegates over the past four months, Clinton had always led with superdelegates, a sign that she was the establishment favorite.

Obama, though, moved ever closer to clinching the nomination with his double-digit win in North Carolina on Tuesday and his better-than-expected finish in Indiana. His performance prompted a round of pundits and elected officials to declare the race was over and started the stream of superdelegate endorsements.

Training his sights on presumptive GOP nominee McCain, Obama even said Saturday he would be happy to meet the Arizona senator for joint town hall meetings, after spending weeks refusing to debate Clinton.

“That’s a great idea,” he said. “Obviously we would have to think through the logistics on that. But to the extent that I, should I be the nominee, if I have the opportunity to debate substantive issues before the voters with John McCain that’s something that I am going to welcome. “

Obama surpassed Clinton’s lead Saturday by adding superdelegates from Utah, Ohio, Arizona and the Virgin Islands.

Virgin Island superdelegates Carole Burke and Kevin Rodriquez were just two of the latest to break for Obama.

“While I have great respect for Senator Clinton … Senator Obama has brought a new generation and energy into the democratic process and the Democratic Party,” Rodriquez said in a statement.

Clinton started the year with a 106-delegate lead among superdelegates, a margin that started to shrink after Obama won the Iowa caucuses in early January.

A little more than 200 superdelegates remain undecided, and about 40 others will be named by state parties at state conventions and meetings throughout the spring.

There are 217 pledged delegates at stake in the remaining six primaries. Obama is on track to secure a majority of the pledged delegates on May 20, when Kentucky and Oregon vote.

In the overall race for the nomination, Obama has 1,864.5 delegates and Clinton has 1,697, according to the latest Associated Press tally. Obama is just 161.5 delegates shy of the 2,025 needed to secure the Democratic nomination.

Undeterred, Clinton held a fundraiser Saturday in New York that was expected to pull in $200,000.

“So let’s keep going. Stay with me,” she said. “This is a great adventure and we’re going to make history.”

FOX News’ Shushannah Walshe and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Five months after campaign fund-raiser Norman Hsu was indicted on federal fraud charges, investigators are looking into the questionable practices of a northern Virginia firm chairman, William Danielczyk.

Danielczyk was one of Clinton’s “bundlers,” or fund-raisers who rack up contributions from other donors, and is being investigated to see whether he violated election law by repaying contributors, according to a Saturday article in The Wall Street Journal.

The paper reported that investigators are looking into contributions made last year by the chairman of Galen Capital Corp., his family, his employees and his investors. Investigators are trying to find out if Danielczyk’s company repaid donors, which would be a federal crime.

The paper reported that there is no evidence the Clinton campaign knew about the potential problems with Danielczyk’s donations but that the campaign returned $115,000 that he raised last year.

Clinton returned $850,000 that Hsu raised after he was accused of cheating investors out of millions and using some of the money to make illegal donations.

Click here to read the full story in The Wall Street Journal.

Polls show her leading by double digits in both states, and she is hitting the campaign trail hard in Appalachia as a fighter for “hard-working middle-class Americans.” The latest American Research Group poll has her up by 43 percentage points in West Virginia, which votes Tuesday.

Too bad for her, those states fall late in the primary calendar and Barack Obama is publicly predicting the Oregon contest May 20 as the end of the road.

“We are ready to turn the page on American history. And we are going to bring this election to a close right here in Oregon if all of you join us,” Obama told the crowd gathered at the University of Oregon in Eugene Friday night.

Obama has practically conceded West Virginia and Kentucky already and is moving on, girding for a general election battle against John McCain.

His potential Republican opponent is “running for a third George Bush term,” Obama said Friday, an attack he hopes will resonate in November should he clear Clinton out of his way.

Polls show Obama well ahead in Oregon, and that’s the state where the campaign expects to take the majority of pledged delegates.

But Clinton’s expected wins in Kentucky and West Virginia will at least give a boost to her flailing candidacy, and the friendly territory is allowing her to prop herself up in the closing days of the campaign. If Obama wins in Oregon and declares victory overall, it’ll be a bumpy road to get there. In Appalachia, Clinton is highlighting Obama’s continuing trouble attracting white, working-class voters, and touting what she sees as her ability to carry the Democrats to victory in November.

“One thing you know about me is, I’m no shrinking violet,” she told voters in Louisville, Ky., Friday, taking a shot at Obama for not campaigning in the state, which also votes May 20.

For Clinton, the delegate math is no longer the issue she focuses on publicly. Obama picked up nine superdelegates against Clinton on Friday and is fewer than 170 total delegates away from the 2,025 needed to clinch the nomination.

Clinton, rather, is trying to shift attention to a different number — 270, the number of electoral votes needed to win the general election. She stresses that Democrats need working-class states like Kentucky, where she seems to have far more support than Obama.

“The only way we can have a Democrat in that White House come next January is to win in November,” she said Friday. “And we cannot win unless we can win 270 electoral votes. Look at the map, figure out where we’re going to get those votes, and which candidate is more likely to be able to win those votes in November against John McCain.”

Clinton heads to New York City on Saturday for a fundraiser, while Obama continues campaigning in Oregon.

Laying off Clinton, Obama went after McCain Friday for supporting a proposed summer suspension of the federal gas tax in Eugene, Ore., and warned of the tricks Republicans will play in the fall.

“It appears the Republicans are intent on making this campaign about me — about whether I wear a flag pin or … the offensive remarks of a former pastor. That’s what they want to make this campaign about,” he said.

Oregon Rep. Pete DeFazio, who endorsed Obama Friday, added: “Some are tempted by the false promise of John McCain, what he calls the Straight Talk Express. But let’s call it what it is. It is not the Straight Talk Express. It is the Trojan Horse Express. It’s the same old Bush-Cheney politics but even more reckless on public policy even more reckless on foreign affairs.”

FOX News’ Aaron Bruns and Shushannah Walshe contributed to this report.

And amazing it was. It made it possible for him to stand today on the verge of being the first black person ever nominated for president by a major party.

One could guess the thoughts of the blacks and whites in that crowd: Can you believe that our state — South Carolina, first to secede and first to open fire in the Civil War — is now catapulting a black man to the front of the presidential contest in a year that bodes well for Democrats?

“Race doesn’t matter,” some began to chant. “Race doesn’t matter!”

The cry soon gave way to more familiar chants of “Yes we can,” and everyone in the auditorium surely knew that race does still matter in so many ways. But in a pinch-me moment, they seemed to realize that a barrier had been broken with a swiftness and certainty that even they had not foreseen.

Even more astounding, the man vaulting ahead of the universally known former first lady, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, had been a state legislator only four years earlier — a lawyer with no fame, wealth or family connections.

Now, the entire nation and countless foreigners are absorbing a moment that had seemed decades away, if possible at all. Smart strategists and rank-and-file voters ponder how Obama rose so far so fast, and theories abound. Historians will sort it out someday, but Obama’s blend of oratory, biography, optimism and cool confidence come to mind most immediately.

It’s not just about him, of course. If America can seriously think of putting a black man in the White House, surely it must also profoundly rethink the relevance of race, the power of prejudice, the logic of affirmative action and other societal forces that have evolved slowly through the eras of Jim Crow, desegregation and massive immigration.

Maybe the toughest question is this:

Is Obama, with his incandescent smile and silky oratory, a once-in-a-century phenomenon who will blast open doors only to see them quickly close on less extraordinary blacks?

Or is he the lucky and well-timed beneficiary of racial dynamics that have changed faster than most people realized, a trend that presumably will soon yield more black governors, senators, mayors and council members?

Presidential campaigns have destroyed many bright and capable politicians. But there’s ample evidence that Obama is something special, a man who makes difficult tasks look easy, who seems to touch millions of diverse people with a message of hope that somehow doesn’t sound Pollyannaish.

Rep. Elijah Cummings, a black Maryland Democrat who endorsed Obama early, says the Illinois senator convinces people of all races that Americans as a society, and as individuals, can achieve higher goals if they try.

“He says we can do better, and his life is the epitome of doing better,” says Cummings, noting that Obama was raised by a single mother who sometimes relied on food stamps. “He convinces people that there’s a lot of good within them.”

And why should they believe such feel-good platitudes? “Because he’s real and he has confidence in his own competence,” Cummings says.

Without question, Obama is an electrifying speaker. At virtually every key juncture in his trajectory, he has used inspirational oratory to generate excitement, buy time to deal with crises, and force party activists to rethink their assumptions that a black man with an African name cannot seriously vie for the presidency.

A prime-time speech at the Democratic convention in Boston catapulted him to national attention in 2004. When his presidential campaign badly trailed Clinton’s high-flying operation, he gave it new life with a timely Iowa speech that outshone her remarks moments earlier on the same stage. And a heavily covered March 18 speech about race relations calmed criticisms about his ties to his former pastor, although Obama had to revisit the matter when the minister restated incendiary remarks about the government.

Obama has a compelling biography, too. The son of a black African father he barely knew, and a white Kansan mother who took him from Hawaii to Indonesia, he was largely raised by his white maternal grandparents. He finished near the top of his Harvard law class, then rejected big firms’ salaries to work as a community organizer in Southside Chicago, where he found a church, his wife and a place that felt like home.

But all those attributes don’t explain the Obama phenomenon.

Other great orators have fallen short of the presidency, including Daniel Webster and William Jennings Bryan.

Plenty of brilliant people have tried and failed, too. Bill Bradley was a Princeton graduate, basketball star and Rhodes Scholar.

Intriguing biographies aren’t enough, either. John Glenn was an astronaut and American hero, but he couldn’t get off the presidential launchpad.

Jim Margolis, a veteran campaign strategist now working for Obama, thinks it is his blend of all these traits, wrapped in “authenticity,” which makes Obama’s message of hope and inclusion seem plausible, not pie in the sky.

Margolis interviewed many of Obama’s Harvard classmates for TV ads and documentaries. They told him Obama “was wise beyond his years, and never talked down to people,” Margolis said.

“He has this amazing ability to connect with people and understand their problems,” he said. “And through it all, there is this optimism.”

For a politician with only four years of experience at the federal level, Obama also has spot-on instincts, associates say, and a steely confidence in his convictions, in good times and bad. His roughest patch came after Clinton revived her campaign with wins in Ohio and Pennsylvania, and a renewed uproar over Obama’s former pastor threatened to consume his campaign.

Obama rejected advice to criticize Clinton more fiercely, and went back to his themes of political and racial reconciliation. His solid win in North Carolina and near miss in Indiana confirmed his judgment.

Obama and his small core of longtime advisers also outsmarted the vaunted Clinton team by focusing early on small caucus states, where he racked up important wins. His fundraising has been nothing short of astounding, with millions of dollars pouring in via the Internet from people who never gave a politician a dime.

Obama fans often search for words to express their attraction.

“He just really electrifies you when you are listening to him,” said Lena Bradley, 78, a beauty salon owner in Washington. “He has something that’s leading him.”

As ephemeral as “something that’s leading him” sounds, it’s hard to explain in more clinical terms his impact on people. But it’s there.

As recently as June 2006, a lone reporter could travel with Obama in cars and small planes as he campaigned for other Democrats in state after state. On one such visit to Massachusetts and New Jersey, his charm was on full display before crowds of various size, age and ethnic makeup. He made teenagers guffaw by saying people pronounced his name “Yo Mama.” He quoted scripture in a black church, and set every head nodding.

On a plane ride he talked with the reporter for an hour, on the record, with barely a hint of the nervousness or hedging that most politicians understandably display to someone with a pen, pad and tape recorder.

Before an audience of 300 people in East Orange, N.J., Obama spotted local resident and famous singer Dionne Warwick. He smiled impishly and sang, “If you see me walking down the street,” the opening line of her hit, “Walk on By.” The crowd roared its approval of his on-key ad lib.

Some veteran politicians also see “something that’s leading” Obama, whether they can explain it or not.

Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., a longtime friend and supporter, said “nothing was ever the same” after Obama’s Boston speech.

Durbin recalls pulling Obama into a vacant meeting room in Chicago’s Union League Club, where both had spoken on a Friday afternoon in November 2006. He felt it was time for his young colleague to decide whether to run for the White House.

“There are moments in life when you can pick the time,” Durbin said he told Obama. “But when it comes to running for president, the time can pick you. You’ve been picked. This is your moment.”

A short time later, Obama launched his candidacy.

At breakfast forums, in op-ed columns, across the blogosphere, the debate has been heartfelt and sometimes bitter. Are the activist women supporting front-runner Barack Obama betraying their gender? Are Clinton’s feminist backers mired in an outdated, women’s-liberation mind-set?

Ellen Bravo is a Milwaukee author and activist who advocates on behalf of working women — and is an Obama supporter. She faults Clinton for her 2002 vote authorizing the Iraq war and believes the Illinois senator would be more supportive of grass-roots political action.

At times, Bravo, 64, has been dismayed by the harsh criticism directed at women like herself from pro-Clinton feminists.

“I felt it was an ultimatum — vote for Hillary Clinton or you’re betraying the women’s movement,” Bravo said. “It’s very self-defeating and alienating, particularly to younger women who, regardless of who they support, don’t like to be told, ‘Do this. Do that.”‘

Clinton supporter Gloria Feldt, former president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, accepts that the women’s movement is not single-minded, yet worries that the Obama-Clinton rift is eroding whatever clout it might have.

“We’re squandering an opportunity to be seen as a voting bloc that turns elections,” Feldt said. “Unless we are working together, in a strategically thought-out effort to vote in our own best interests, we are in danger of never having another election where people will say women can determine the outcome.”

Overall, Clinton’s now-endangered campaign has survived largely because of her 60 percent to 36 percent edge over Obama among white women voters in the primaries to date. But among college-educated white women — the demographic of many feminists and of Clinton herself — her edge is much smaller, 54 percent to 43 percent, according to exit polls conducted for The Associated Press and television networks.

One factor in play is generational. There is a widespread perception in the women’s movement that younger feminists tilt more toward Obama while most of their elders favor Clinton.

Clinton frequently mentions the elderly women she’s met on the campaign trail who were born before women were able to vote and have confided to her they thought they’d never see a woman elected president.

Indeed, 74-year-old Gloria Steinem, a Clinton supporter and icon of the women’s movement, riled some younger, pro-Obama feminists with a New York Times op-ed suggesting that they were in denial about America’s persisting “sexual caste system.”

Ariel Garfinkel, a sophomore at Mount Holyoke College, wrote one of the many counter-arguments in an online column. She and many other young feminists supported Obama because they perceived the Clinton campaign as trying to capitalize on racial divisions and to impugn Obama’s patriotism.

“This pattern of old-style politics and adherence to un-feminist values is part and parcel of the campaign Hillary Clinton has run,” Garfinkel wrote. “In this race, Barack Obama is the true feminist.”

New York-based author Courtney Martin, also an Obama supporter, wrote on Glamour magazine’s blog Glamocracy last month that she was not backing Clinton “in part because she reminds me of being scolded by my mother.”

But the 28-year-old Martin has joined in appeals for activist women in the two camps to tone down their hostilities and prepare to work together on behalf of the eventual Democratic nominee.

“I deeply respect what Clinton has endured as a woman painstakingly unknotting gender and power,” Martin wrote for The American Prospect.

Another young New York-based feminist writer, Hannah Seligson, backs Clinton and feels somewhat isolated among her mostly pro-Obama peers.

“I shy away from conversations with them,” said Seligson, 25. “They’re so passionate and there’s so much vitriol toward Hillary.”

For all the divisions among individual women, there was little dissension at the best-known feminist group — the National Organization for Women — before its political action committee endorsed Clinton in March 2007.

NOW’s president, Kim Gandy, sees Clinton’s determination and combativeness as among her strongest attributes.

“The women who’ve had to struggle the hardest and run into the most difficulty because they’re women are clearly gravitating to a candidate they identify with,” Gandy said. “They see her fighting.”

Gandy knows some feminists dismiss Clinton as a woman whose political ascension depended on her husband’s career, but she rejects that thinking.

“She might have been president instead of him if things had gone a little differently,” Gandy said. “No one will ever know whether her marriage to Bill Clinton held her back politically as much as it moved her forward.”

While still holding out hope that Clinton can win, Gandy suggests that her defeat would be a huge blow to some feminists. “It’s hard to imagine that anytime soon there will be another candidate as extraordinary as Hillary Clinton,” she said.

Gloria Feldt conveyed similar sentiment.

“I’d feel very sad to miss this enormous opportunity to bring the United States of America into the circle of nations that have had women as their leaders,” she said. “I feel strongly when you have the opportunity to support a women so clearly qualified and capable, do it. Do it for your daughter.”

The campaign has brought the women’s movement to a crossroads, according to Obama supporter Kate Michelman, the former head of the abortion-rights group NARAL Pro-Choice America.

“We’re at a time and place where we don’t have to base everything we think about in terms of gender, and that’s a sign of progress,” she said. “This rigid view that when any woman runs, we have to all fall into line — that’s contradictory to what I consider feminism to be about.”

The exchange was also picked up by the West Virginia papers and also the New York Times and I’m sure we haven’t seen the end of it.

Politicians have always been caught in moments they’d rather forget, but in the world of bloggers, 24 hour cable news and embedded reporters, moments like these have become media staples and are memorialized the web.

“If a candidate says something or a surrogate says something that they shouldn’t be saying then it’s going to be everywhere,” says Shushannah Walshe, a FOX News producer and embedded reporter.

Of all the politicians, Bill Clinton falls victim to never the ending news coverage the most.

Who can forget the fairy tale flap over Barack Obama and his position on the war…

or when he shamed a CNN reporter….

Chastised an NBC reporter for asking a question

and became frustrated about the NV caucuses with a local ABC reporter

He is making headlines at a time when Hillary should be in the spotlight.
“He turns red-faced, he starts wagging his finger and then it’s all over and there’s nothing he can do to stop it,” says Charles Hurt, Washington bureau chief for the New York Post. (Owned by our parent company)

Why is he making news? One theory is that he’s not hip today’s media environment. When he ran for president in 1992 and 1996 the internet wasn’t in wide use, TV networks had two deadlines (the morning shows and the nightly news) cable news was in its infancy (except CNN) and few newspapers were on-line. There wasn’t the drive for 24 hour news and politicians weren’t held accountable for every thing they said-today things are different.

New to political coverage are embedded reporters. The concept started in 2003 with the war in Iraq and has since spread to the campaign trail. They are young, energetic and carry just a small camera, laptop and blackberry.

“The whole concept behind the embed reporter was to travel with the candidates 24/ 7 report their every word, their every action and then be able to transmit the file to the newsroom,” said Cristina Corbin, a former Clinton and Edwards embed.

Embeds keep daily blogs and alert the bosses to news made on the campaign trail. Meet ours here:
http://embeds.blogs.foxnews.com/

Each network and major newspaper have ‘em and they’re driving Bill Clinton nuts.

“Some of the people that are embedded with me — that’s what you call the press that have to follow you around,” Clinton recently said. “The embeds,” he said and laughed. “Sounds kinda like a spy, doesn’t it?”

Shushannah Walshe puts it this way, “Even though the Clinton campaign might have seen us as trying to catch them we’re really covering this to the best of our ability.”

Cristina Corbin, FNC Embed Reporter

Shushannah Walshe, FNC Embed Reporter

The Alliance Defense Fund, based in Scottsdale, Ariz., will ask the clergy to deliver a sermon about specific candidates Sept. 28. If the action triggers an IRS investigation, the legal group will sue to overturn the federal rules, which were enacted in 1954.

Under the IRS code, churches can distribute voter guides, run voter registration drives, hold forums on public policy and invite politicians to speak at their congregations.

However, they cannot endorse a candidate, and their political activity cannot be biased for or against a candidate, directly or indirectly.

The Alliance Defense Fund said Friday that the regulations amount to an unconstitutional limit on free speech and government intrusion into religion.

“It certainly does have a chilling effect,” said Mike Johnson, senior counsel for the fund. “I think that there is a lot of fear and intimidation and disinformation about the parameters that do exist.”

Johnson said about 100 pastors have expressed interest in participating so far.

The IRS has stepped up monitoring of nonprofit political activity during the 2008 election. Punishments can range from a financial penalty to loss of tax-exempt status.

IRS investigations are confidential and the agency does not discuss the cases.

However, the United Church of Christ, which counts Sen. Barack Obama as a member, has said that it is under IRS review because of a speech given by the Democratic presidential candidate at the denomination’s national meeting last year.

Americans United for Separation of Church and State, an advocacy group in Washington, monitors church political activity and consistently files complaints with the IRS. They said Friday that they will notify the agency of any pastor who participates in the ADF campaign.

Some religious groups support keeping politics out of the pulpit.

J. Brent Walker, executive director of the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty in Washington, which advocates for religious freedom, said churches should be involved in public issues, but partisan activity can “compromise the essential calling to spread the Gospel.”

“The church can’t raise prophetic fist at a candidate or at a party,” Walker said, “when it’s locked up in a tight bear hug with that candidate or party.”

The Times newspaper in London first reported Friday that the campaign was severing ties with the adviser, Robert Malley.

Malley said he had been in contact with the Palestinian group, but only through his work for a “conflict resolution think tank,” and not on behalf of the Obama campaign, the newspaper reported.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton told FOX News Malley was “an ancillary adviser who never met with Obama, literally one of hundreds of informal advisers who from time to time offered advice on Middle East policy.”

Another Obama spokesman told The Times Malley “has no formal role in the campaign and he will not play any role in the future.”

Hamas, which is labeled a terrorist organization by the State Department, is a touchy issue for the Obama campaign.

Hamas adviser Ahmed Yousef said in a recent interview, “We like Mr. Obama, we hope that he will win the election,” and presumptive Republican nominee John McCain has poked fun at Obama for the apparent endorsement.

McCain has said he would be Hamas’ “worst nightmare”; he told “The Daily Show’s” Jon Stewart Wednesday that he could “guarantee” Hamas would not endorse him for president.

Obama accused McCain of “losing his bearings” and engaging in a smear campaign for the remarks.

Click here to read the article about the Obama aide in The Times.

FOX News’ Major Garrett contributed to this report.

Though his campaign claims to be ready to declare victory within two weeks and speculation is swirling that Clinton could be positioning herself for a shot at Obama’s No. 2 spot, Obama gave the standard line, saying he hasn’t won “yet” and that he wouldn’t speculate “until I am the nominee.”

“It would be presumptuous of me to suggest that she is going to be my running mate while we are still actively running,” he said at a campaign stop in Beaverton, Ore. “We do not have this nomination locked up, so we are still competing.”

Obama teased the individual who asked about his running mate possibilities, joking that the press must have put him up to the question.

But he elaborated a bit, saying: “I will say that she has shown herself to be an extraordinary candidate. … She is hard-working, she is tough. She is very smart, and so I think she would be on anyone’s list — short list of vice presidential candidates. But beyond that, you know, I don’t want to offer an opinion.”

Meanwhile, Clinton took shots at Obama’s health care plan at a stop in Portland, Ore., Friday — a sign that she isn’t just running out the string in hopes of snagging a VP nod.

“How could anybody run to be the Democratic nominee for president and not have a universal health care plan?” she said. “This is a huge difference. And one I obviously feel very passionately about.”

FOX News’ Shushannah Walshe and Aaron Bruns contributed to this report.

As he racked up nine such endorsements, the Illinois senator trained most of his attention on John McCain. His nonchalant attitude toward his gains against Clinton highlighted the way his campaign has been treating the competition lately in the Democratic race — almost as an afterthought.

“I’m gratified that we’ve got some superdelegates that are coming our way,” Obama said Friday in Woodburn, Ore., when asked by reporters about his superdelegate gains. “Our focus has always been on the pledged delegates and just getting the American people to vote for us … but if superdelegates also feel that we’re gonna be a strong candidate then I’m very pleased with that.”

The superdelegates — Democratic party leaders and insiders not bound to support either candidate — represent Clinton’s last hope for keeping the nomination out of Obama’s hands.

While Obama downplayed it, the developments Friday left the former first lady with 272.5 superdelegates, to 271 for Obama, poised to close what was once a gaping deficit between him and the New York senator in that category.

Obama already has 163 more pledged delegates than Clinton, and he expects to win a majority of those delegates on May 20. If he surpasses Clinton in superdelegates, she will likely be hard-pressed to keep the rest from moving into his corner.

“This trickle will soon become a steady stream,” said Democratic strategist Dan Gerstein. “At a certain point, it’s gonna become an inescapable wave.”

Behind the scenes, the Obama camp was working to get two more superdelegates. While the Associated Press tallies showed him slightly behind, other new organizations’ tallies showed he had already surpassed Clinton.

Gerstein said the superdelegate movement could give “cover” to other undecided delegates “who are nervous or on the fence or scared of crossing the Clintons,” in turn forcing the race to an end before June 3, when the final primaries are held.

Obama, increasingly confident that Clinton cannot overtake his lead, ignored her in his prepared remarks at a Portland-area workplace Friday and pointedly criticized McCain’s economic, health and Iraq policies, saying the probable GOP nominee would continue failed Bush administration priorities.

When asked about Clinton, Obama heaped more praise than criticism on the New York senator, continuing his efforts to avoid antagonizing her or her supporters. Speaking later with reporters, Obama hinted that he might help Clinton retire her campaign debt if he prevails.

“Historically, after a campaign is done and you want to unify the party … And so obviously I’d want to have a broad-ranging discussion with Senator Clinton about how I could make her feel good about the process and have her on the team moving forward,” he said when asked about the campaign debt.

Also campaigning in Portland, ahead of Oregon’s May 20 primary, Clinton took the opposite tack, knowing she can’t take on McCain unless she somehow derails Obama. At a round-table at Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, she criticized Obama’s health care plan for promising universal coverage to children but not adults.

“This is a big difference in this campaign. It’s not a difference of politics so much as commitment. … How can anyone run to be the Democratic nominee and not have a universal health care plan?” she said.

McCain said Friday he is “ready” for the general election campaign to begin.

Superdelegate Haul

As of early evening Friday, Obama had earned nine more superdelegates, capitalizing on his strong primary performance three days earlier.

The latest superdelegates to endorse Obama were Hawaii Rep. Mazie Hirono, New Mexico’s Laurie Weahkee (according to a local paper) and Wilber Lee Jeffcoat, Democratic Party vice chair in South Carolina.

“The election is over, everybody knows that. Obama has won,” said Vernon Watkins, one of two Democratic National Committee members from California to endorse Obama Friday.

The other was Ed Espinoza, who in a statement said Obama’s “judgment and character” and ability to unify the country had driven his decision. Virginia DNC member Joe Johnson also endorsed.

Clinton also gained two superdelegates.

But she lost one when New Jersey Rep. Donald Payne — a black congressman who had been backing Clinton — decided to switch to Obama. Rep. Peter DeFazio of Oregon also endorsed.

Little more than five months ago, on the eve of the primary season, Clinton led 169-63 in superdelegates.

In an interview with National Public Radio, former candidate John Edwards said Clinton has made a compelling case for her candidacy, but “I think it’s very hard for her now to make a compelling case for the math. I mean, I think that’s the reality of what she’s faced with. She knows that. … It’s just very hard to see how the math works.”

Obama’s endorsements from superdelegates have picked up sharply since Tuesday, when he soundly defeated Clinton in North Carolina’s primary and held her to a narrow victory in Indiana. The momentum in his direction reflects a growing sense among Democratic leaders that his nomination is inevitable.

Obama also picked up the endorsement of the influential American Federation of Government Employees union on Friday.

“Our people, I think, recognize the enthusiasm and vitality behind Senator Obama’s campaign,” AFGE President John Gage said.

Gage, a previously uncommitted superdelegate, said he too was personally endorsing Obama.

Clinton spokesman Jay Carson said the campaign was keeping its chin up.

“We have strong support from a number of superdelegates, he has strong support from a number of superdelegates. And we believe as do our supporters that she would be the best candidate against (John) McCain and the best president on day one,” he said. “There’s still three weeks left in these contests. We think things can change. These numbers can shift at any point.”

Clinton pledged to fight to the end.

“Of course I’m going to keep going. I’m going to keep going because you keep going,” she told a Central Point, Ore., crowd Friday.

The Clinton campaign is still lobbying superdelegates, and according to aides has a plan in place to aggressively court them, via direct mail, television spots and public rallies.

Clinton also began airing an ad in Oregon in which former CIA operative Valerie Plame and her husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, say the New York senator has the strongest plan to end the war in Iraq.

FOX News’ Shushannah Walshe, Judson Berger and Aaron Bruns and The Associated Press contributed to this report.