Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton vowed to fight all the way to the Democrats' August convention in her bruising battle against Barack Obama for the White House nomination.
In an interview with Time magazine published Wednesday, the New York senator said even pledged delegates would be up for grabs as she vies to overhaul Obama's seemingly impregnable lead in the 10 remaining nominating contests.
"We talk a lot about so-called pledged delegates, but every delegate is expected to exercise independent judgment," she said, staking out a position on elected convention representatives that is hotly contested by the Obama camp.
"And, you know, I'm just going to do the best I can in the next 10 contests to make my case to the voters in those elections, and then we'll see where we are," she said.
Clinton's fighting talk came despite growing noises from Democratic elders that the party needs to unite behind a nominee to take on Republican candidate John McCain well before the convention in Denver.
Senator Maria Cantwell, one of the party "superdelegates" who could decide the nomination, said the candidate with the most pledged delegates after the primary season ends in mid-June should be declared the winner.
"I definitely don't want the superdelegates to be the deciding factor," Cantwell told The Columbian newspaper in her home state of Washington.
"We wouldn't want to tear apart the party," added the senator, who is a Clinton backer but whose position would appear to favor Obama.
The former first lady trails her rival from Illinois in the pledged delegate count, but neither can win enough backers to clinch the Democratic nomination without convention backing from the nearly 800 superdelegates.
In her Time interview, conducted Tuesday, Clinton again raised fiery sermons by Obama's former pastor in a bid to undermine his electability against McCain in November's general election.
Her supporters "want me to keep fighting, so this will all work out," she said.
"We're going to have a unified Democratic Party and we'll go into the fall in a strong position to defeat John McCain."
Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton vowed to fight all the way to the Democrats' August convention in her bruising battle against Barack Obama for the White House nomination.