Democrats took the fight to Republican John McCain Sunday as a November matchup between the hawkish senator and Barack Obama took shape, but Hillary Clinton was adamant she was still in the race.
With the Democrats coalescing behind Obama after a long and bitter nominating race, Senate majority leader Harry Reid gave a pithy outline of their three main lines of attack against McCain.
"He's wrong on the (Iraq) war. He's wrong on the economy. He's a clone of (President) George Bush," Reid told ABC, while urging Democrats to "relax" and let the Obama-Clinton battle play out until the final primaries on June 3.
Senator Christopher Dodd, who supports Obama, said he was confident Clinton would "make the right choice" for the sake of Democratic unity heading into November's general election.
"And she's not about to allow another term of George Bush in the name of John McCain, who's embraced basically the Bush policies on economics, on foreign policy," he said on NBC.
"The country wants a very different direction and I have every confidence that she's going to be as strong a supporter of Barack Obama as anyone would be when it comes to this November election."
Obama may be building up irresistible momentum against Clinton, but the Democrats' rival camps denied they were in talks to end their White House race through a deal on financial arrangements or the vice presidency.
On Friday, the deep-pocketed Obama prompted speculation of a deal to pay off Clinton's 20 million dollars of campaign debt if she bows out of the race and backs him for the nomination.
Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Obama's chief strategist David Axelrod said about the debt question, "she hasn't asked, and we haven't offered."
"And the truth is I think that Senator Clinton will have the capacity to retire her debt. I don't believe that Senator Clinton is looking for a deal. I don't think that's what this is about," he said.
Axelrod brushed off a weekend report by conservative commentator Robert Novak that Obama's wife Michelle had vetoed Clinton as his potential pick for vice president, because of her "hostility" to the former first lady.
"That's false. There's been no discussion about vice presidential nominees and this whole scenario," the Obama aide said.
"I know that this is the parlor game of choice in Washington. But we're just going out there and meeting voters, fighting for every delegate, fighting for every vote. That's what Senator Clinton is doing."
Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson said on Fox she was poised for a big win in West Virginia on Tuesday, and was "going to keep going until she secures the nomination or until the nomination is decided in a different direction."
However, Obama has now pulled ahead of Clinton in support from Democratic grandees called " superdelegates " who look set to crown the party's champion to go up against McCain.
At least five more superdelegates announced their support for Obama on Saturday, taking his count on the RealClearPolitics website to 274 to Clinton's 271. He has 1,591 pledged delegates to her 1,426, according to its tally.
A total of 2,025 delegates is needed for victory, meaning the superdelegates will play a pivotal role at the Democrats' August nominating convention unless Clinton bows out first.
Senator Joseph Lieberman, a Democrat turned independent who is stridently backing McCain, agreed that Obama was on course to be the party's standard-bearer for November.
On CNN, the Democrats' 2000 vice presidential nominee articulated one of the McCain campaign's major themes against Obama, that the Illinois senator would be weak on national security.
"I don't question Senator Obama's commitment to the security of the state of Israel. I'm saying when it comes to dealing with enemies, both in the Middle East and around the world, Senator McCain has more experience, more balance, knows when to be tough, knows when to be soft," Lieberman said.
"And I worry that Senator Obama has not had that experience and therefore, ultimately, will compromise our security in that way and also our alliances."
