Carter And Gore Want Hillary To Drop Out Of Race

Insiders believe that Jimmy Carter and Al Gore will have a joint press conference or speak privately with Hillary Clinton and urge her to drop out of the Democratic race for the presidency. They want the party to unite behind Illinois Senator Barack Obama. Party bigwigs are becoming increasingly concerned and worried that the bickering back and forth between Obama and Clinton is helping John McCain's presidential candidacy. Recent polls have indicated that McCain and Obama are in a statistical dead heat for the presidency while some give McCain a slight edge. Carter and Gore have considerable weight and influence within the Democratic Party. Both are Nobel Peace Prize winners. Gore is beloved within the environmental community which is a potent special-interest group within the Democratic Party. Former President Carter is highly respected for getting involved in foreign policy disputes and monitoring international elections. His Carter Center has garnished global acclaim. Many options are being considered as to how Carter and Gore will proceed regarding Clinton's departure. ''One is for Carter and Gore to go to Clinton privately and ask her to step down. The other is for both men to appear in public and endorse Obama-a move which would see a majority of super delegates go with them.'' Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi have urged superdelegates to hold an unofficial primary in June to select a candidate rather than wait for the Denver convention. Pelosi insists that the superdelegates follow the voting results of the primaries and caucuses to select the nominee while the Clinton camp believes that they should vote their consciences. Democratic insiders are wary of urging Clinton to drop out too soon. According to polls, 30 percent of Clinton's supporters would vote for McCain in November rather than Obama. The question is whether they will do this if Clinton fails to get the nomination. If Obama wins Pennsylvania, the race is essentially over. Clinton has to win Pennsylvania by a large margin to gain momentum and continue through the final primaries of June 3. Her current strategy is hoping that superdelegates will decide that she is more ''electable'' than Obama. There are more than 350 superdelegates who haven't indicated a preference for either Clinton or Obama. She hopes to go through the final primaries and gain the support of these superdelegates to quash Obama's 160 delegate lead over her. Party insiders are worried if superdelegates defy the results of the voters in the party caucuses and primaries. The fact that Obama is black makes it doubly difficult and risky to do that. One party official described it in these terms: ''It would cause a scandal to do that. To turn around to the black community and say, 'You got the most votes, but no'? Unlikely.'' Hillary has been involved in controversy recently with the lie saying that she braved sniper fire while touring Bosnia in 1996. Many people who have made donations to the William J. Clinton Presidential Library might be expecting favors if Hillary wins the presidency. Henceforth, this might be the main reason why Clinton has refused to release a list of donors for the library. Also, Clinton's campaign manager Mark Penn had to step down because it was revealed that he had been lobbying the Colombian government for the free trade agreement between our country and that Latin American nation while Clinton was publicly stating her opposition to it. She also has been unable to pay event organizers and the health insurance of her campaign staff. Some conspiracy theorists who oppose Clinton believe that she is prolonging the race because a weakened Obama would lose to McCain in November. This would give her the chance to run for the nomination in 2012.