Barack Obama on Wednesday shrugged off one of his worst election results since his epic battle with Hillary Clinton began in January, after going down by 67% to 26% in Tuesday’s West Virginia primary. She promised to stay in the race until at least the last of the primaries on June 3.
In spite of the scale of his defeat, Obama remained on course to secure the Democratic nomination, picking up three superdelegates on Wednesday.
Obama spent the day in Michigan, one of the key swing states in the November election, speaking to Chrysler car workers. He has further meetings with blue-collar workers set up, a tacit admission of his inability so far to win over a key demographic group that could decide the White House election.
In an appeal to workers angered by the loss of manufacturing jobs overseas, he said the Republican nominee, John McCain, had been right earlier this year when he said those jobs would not be coming back.
”But where he’s wrong is in suggesting that there’s nothing we can do to replace those jobs or create new ones,” he said, promising to set up a fund to help keep jobs in the United States.
Clinton spent Wednesday at her home in Washington, trying to win over some of the remaining undecided superdelegates, the members of Congress and others with an automatic vote for the Democratic nominee.
She tried to persuade them that Obama will struggle against McCain in the swing states the Democrats have to win to take the White House. She picked up one superdelegate, giving her a total of four over the past week, compared with 33 for Obama.
Overall, Obama has 1 885 delegates (elected ones as well as superdelegates) to Clinton’s 1 718. Obama is virtually unstoppable now as he approaches the 2 026 that he needs to secure the Democratic nomination. — Â