Voice rasping, arm pumping, ”Iron Lady” Hillary Clinton campaigned for Barack Obama on Monday, turning the populist fervour that enflamed their White House duel on to Republican John McCain.
It was all sunshine between the one-time enemies in the Sunshine State of Florida, with the bitterness that laced their six-month struggle but a memory as Clinton ordered a 50 000-strong crowd to send Obama to the White House.
”I am asking you to work as hard for Barack as you worked for me,” the New York Senator roared in Orlando at their first double-bill rally since June.
”If you walked streets for me, then walk them for Barack,” Clinton said, telling her supporters to fan out in their neighbourhoods and canvass for Obama.
”Tell them Hillary sent you to vote for Barack Obama,” Clinton said, drawing raucous cheers from the boisterous Obama crowd put by police and fire marshalls at 20 000, with an overflow throng of 30 000 outside the crash barriers.
In a sense, Clinton was handing Obama the keys to her kingdom.
The former first lady trounced her rival in the primary in the vital swing state in January, but the contest was voided because the state violated party scheduling rules.
So her help in moving votes towards Obama, especially in her constituencies of older voters, women, Jewish voters and Hispanics, could be key to Democratic hopes of snatching the state from McCain on November 4.
”Jobs baby Jobs,” Clinton yelled, riffing off the ”drill baby drill” Republican slogan on oil exploration, getting a payback chant from the crowd, and an approving quip from her ex-foe: ”I think you have started something.”
Clinton and Obama had walked on to a simple stage perched in a sea of supporters together, smiling broadly, arms around one another’s backs.
Things were so different just a few months ago.
Clinton’s primary campaign cast sharp doubts on Obama’s capacity to serve as president.
Hard-hitting negative ads wondered whether he had the steel to take a 3am crisis call in the White House, and her furious husband, former president Bill Clinton, accused the Obama camp of playing the ”race card” on him.
But both Clintons threw their support behind Obama at the Democratic national convention in August, and have been campaigning for him since.
Hillary Clinton is a vital part of a three-day Obama campaign blitz through Florida, which went for Republican President George Bush in 2000 and 2004 and last voted for a Democrat in 1996 — Bill Clinton.
Republicans had hoped that Clinton partisans angry at Obama’s victory over the heroine in the bitter primary race would split the Democratic vote, and offer McCain a path to power.
But polls suggest many of her supporters are coalescing behind Obama in the wider cause of beating the Republicans.
Earlier, Florida Democratic Senator Bill Nelson, a staunch Clinton supporter Obama in the primary, said the former first lady had knitted warring party factions together.
”When it was time to come together, she came together and is supporting Barack Obama. There is an Iron Lady in the Senate,” Nelson said.
Former Florida senator Bob Graham told ABC News, meanwhile, in an interview for the Nightline programme, that Clinton was a vital asset for Obama.
”Hillary Clinton is the most popular national politician in Florida today,” he said. ”She won this state, and she can help Obama win it.”
Some cynics predicted Clinton would do the minimum to help Obama, in the knowledge that she would likely be frontrunner for the Democratic nomination in 2012 should he lose to McCain.
But even if she was contemplating a second run for the White House, the former first lady knew she could not be seen to be the reason for his defeat.
And with Obama’s prospects against McCain apparently bright, 14 days before the election, she has been emerging as a force in his campaign, not just in Florida, but swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, where her appeal to white working class voters could be a boon to his chances.
Clinton has also been showing signs that she has come to terms with her defeat, telling Fox television that the chances she will run again for president are ”probably close to zero”.
”I ran for president because I thought we had to make drastic changes, given what I viewed as the damage that the Bush administration had done here at home and abroad,” she said.
”Now I’m going to work very hard with President Obama to repair that damage,” she told Fox.
Meanwhile, Obama will leave the White House trail later this week to dash to the side of his gravely ill 85-year-old grandmother in Hawaii, just 11 days before the election.
The Illinois senator will cancel events in mid-western Iowa and Wisconsin and head to his native Hawaii for a one-day trip on Thursday, before throwing himself back into full bore campaigning on Saturday, adviser Robert Gibbs said.
Obama’s grandmother, Madelyn Dunham, played an instrumental role in his upbringing and he lauded her as an anchor of his life in his convention speech in August.
”In the last few weeks her health has deteriorated to the point where her situation is very serious,” Gibbs told reporters on Obama’s plane in Florida, while declining to give further details of Dunham’s condition.
”It is for that reason Senator Obama has decided to change his schedule on Thursday and Friday so that he can see her and spend some time with her. He will be returning to the campaign trail on Saturday.” — AFP
