ng blow to Hillary Rodham Clinton's long-shot bid to salvage her campaign as top Democrats coalesced around the party's likely presidential nominee. John McCain, who already has more than enough Republican delegates to secure his party's nomination, looked ahead Thursday to the end of his "first term" in 2013, foreseeing "spasmodic" but diminishing violence in Iraq and Afghanistan, Osama bin Laden dead or captured and illegal immigrants living humanely under a U.S. temporary worker program.
Edwards' endorsement on Wednesday deals a sharp blow to Obama's rival Clinton. A day earlier she had sought to convince top Democrats that her 2-1 victory over Obama in West Virginia on the strength of working-class voters was evidence that her campaign still had signs of life despite Obama's largely insurmountable delegate lead.
Edwards, who had based much of his candidacy on supporting the working-class voters that Clinton has been capturing and Obama hopes to woo, made a surprise appearance with the Democratic front-runner in Grand Rapids, Michigan, a critical general election battleground state.
Obama has shrugged off his largely symbolic loss in West Virginia to the former first lady, and turned his attention to a general election matchup against McCain.
Edwards said Obama "stands with me" in a fight to cut poverty in half within 10 years. Obama devoted his speech to one of his guest's favorite topic, fighting poverty. In America, he said, "you should never be homeless, you should never be hungry."
As president, he vowed to "lift up every American out of poverty."
Earlier, Obama tried to reach out to Michigan workers, promising to pump billions of dollars into efforts to keep manufacturing jobs from being shipped overseas. Clinton had won the Michigan and Florida primaries, though neither Democrat had campaigned there because the party stripped the states of their delegates for scheduling three primaries too early in the election calendar.
Clinton vowed to stay in the campaign despite struggling with debt. But she hinted that the protracted race would end shortly after the primaries concluded in early June and that the party would select a candidate before its national convention in August.
Still ahead are five primaries, beginning next week in Kentucky and Oregon, then Puerto Rico on June 1 and Montana and South Dakota two days later.
Obama is favored in Oregon and South Dakota, with Montana apparently more competitive and the others looking solid for Clinton.
