Obama hopes her high-profile appearance can begin to heal the wounds of a bruising nominating battle and win over intransigent Clinton supporters still angry over his triumph and his choice of Joe Biden over her for his running mate.

The drama cast a shadow over Monday’s opening day of the convention to crown Obama, 47, a first-term Illinois senator, as the party’s leader and presidential candidate in the Nov. 4 election battle with Republican John McCain.

Obama had tried to ease the tension by giving Clinton, a New York senator, and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, major roles at the convention. Bill Clinton will address the Democrats on Wednesday.

“There are going to be some of Senator Clinton’s supporters who we’re going to have to work hard to persuade to come on board. That’s not surprising,” Obama told reporters on Monday.

“But if you take a look, I think, at this week, I am absolutely convinced that both Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton understand the stakes.”

Clinton will be symbolically nominated for president on Wednesday, although she is expected to release her delegates to Obama after a roll call vote is called and Obama would be nominated by acclamation under a deal between the two camps.

An opinion poll showed how much work remains for Obama. A CNN/Opinion Research Corp. poll said he and McCain were running even at 47 percent — but only 66 percent of Clinton supporters backed Obama, down from 75 percent at the end of June.

Twenty-seven percent of Clinton supporters said they would support McCain, up from 16 percent in late June.

Republicans hammered on their line that Obama, a one-term member of the U.S. Senate, was too inexperienced to take on the presidency and said the first day of the Democratic convention had not helped him counter that charge.

“His number one deficiency in the views of the voters that haven’t made up their mind yet is that he lacks the experience and judgement to step into the role of commander in chief. So I didn’t see anything last night that leads me to believe he has begun to bridge that gap,” McCain spokeswoman Nicolle Wallace told NBC’s Today Show.

Subscribe to The China Post and save.  Click hereSharePrintEmail

Write a Comment

Enter your comments - 800 characters max

Receive China Post promos

Respond to this email