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Democrats to launch White House bid

Democrats were to launch a star-studded party to rally around Senator Barack Obama’s historic White House bid yesterday, with Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton set for a symbolic gesture of unity after their tense primary showdown.

Obama, 47, who will become the first black presidential nominee, said on Sunday he would try to convince voters he is just a normal middle class American despite his exotic upbringing and Republican claims he is an elitist.

“You’ll find out, ‘he’s pretty much like us,’” Obama told supporters referring to himself, days after lambasting his Republican rival Senator John McCain for being unable to say how many homes he owns with his multi-millionaire wife.

Though the Democratic National Convention is Obama’s moment in the spotlight, his former foe Clinton will be watched almost as closely, under intense pressure to unify Democrats after their bitter nominating clash.

As Republicans picked at the wounds of their marathon battle, a Democratic official said on condition of anonymity that Clinton was expected to release her haul of delegates, leaving them free to vote for Obama in tomorrow’s symbolic roll-call vote.

The former first lady will host a reception for her delegates piled up in a countrywide string of primaries and caucuses in the first six months of this year, a day after addressing the convention tonight.

Republicans however are attempting to play on the anger of Clinton supporters who feel their heroine was deprived of her rightful spot as the nominee, or even a vice presidential nod, partly through sexism.

A hard-hitting McCain political ad said Clinton had been passed over for “speaking the truth” about Obama’s political agenda during their acrimonious battle.

“The truth hurt and Obama didn’t like it,” said the ad, issued a day after the presumptive Democratic nominee chose foreign policy expert Senator Joseph Biden as his No. 2.

Former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani meanwhile said that Obama, whom Republicans say is woefully inexperienced, had been too weak to put a formidable figure like Clinton on the ticket.

A new USA Today/Gallup survey yesterday suggested that the general election was still up for grabs, with voters harboring misgivings about each candidate.

Half of those polled said Obama “may be too closely aligned with people who hold radical political views” and 57 percent said they were concerned he lacked the experience to be an effective president.
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