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Obama says race not a factor in the presidential race

Democratic front-runner Senator Barack Obama dismissed race as a “determining factor” in this year’s US presidential contest, but acknowledged he needed to work harder for the working-class vote that has propelled the dogged campaign of rival Hillary Clinton.

Meanwhile, Clinton campaigned in North Carolina on Sunday, saying the US has failed to give proper attention to Afghanistan, pointing to an assassination attempt on the country’s president on Sunday as proof.

Despite Obama’s remarks Sunday, there was evidence of widening fissures over race as well as gender and economic status among US voters as the Democratic rivals headed into the 17th week of their increasingly contentious struggle for the nomination.

A Democratic victory in the November general election against presumptive Republican nominee John McCain would mean a first regardless of who wins — Obama, the first African-American president, or Clinton, the first woman to hold the office.

As the Democrats looked toward elections next week in North Carolina and Indiana, those issues stood in stark relief. Obama had a sizable lead in pre-balloting polls in North Carolina, where there is a large African-American population, but he was running about even in with Clinton in Indiana.

His support there depended heavily on urban areas with larger black populations in contrast with Clinton’s deeper backing in rural and small-town Indiana and among hard-pressed working class whites — especially women — in rust-belt cities.

Those same divisions gave Clinton a nearly 10 percentage point victory last week in Pennsylvania, a vote that buried speculation she would exit the race, in which Obama holds an unassailable lead in elected delegates to the party’s August national convention in Denver.

During a television interview Sunday, Obama acknowledged race was “still a factor in our society.”

Yet, he asked rhetorically: “Is that going to be the determining factor in a general election? No, because I’m absolutely confident that the American people — what they’re looking for is somebody who can solve their problems.”

Obama also told Fox News Sunday he needed to do more to raise his profile among working-class voters who have been especially hard hit in the ongoing American economic downturn.
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