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Feb 21, 2008 7:11 pm US/Central
Hillary Clinton Headed To North Texas
NORTH TEXAS (CBS 11 / TXA 21) ―
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Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-NY) answers questions from the media following a tour of the General Motors Allison Transmission Plant Feb. 11, 2008 in White Marsh, Md.
Win McNamee/Getty Images
Democratic Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is headed to North Texas. Friday the democratic presidential hopeful will hold 'Early Vote Rallies' in both Dallas and Fort Worth.
The Clinton campaign says democrats voting for the former first lady will help put Americans one step closer to getting the country back on track.
At 9am Clinton will hold a rally in the Bank Tower Lot on South Zang, in Dallas. At 11am the presidential hopeful will be in downtown Fort Worth, at Main and West 1st Street, to hold a rally there.
Clinton must win 57 percent of the remaining primary and caucus delegates to erase Barack Obama's lead, a daunting task requiring landslide-sized victories by a struggling presidential candidate.
Obama's victories in Wisconsin and Hawaii on Tuesday -- his ninth and 10th in a row -- left him with 1,362 pledged delegates won in primaries and caucuses in the CBS News count. Clinton has 1,262.
To secure a nomination a democratic presidential candidate must have 2,025 delegates.
Further complicating Clinton's challenge, Obama appears particularly well-positioned to win at least one of the remaining states with ease. Mississippi, with a primary on March 11, fits a pattern of Southern states with large black populations that he has won handily, including South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana.
"We expect to do well in both those states," said Harold Ickes, one of Clinton's top aides, speaking of Texas and Ohio, which hold primaries on March 4. "But 65 percent is a far reach and there is no expectation here that we're going to hit that number."
"We're in the neighborhood of about 75 delegates behind, that's less that 3 percent of the total number of delegates who have been elected. We expect to narrow that gap substantially by the end of this process," he added.
Obama's lead in delegates won at the ballot box is partially offset by Clinton's advantage among superdelegates -- members of Congress, governors and other party leaders who are unpledged to either candidate.
Superdelegates are free to shift allegiances. And Clinton's recent string of primary and caucuses defeats coincides with a slow erosion of support among the same party leaders who established her as the front-runner months before the first votes were cast.
She has failed to add any since Super Tuesday on Feb. 5, while Obama is slowly gaining ground.
The former first lady lost two more superdelegates recently, both in New Jersey, when one switched to Obama and the other moved to uncommitted.
Further underscoring Clinton's political peril, Rep. David Scott of Georgia announced he would vote for Obama rather than the former first lady, and Rep. John Lewis said he might switch, as well.
Superdelegates aside, results in earlier states show how difficult Clinton will find it to overtake Obama's lead when the primaries resume in two weeks.
In general, delegates are allocated on the basis of popular votes within congressional districts, and any candidate who gains 15 percent of the vote is entitled to at least one.
Clinton won New Jersey with 54 percent of the vote and Massachusetts with 56 percent on Feb. 5. But because Obama ran relatively well, particularly in some congressional districts, she won the delegate competition by only 28 delegates combined in the two states.
The contests left on the calendar include primaries in Ohio, Texas, Vermont, Rhode Island, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky, Oregon, Montana and South Dakota as well as caucuses in Wyoming, Guam and Puerto Rico. There are 44 delegates unallocated from primaries and caucuses held earlier.
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