Obama camp mounts final victory push

Washington: In a setback for Hillary Clinton's presidential hopes, Democratic Party officials on Saturday cut by half the number of delegates she was hoping to receive from disputed primary elections in Florida and Michigan.

After an all-day meeting, punctuated by applause and jeers from a raucous audience, the party's rules and bylaws committee decided that the Florida and Michigan delegates could attend the party's convention this August, but that each delegate would carry only half a vote.

Clinton trails Barack Obama by about 200 delegates in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, and she had been hoping to make up some of that gap by persuading party officials to restore delegates from the two states.

Clinton won the January primaries in those states, but after Democratic officials stripped them of their delegates for ignoring party scheduling rules and holding the elections too early in the year.

Voting power

Under the plan approved Saturday, Clinton will gain 19 delegates above Obama's take from Florida. Had the delegation been seated with full voting power, Clinton would have netted 38 delegates. Clinton also will eat into Obama's lead under the committee plan for seating 157 delegates from Michigan.

But with Obama poised to claim victory in the nomination battle as early as next week, the delegates Clinton gained from those two states are well short of what Clinton needed to make up the gap.

Clinton's reaction to the committee decision is an important question.

If she accepts the panel's decision, the Democratic race could end quickly after the final primary elections are held tomorrow in South Dakota and Montana. Obama is expected to emerge from those primaries only a few delegates short of being able to clinch the nomination.

But if Clinton chooses to fight the panel's decision as far as the convention in August, the party faces a split in its ranks that could make it hard to unify against Republican nominee John McCain.

One possible clue to Clinton's intentions came from Harold Ickes, a top Clinton campaign strategist who serves on the rules committee.

He fiercely protested the settlement reached for Michigan, leaving open the possibility that Clinton might pursue an appeal through the summer.