Clinton may be hopeful, but Obama rolls on

INDIANAPOLIS: Have Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton's chances of winning the Democratic presidential nomination improved as Senator Barack Obama has struggled through his toughest month of this campaign?

After weeks in which her candidacy was seen by many party leaders as a long shot at best, Clinton's advisers argued strenuously on Thursday that the answer was most assuredly yes, that the outlook was turning in her favor in a way that gave her a real chance.

Still, despite a series of trials that have put Obama on the defensive and illustrated the burdens he might carry in a fall campaign, the Obama campaign is rolling along, leaving Clinton with dwindling options.

Obama continues to pick up the support of superdelegates — elected Democrats and party leaders — at a quicker pace than Clinton.

On Thursday, he got a boost from a high-profile defection: Joe Andrew, a former Democratic national chairman appointed by former President Bill Clinton, said he had changed his mind and would back Obama. Even after Clinton's victory in Pennsylvania, Obama has held on to a solid lead in pledged delegates, those selected by the voting in primaries and caucuses.

Although Clinton has cut into Obama's popular vote lead, it would be difficult for her to overtake him without counting the disputed results in Florida and perhaps Michigan.

By and large, the group that matters most at this point — the uncommitted superdelegates, who are likely to hold the balance of power — still seem to view their decision the way the Obama campaign would like them to see it. They suggest that they are more sympathetic to the argument that they should follow the will of the voters as expressed by the delegates amassed by the candidates when the primary season is done rather than following Clinton's admonitions to select the candidate they think would best be able to defeat Senator John McCain and the Republicans in November.

"It's about the numbers, and the numbers are the numbers," said Chris Redfern, the chairman of the Ohio Democratic Party and an uncommitted superdelegate. "It's not about hand-wringing. And Senator Obama has the lead."

None of this is to say that Clinton has run out of string. She has waged a spirited and focused campaign in the past month, a period in which Obama has at times seemed to lose energy.

Several polls signal that Obama's troubles have shaken the confidence in the Democratic electorate, and it is too early to measure fully how much he may have been hurt by a round of incendiary appearances by his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

A big Clinton victory in Indiana on Tuesday and in West Virginia the next week could, combined with her victories in Pennsylvania and Ohio, give her ammunition to say that Obama would fail to draw blue-collar support against McCain in the fall.

David Plouffe, the manager of Obama's campaign, said that if Clinton won 55 percent of the remaining pledged delegates — an assumption he called "overly generous" — she would still need about two-thirds of the remaining uncommitted superdelegates to reach the 2,025 delegates needed to secure the nomination.

Clinton's advisers did not dispute Plouffe's calculation, in effect acknowledging the enormousness of their task.

Senator Christopher Dodd, the Connecticut Democrat who ran for president and has now endorsed Obama, said that Clinton still had a chance but that it was something of a long shot. "I still don't think the math is there," Dodd said.

Most of what chance Clinton has rests on her ability to convince superdelegates that Obama would be a flawed candidate in the general election. In recent weeks, he has certainly struggled with a series of problems — some of his own making — which has made it easier for her to make that case.

Many superdelegates said they were queasy about Obama and his former pastor, and fearful of how the issue might be used in the fall. Still, they said they were not convinced that that made him a weaker general-election candidate than Clinton, or at least not convinced enough to cast a vote that could be portrayed as overturning the will of Democratic primary voters and blocking the effort by Obama to become the nation's first African-American president.

Andrew, the former national party chairman, said in an interview that Obama's response to his problems with Wright convinced him that Obama was the better choice.

"What's happened here is how he has handled each one of these crises — because you know there are going to be crises — has made him an even stronger candidate," Andrew said.

Obama has also picked up superdelegate support from Democratic members of Congress in relatively conservative districts — despite efforts by Republicans to make Obama a liability for Democrats running in competitive districts, including campaigns for two open seats in the South that are under way.

Representative Baron Hill of Indiana and Representative Ben Chandler of Kentucky endorsed Obama, for example, and both face the likelihood of stiff Republican challenges in the fall.

Beyond the resistance Clinton is facing to the electability argument, there is clear concern among Democrats — some unaligned, some supporting Obama — that the fight is hurting the party and should come to an end soon. Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, who is supporting Obama, said she saw an increasing anxiousness among superdelegates to bring the nomination fight to a conclusion.

"The delegate math is not going to change significantly," McCaskill said. "She is a formidable candidate, she has passionate support, but I don't see the people who are for Obama wavering one bit."

Clinton advisers acknowledged that the path to the nomination was steadily uphill, and to some extent dependent upon factors outside their control — yet it was a path nonetheless, they said.

First, Clinton must win the Indiana primary as a means of demonstrating to supporters and donors that she is building on momentum after Pennsylvania, they said, and she must run strongly enough in North Carolina to avoid the perception that she did no better than an even split. Then she must win in a state that catches people by surprise, like Oregon or Montana.

The Clinton campaign must also persuade the Democratic National Committee to seat at least some of the delegates she won in the disputed votes in Michigan and Florida. It must also persuade superdelegates to include the popular votes cast in Florida, and maybe in Michigan, in calculating the overall tally.

Without that latter success, it would be all but impossible for her to match Obama in the popular vote total. But that is a tough sell because since neither candidate campaigned in those states after they held their primaries earlier than allowed by the party. Obama's name did not even appear on the Michigan ballot.

One of Clinton's chief strategists, Geoff Garin, said the campaign hoped to end the primary season on June 3 lifted by a series of victories, and by coming close in the pledged delegate totals and the popular vote — though he declined to say what close would be.

"We'll know it when we see it," Garin said.

Adam Nagourney reported from Indianapolis, and Carl Hulse from Washington. Patrick Healy contributed reporting from Indiana.