Obama meets Clinton in private

Likely U.S. Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama met privately with former rival Hillary Clinton on Thursday as the party sought to unite for the general election campaign after a long nomination battle.

"Senator Clinton and Senator Obama met tonight and had a productive discussion about the important work that needs to be done to succeed in November," said a statement issued by the two campaigns.

Obama campaign spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters on a flight to Chicago that the Illinois senator met with Clinton but he declined to disclose the location or details of what they discussed.

Obama had been scheduled to fly back to Chicago on Thursday evening after a rally in northern Virginia, but skipped the flight and slipped away from the reporters traveling with him in order to meet secretly with Clinton.

Gibbs denied media reports that the meeting took place at Clinton's home in Washington.

As Obama enjoyed his first campaign swing as the likely Democratic presidential nominee, some prominent supporters of Clinton launched an effort to pressure him to invite her to join his ticket as the No. 2 in the general election battle against Republican John McCain.

But Clinton distanced herself from the push and said the decision on a vice president was his alone to make.

Critics of Clinton have accused her of trying to force her way on to the ticket. An aide to the New York senator issued a statement trying to dispel that impression.

"While Senator Clinton has made clear throughout this process that she will do whatever she can to elect a Democrat to the White House, she is not seeking the vice presidency, and no one speaks for her but her," said spokesman Phil Singer. "The choice here is Senator Obama's and his alone."

Backers of an Obama-Clinton ticket believe it would be the best way to unify the Democratic Party after the hard-fought, 16-month race between the candidates.

Obama made history on Tuesday when he became the first black to win a U.S. major-party presidential nomination. Clinton would have been the first woman to do so.

The former first lady did not immediately concede the race but told supporters in a letter on Wednesday she would hold an event on Saturday where she would formally back Obama.

Obama has not tipped his hand about whom he might pick as his running mate and when asked publicly about the option of choosing Clinton, he has praised her but emphasized his selection process would be deliberative and wide-ranging.

Clinton was seen as having promoted the idea of her becoming the vice presidential nominee when she told supporters in a conference call on Tuesday that she would be "open" to it if it would help her party win the White House.

Obama told reporters he appreciated the statement from Clinton's aide deferring to him on the running mate choice.

POTENTIAL VICE PRESIDENTIAL PICK

At the northern Virginia rally attended by 10,000 people, Obama shared the media spotlight with someone cited frequently by pundits as a potential running mate: Virginia Sen. Jim Webb.

Webb, who had remained neutral as Obama and Clinton battled for the nomination, gave the Illinois senator an emphatic endorsement as he introduced him.

"I'm honored to stand alongside this man, a man of great intellect who over the past 16 months has impressed all of us as he stood up to sometimes withering attacks with measured responses, unshakable composure," Webb said.

The decorated Marine veteran of the Vietnam War said Obama "has given all of us confidence in the steadiness that we want to see in a commander in chief."

In his Virginia speech, Obama said he hoped he and McCain could have a respectful debate about policy issues and keep the campaign from getting bogged down by "name-calling" and "scandal-mongering."

The Illinois senator told McCain of that wish when the presumptive Republican nominee called Obama to congratulate him on Wednesday.

"I said that I was looking forward to a civil, substantive debate on the issues. And he agreed," Obama said, adding they discussed McCain's idea of appearing jointly at town-hall style forums. Obama's campaign has said it is open to such formats and the two camps are exchanging views on options.

But Obama did not hold back from attacking McCain. At an event in southwestern Virginia earlier in the day, Obama likened his Republican rival's health care proposals to those of the unpopular President George W. Bush. He said McCain's ideas amounted to "Bush light."

McCain's campaign hit back, deriding Obama's attempts to cast himself as someone who could rise above party divisions.

"Barack Obama has no record of bipartisan success," said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds, adding Obama had voted "in lock-step with his party on issues from tax relief to funding of the Iraq war.

King still roils U.S. politics 40 years after death

Forty years after Martin Luther King Jr. was shot to death in a racially charged assassination, the civil rights leader is still roiling American politics.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Republican candidate John McCain have both come to Memphis to mark King's April 4, 1968, death and try to shore up support among black voters attracted to Democrat Barack Obama.

Both have some fence-mending to do among African Americans, and both are expected to give speeches and appear at an NBC News event to talk about King's leadership role in the 1960s movement against segregation.

Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president and is getting overwhelming support for his candidacy from black voters, will mark the holiday but will do it in North Dakota, where he will address the state's Democratic convention.

He was invited to the NBC event but could not attend due to a prior commitment, his campaign said.

Clinton, flying overnight from California and due to arrive before dawn, was accused of injecting race into the campaign when her husband, President Bill Clinton, was viewed as denigrating Obama in the South Carolina primary in January.

Clinton, who would be the first woman to win the White House, is scrambling to try to win the Democratic presidential nomination from Obama in what increasing looks like a difficult battle for her. Obama or Clinton will face McCain in the November election.

WORK TO DO

McCain has some work to do to improve his standing among black voters. He skipped a Republican campaign debate last September that focused on African-American issues.

And Democrats have been pointing out that Arizona Sen. McCain, as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives, voted in 1983 against creating a federal holiday marking King's birthday.

The holiday was approved by a 338-90 vote and President Ronald Reagan signed it into law.

McCain told reporters this week that he had "learned that this individual was a transcendent figure in American history" and deserved to be honored.

He is to speak to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference at a civil rights museum built at the old Lorraine Motel where King was gunned down.

Obama, on the other hand, has been criticized by revelations about some of the sermons given by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright at Obama's Chicago church.

Wright, who has since retired, used inflammatory rhetoric from the pulpit, saying "God Damn America" as he railed against the country's history of racism.

Obama gave a well-received speech on race to try to allay concerns about why he sat in the pew all those years as Wright made outrageous statements.

Since those sermons came to light, some of Obama's supporters have suggested the Clinton campaign has been playing the race card against Obama.

This came up after Clinton said Wright would not be her pastor because of what he had said.

The McCain camp has declined to inject itself into the Wright controversy.

Clinton, Obama draw; McCain leads

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton battled to a draw on "Super Tuesday" and John McCain took charge of the Republican race in coast-to-coast presidential nominating battles in 24 U.S. states.

In their hard-fought Democratic duel, Obama won 13 states and Clinton took eight, ensuring a long and difficult battle for the nomination. Clinton's wins included the key prizes of California and New York on the biggest day of U.S. presidential voting before the November 4 election.

"There is one thing on this February night that we do not need the final results to know: Our time has come," Obama told cheering supporters in Chicago. "Our movement is real, and change is coming to America."

McCain won nine contests, including victories in California and the Northeast, to take a daunting lead in the Republican race. He captured a huge haul of the convention delegates who select the party's presidential nominee, taking several big states where delegates are granted on a winner-take-all basis.

Republican rivals Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee kept their hopes alive and vowed to fight on, but could face growing questions about the viability of their campaigns. Romney won seven states and Huckabee won five.

"Tonight, I think we must get used to the idea that we are the Republican Party front-runner for the nomination," McCain told supporters in Scottsdale, Arizona. "And I don't really mind it one bit."

RACE SET TO CONTINUE

Hillary wins New Hampshire

US Senator Hillary Clinton claimed a come-from-behind victory in New Hampshire's Democratic primary late Tuesday, edging out her Senate colleague, Barack Obama, after placing third in the Iowa caucuses.

Flanked by her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and daughter Chelsea, the New York senator told supporters she "found her own voice" in the five days since her third-place showing in Iowa, and promised them "we are in it for the long run."

"Now let's give America the kind of comeback that New Hampshire has just given me," she said.

Solid support from registered Democrats and women were crucial, results from exit polls suggest.

With 72 per cent of precincts reporting, CNN projected Clinton the winner of the first-in-the-nation primary with 39 per cent of the vote to Obama's 36.

Self-styled independents, who made up 43 per cent of all voters polled, said they voted for Obama by a margin of 43 per cent to 31 per cent for Clinton.

But Clinton was ahead of Obama 45 per cent to 34 per cent among those who said they were registered Democrats.

Those voters made up a majority -- 54 per cent -- of all those respondents. Clinton also claimed the majority of women's votes, according to the polling.

That's in contrast to last week's Iowa caucuses, in which Obama surprised observers by stealing the female vote from Clinton. According to the exit polls, Clinton had a sizable lead over Obama among women, 47 per cent to 34 per cent. Analysts say that shift was crucial to the Clinton turnaround.

"If I had a single word, the word would be 'women,' " said CNN political analyst Bill Schneider. "She got the women back."

Meanwhile, US Senator John McCain won the New Hampshire state primary in the race to become the Republican party's presidential candidate.

Despite New Hampshire's comparatively small population, the state carries an importance disproportionate to that size as it is the first state to go to the polls -- rather than caucus -- in the presidential election race.

In exit polls, voters from both parties rated the economy their top issue and the war in Iraq second -- but concerns about illegal immigration rated third among Republicans, while Democrats said health care was just behind Iraq.

In his victory speech Tuesday, McCain made joking reference to a similar speech by Bill Clinton, who coined the term "Comeback Kid" when he did well in New Hampshire as a presidential hopeful.

"I am past the age when I can claim the noun kid ... but tonight we sure showed them what a comeback looks like," he said.

As supporters chanted "Mac is back," McCain said his victory was down to telling the truth even if it was not what voters wanted to hear.

Over the summer many had written off McCain, who had alienated the party's conservative base with his support of a controversial immigration reform bill, and poor fund-raising prompted him to shake up his staff.

Ballots ran low in some polling stations six hours before the last polling stations closed at 8 p.m., indicating a larger-than-expected turnout, representatives of New Hampshire's secretary of state said.

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