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Clinton defends decision to stay in race

Bloomberg News

May 26, 2008

Hillary Rodham Clinton, criticized for a reference to the 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, said in a New York Daily News commentary she is still campaigning for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination because she believes she is the strongest candidate.

"I am running because I believe I'm the strongest candidate to stand toe-to-toe with Sen. McCain," the New York senator wrote in yesterday's edition.

"Delegate math might be complicated, but electoral math is not," she wrote. The campaign of her rival for the nomination, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois, said last week that he is only 56 delegates short of the 2,026 needed to secure the nomination.

Clinton said she has won in the crucial swing states needed to win the general election, such as Florida, New Jersey, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

The former first lady also repeated that her reference three days ago to Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's assassination in June 1968 was only intended to make the point that "the length of this year's primary contest is nothing unusual" because both Kennedy's and her husband's primary campaigns continued into June.

"I was making the simple point that given our history, the length of this year's primary contest is nothing unusual," Clinton wrote. "But I was deeply dismayed and disturbed that my comment would be construed in a way that flies in the face of everything I stand for - and for everything I am fighting for in this election."

She wrote that she can still win on the merits, and because "my parents did not raise me to be a quitter." And she said that, while "pundits and politicians" have called on her to end her candidacy, recent victories in West Virginia and Kentucky show that she is still winning votes from people despite being told the "race is over."

"I am running because I believe staying in this race will help unite the Democratic Party," Clinton wrote. "I believe that if Sen. Obama and I both make our case, and all Democrats have the chance to make their voices heard, in the end everyone will be more likely to rally around the nominee."