Clinton, Obama dash to Washington after Indiana stumping
The Senate is adjourned until later in the day to give the presidential candidates time to vote on a pay discrimination bill. In Kentucky, McCain pledges to help poverty-stricken areas.
WASHINGTON -- Soldiering on in their long-running primary campaign, Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama stumped in the next big battleground state of Indiana today and then rushed back to Washington to vote on a bill giving workers the right to sue their employers for past pay discrimination.
"Too many women are still earning less for the same work," Obama said at a town hall rally in New Albany, Ind. "Pay discrimination is wrong, it has no place in America, and tonight we have a chance to do something about it."
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) adjourned the Senate until 5 p.m. EDT to allow the two Democratic candidates time to get back for the vote. The procedural move angered Republicans, who complained that it was not the first time the Senate's business was interrupted for the convenience of the two senators.
"They are staging this for another special interest group, the trial lawyers," said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). "This isn't the first time."
Buoyed by her 10-point win over Obama the day before in Pennsylvania, Clinton said today that she is looking to the superdelegates to decide the nomination.
"I believe in the last month I've demonstrated a real strength, as certainly verified last night by the results, and the kind of strength that delegates have to look at," the New York senator told NBC's Matt Lauer on the "Today" show. "Because after all, they have to exercise independent judgment as to who they think is a better candidate to win."
Outlining her strategy for winning the nomination -- "if you include Florida and Michigan, then the popular vote is very close," she told ABC's Diane Sawyer on "Good Morning America" -- Clinton said, "I have no way of predicting what they'll decide, but I think last night's win should give a lot of fresh information to our superdelegates. ... And the big win that I had, the broad base of coalition that I put together, is exactly what we're going to need to have in the fall."
Clinton defended herself against charges that she has run a negative campaign -- charges fueled in part by a New York Times editorial warning that her tactics will undermine Democratic chances in November. "In a campaign you're going to have back and forth, that's part of a campaign," she told Sawyer. "I'm going to keep running a positive campaign, a campaign that is about the solutions, is about my experience, is about the leadership that our country needs."
