WASHINGTON — Pointing the way to a peaceful end for the tumultuous presidential primary campaign, some key supporters of Hillary Rodham Clinton said Sunday that they accepted a new finish line in the race for delegates, a threshold Barack Obama could reach as soon as this week.
Obama aides said they expected him to surpass the 2,118 needed delegates after the final Democratic balloting finished Tuesday in South Dakota and Montana, and as more superdelegates backed the Illinois senator.
Moreover, a number of Clinton backers signaled Sunday that they were wary of the kind of protracted fight that some of her aides said they might wage in the coming months.
"It would be most beneficial if we resolved this nomination sooner rather than later," said U.S. Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz of Florida, a high-profile superdelegate who backs Clinton. "The more time we have to get through a general-election period and the more time we have to prepare in advance of the convention, the better."
Some of Clinton's closest advisors want the New York senator to challenge the party's unusual decision Saturday to shift four of Clinton's Michigan delegates to Obama in an attempt to reflect how voters might have cast ballots and to allocate Michigan's uncommitted delegates to Obama, even though his name did not appear on the ballot in the state.
Even if Clinton won those delegates in a challenge, it would be unlikely to alter the outcome.
"She'll do the right thing for America, and I don't think we're going to fight this at the convention," said Pennsylvania Gov. Edward G. Rendell, a top Clinton supporter and party superdelegate, speaking on CBS. "Because even were we to win it, unless it's going to change enough delegates for Sen. Clinton to get the nomination, then it would be a fight that would have no purpose."
Alice Huffman, a member of the rules panel and a superdelegate committed to Clinton, said she would not support an appeal if Obama had clearly won the delegate fight.
"What's the point for a challenge, if a challenge doesn't change the status of anything?" asked Huffman, the president of the California branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.
Such sentiments signaled that the Democratic Party might have vaulted a major hurdle in its quest to move beyond the competitive primary season and lay the groundwork for the fall campaign against presumptive Republican nominee John McCain. That achievement came Saturday when the party's Rules and Bylaws Committee agreed to seat the disqualified Florida and Michigan delegations, but to halve their votes as punishment for holding their primaries early.
