"Lady Hillary Bows Out And Endorses Obama"

Sen. Hillary Clinton endorses her former rival, Sen. Barack Obama, for president Saturday.

Sen. Hillary Clinton said Saturday "we need to do all we can" to help elect Sen. Barack Obama the next president of the United States.

"The way, the way to continue our fight now, to accomplish the goals for which we stand is to take our energy, our passions, our strengths and do all we can to help elect Barack Obama, the next president of the United States," she said at the National Building Museum in Washington.

"Today, as I suspend my campaign, I congratulate him on the victory he has won and the extraordinary race he has run. I endorse him and throw my full support behind him. and I ask all of you to join me in working as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me."

Earlier, she said "this isn't exactly the party I planned, but I surely like the company and I want to start today by saying how grateful I am to all of you ... to all those women in their 80s and their 90s born before women who could vote who cast their votes [this year]"

"I will continue to stand strong with you ... the dreams we share are worth fighting for," she added.

Clinton's campaign tells CNN that 6,000 people signed up on the New York senator's Web site to attend the speech.

The primary battle created enormous enthusiasm among Democrats. The two candidates split nearly 36 million votes between them, easily shattering records for the number of voters who turned out for the Democratic primary season.

But the primary battles also heightened animosity between the two camps, and the at times bitter battle between Obama and Clinton revealed divisions within the party along race, class, age and gender lines.

Exit polls of Democratic primary voters -- especially in swing states like Ohio and Pennsylvania -- showed that Clinton's supporters were more likely to be white, working-class, older and less educated than the voters who backed Obama. Clinton also did better with Latino voters.

The question for Clinton is whether she can persuade her supporters to back Harvard-educated Obama, the first African-American to head a major party ticket.

Clinton has vowed to do whatever she could "to ensure that Democrats take the White House back and defeat John McCain," and her efforts to reach out to woman and blue-collar voters -- groups with which she handily beat Obama -- may be crucial if the Democrats are to take back the White House.

Democratic voters appear to like an Obama-Clinton ticket. A CNN poll released Friday suggested that nearly half of Democrats, 54 percent, would support a joint ticket, but 43 percent would oppose it. The poll's margin of error was plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

The Clinton camp made it widely known that she would accept the No. 2 slot if it were offered, but the push was viewed as putting undue pressure on Obama to pick his former rival.

Obama said Thursday that "everybody needs to settle down" and let the vetting process run its course.

     Senator Hillary Clinton, as a gracious loser, has suspended her campaign and endorsed Senator Barack Obama as the Democrat nominee for President in '08. Despite my own reservations about the character and leadership ability of Barack Obama, I will vote for him in the general election, as Senator Clinton encourages. In my opinion, Obama is the "lesser of two evils" between Obama and McCain. Though I am now inclined toward libertarianism, I won't waste my vote on the Libertarian party candidate for '08, former Congressman Bob Barr. Unfortunately, in current American politics, no one can win major political office without spending millions of dollars to campaign for that office. If however Ron Paul is able to wrest the GOP nomination from John McCain at the Republican convention, I will seriously consider voting for him because in my opinion the real "agents of change" were Ron Paul, Mike Gravel and Dennis Kucinich.

    As for the future of Hillary Clinton, I would be happy if Obama picks her as his VP running mate. However, in the event he doesn't, I hope Senator Clinton will return to the Senate and become the Senate Majority or Minority leader. America has not seen the last of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton. Her leadership is still badly needed in these perilous times, in my opinion.

Hillary Clinton Endorsement Speech

tags: hillary clinton  democrats  2008  politics  takebackamerica  barack obama  clinton  obama  us  america  president  power  

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