John Edwards, an influential Democrat and erstwhile candidate for the presidential nomination, cautioned Sunday that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton “has to be really careful that she’s not damaging our prospects” by staying in the contest now that Senator Barack Obama appears to have won it.
With the race rapidly evolving into an expected faceoff between Obama and Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, McCain’s surrogates came out with some of their toughest attacks on Obama on Sunday. Mitt Romney, who lost his fight with McCain for the Republican nomination but now strongly backs him, said Obama was “clearly out of his depth.”
The sides clashed bitterly over Obama’s suggestion that McCain had “lost his bearings” for saying that Hamas, the Palestinian militant group, favored Obama.
While Edwards, of North Carolina, has not endorsed either candidate, he made it clear that he saw little chance that Clinton could manage a come-from-behind victory. “You can no longer make a compelling case for the math,” he said, referring to delegate totals that increasingly favor Obama. “The math is very, very hard for her.”