It's up to the super delegates

With just a handful of smaller states left to vote after Tuesday, Obama and Clinton are not looking to surprise voters or build traditional political momentum.

Rather, they are aiming to impress a small but important audience: the more than 250 Democratic Party officials, or superdelegates, who have yet to publicly back a candidate.

That means Clinton, who trails in the overall delegate count, is the one praying for lightning to strike.

"The onus is on her. She's got to do better than tie," Clinton backer James Carville told Newsweek recently.

Obama's aides said they expect Indiana to be close, downplaying Obama's own earlier suggestion that the state would be the race's "tiebreaker".

Clinton aides, meanwhile, argue that Obama needs to beat her soundly in North Carolina.

Most polls suggest relatively narrow margins.

Obama led by seven percentage points in North Carolina in Monday's polls while Clinton led in Indiana by five percentage points.

Results on that scale would give neither candidate a dramatic boost in the delegate chase.

Unless there is a runaway winner in the final stages of the Democratic primary season, superdelegates could face an unpalatable choice: hand the nomination to a candidate who limps to the finish a month from now, or overturn the will of voters and face a backlash among African Americans and young people energized by Obama's promised break from the past.

The greatest beneficiary, many Democrats fear, will be Sen. John McCain of Arizona who in effect wrapped up the Republican nomination in February and now runs even with either of the two Democrats in national polls.

(Xinhua News Agency May 7, 2008)