Obama talks about PA race, Hamas
Posted: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 3:15 PM by Mark Murray
From NBC/NJ's Aswini Anburajan
PITTSBURGH -- Speaking with reporters here today, Obama handicapped the Pennsylvania race and held steady in his criticism of former President Jimmy Carter's visit with Hamas.
He said that a Keystone State win by Clinton would do little to overcome his delegate lead. "What I know is that going into this six weeks ago, the Clinton campaign suggested that they were unbeatable, and I think the strategy they were talking about is they could overcome our delegate lead and our popular vote lead and the number of states that we have won by winning big in Pennsylvania and future contests."
Obama added, "If you take a look at how the delegates play themselves out at the end of the night we should be able to measure, given how many contests are left, whether they can make up that ground."
Michelle Obama also offered her own take on the race, saying that she felt hopeful because of the strong turnout. "I think we're going to have a solid performance, but it's just so hard to tell," she said. "I've stopped trying to predict anything. Every state -- the polls have said one thing, there've been different outcomes.
"I think that it's just hard to measure where the votes are because you have so many voters engaged in this who are not even being counted. We have people who up until the very last minute are undecided, so it's really hard to know how that's going to play out in the polls. We're just happy to see there's a great turnout. That's what we're hearing. Obviously, we're not out at the polls but they're saying there are long lines and that's just good for democracy. It's good for the party."
On the issue of Hamas, Obama held steady in his criticism of Carter, saying that the former president should not have met with a terrorist organization.
"Given that they are not heads of state, to sit down with them, I think gave them a legitimacy that was unnecessary. And in fact, what we're seeing now is even as President Carter suggests there was a breakthrough, you have some of the same old rhetoric coming out of Hamas representatives with regard to Israel."
He continued, "So I think it's very important for the United States to actively engage in helping bring about negotiations between the Palestinians and the Israelis. And President Abbas has indicated his willingness to make every effort to sit down with Prime Minister Olmert. That's where our energies should go."
