Women push back on calls for Clinton to end campaign

NEW ALBANY, Ind. -- Debra Starks has heard the calls for Hillary Rodham Clinton to quit the presidential race, and she's not happy about it.

The 53-year old Wal-Mart clerk, so bedecked with Clinton campaign buttons most days that friends call her "Button Lady," thinks sexism is playing a role in efforts to push the New York senator from the race. Starks wants Clinton to push back.

"The way I look at it, she's a strong woman and she needs to stay in there. She needs to fight," Starks said at a Clinton campaign rally. "If you want to be president, you have to fight for what you want. If she stays in there and does what she's supposed to do, I think she'll be on her way."

Amid mounting calls from top Democrats for Clinton to step aside and clear the path for rival Barack Obama, strategists are warning of damage to the party's chances in November if women -- who make up the majority of Democratic voters nationwide, but especially the older, white working-class women who've long formed the former first lady's base -- sense a mostly male party establishment is muscling Clinton out of the race.

"Women will indeed be upset if it appears people are trying to push Hillary Clinton out of the way," said Carol Fowler, the South Carolina Democratic Party chairwoman who is backing Obama. "If you are going to ask her to withdraw, you'd better be making a strong case for it -- both to the candidate and the public."

Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy last week became the first leading Democrat to openly call on Clinton to abandon her bid and back Obama, a sentiment shared by many activists worried that a drawn-out nominating contest only bolsters Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain.

Other Obama supporters have echoed that view while stopping short of asking Clinton to withdraw.

New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson on Sunday called Obama's lead all but insurmountable, while Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry said the contest would be reaching "a point of judgment" soon.

To be sure, Clinton campaign officials concede her path to winning the nomination is not at all clear.

She almost certainly will end the primary season trailing Obama in the popular vote and among pledged delegates unless the nullified primaries in Florida and Michigan are counted. But Obama is unlikely to end the race with the 2,024 pledged delegates needed to win outright, meaning the nominee will be determined by roughly 800 "superdelegates" -- elected officials and party insiders who can back whichever candidate they want.

Most observers believe the superdelegates are unlikely to risk an intraparty uproar by siding with Clinton if Obama maintains his lead among pledged delegates.

But Clinton advisers think many superdelegates remain persuadable because of the influence of women voters in the general election.

Indeed, the gender gap in most of the primaries thus far has been stark.

In California, Clinton bested Obama by a margin of 59 percent to 36 percent among women. She beat him by 54 percent to 45 percent among women in Ohio, an important general election battleground state.