WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON - On the eve of the last two Democratic primaries, aides for Sen. Hillary Clinton appeared yesterday to be making plans to scale down her campaign, giving her time to decide in the coming days whether to end it or to stage a comeback.
While Sen. Barack Obama plans to spend election night in St. Paul, Minn., where Republicans will hold their convention, Clinton intends to return home to New York. Her campaign has scheduled no events beyond a speech tomorrow in Washington. Clinton aides considered and rejected a plan to have her campaign later this week in states that will be important in the general election.
She isn't withdrawing, a Clinton aide said, "but we're slowing down this process."
With voters in South Dakota and Montana set to end the five-month primary season today, Clinton campaigned as if it were any other day, but her husband telegraphed that the race might be wrapping up.
"This may be the last day I'm ever involved in a campaign of this kind," said former President Bill Clinton in Milbank, S.D. "I thought I was out of politics, till Hillary decided to run. But it has been one of the greatest honors of my life to go around and campaign for her for president."
Obama, campaigning in Michigan, a state both parties will contest in the fall, said he talked to Clinton on Sunday "and told her that once the dust settled, I was looking forward to meeting with her at a time and place of her choosing."
Clinton and Obama both picked up superdelegates yesterday.
Obama was 41.5 delegates shy of the 2,118 needed to clinch the Democrats' nomination, while Clinton was 200.5 away, according to the Associated Press tally.
In a significant gain for Obama, House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, an influential voice in the black community, told the Associated Press that he would endorse the Illinois senator, who is bidding become the nation's first African-American president.
Although the Clinton campaign seemed poised to enter a more subdued phase, it did not seem on the verge of going out of business. On a conference call with top donors yesterday, campaign officials Harold Ickes, Jonathan Mantz and others appealed to them to stick with her.
During the call, Clinton officials said that the nomination was not beyond her reach.
Superdelegates are free to change their minds and switch allegiance, officials said, a hint that Clinton might stay in the race and pry superdelegates from Obama.
