WASHINGTON – A long and divisive campaign that featured backbiting, insults, humiliation and racial flare-ups will get a Hallmark ending when Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton hold a lovey-dovey joint rally Friday in Unity, NH, officials announced yesterday.
Obama’s campaign said the two former rivals will hold a long-anticipated “unite for change” event in the quaint town – where each candidate got exactly 107 votes in the January primary.
The carefully scripted media event comes at a time when there are signs of lingering disUnity between the rival camps, with the Democratic convention just six weeks away.
Members of Clinton’s team fumed when Obama picked up her fired campaign chief, Patti Solis Doyle, and then gave her the job of chief of staff to Obama’s vice presidential pick. That was a signal to some that Clinton wasn’t getting serious consideration for vice president.
An even as Clinton prepares to urge her wealthiest cash bundlers to go to work for Obama at a Washington event on Thursday, Clintonites have sniped that Obama has yet to do anything to help retire her debt.
Furthermore, a key Clinton supporter, Rep. Sheila Jackson-Lee of Texas, got upset when Obama said that if women realize John McCain is not in their corner on important issues, “that would help them get over [Clinton’s defeat].”
Dante Scala, a political-science professor at the University of New Hampshire, said, “I’m sure there are party activists up here who are unhappy about Barack Obama‘s nomination, who are still probably upset that Clinton’s not the nominee.”
Obama led in two recent New Hampshire polls, but McCain has been a fixture there since 2000.