Obama Focuses on November, Clinton on West Virginia

Today's primary in West Virginia matters so little to the Democratic presidential nomination race that front-runner Barack Obama will spend the day in Missouri and Michigan, two battleground states in the fall's general election.
Obama, who has racked up a commanding lead in delegates to the nominating convention over rival Hillary Clinton, for the first time opted to spend the day of a primary election in states that have already voted.
``We're not going to have a lot of time to pivot'' after the primaries end, Obama said in Bend, Oregon, on May 10. Presumptive Republican nominee ``John McCain's been getting a free pass.''
A poll of likely Democratic voters by Boston-based Suffolk University May 10-11 gave Clinton a 36-point advantage in West Virginia. While victory in that primary won't much improve her chances of clinching the nomination, it may encourage her to continue her campaign, using tactics that could hurt Obama in November, said Clyde Wilcox, a government professor at Georgetown University in Washington.
``If Clinton wins by a huge margin, she may just try to fight on to the convention and will be tempted to use more negative arguments,'' Wilcox said. The back-and-forth between Clinton and Obama became especially pointed in the weeks before the April 22 Pennsylvania primary, which Clinton won, and Democrats have fretted the attacks would harm the party.