Civil Rights Icon Defects to Obama

Senator Hillary Clinton's White House hopes suffered another body blow as civil rights hero and Democratic elder John Lewis defected to her surging rival Senator Barack Obama. "Something is happening in America," said Lewis, who walked in the iconic footsteps of Martin Luther King, Jr., and said he now sensed a comparable groundswell of historic change sweeping the country. The timing of his switch was especially annoying for Senator Clinton, just days before Texas and Ohio hold March 4 nominating contests which her campaign admits she must win to keep her White House dreams alive. Congressman Lewis, who risked his life in the civil rights movement of the 1960s, said there was a spirit in the hearts and minds of Americans he had not seen since the 1968 presidential pursuit of assassinated Democrat Robert Kennedy. "I want to be on the side of the people, on the side of the spirit of history," he said. Lewis, 68, was the latest superdelegate, (Democratic party VIPs and elected officials who can vote how they like at the party convention) to choose Senator Obama, further weakening Senator Clinton's hopes. Obama, on the day when he welcomed the one millionth donor to his campaign, said he was honored to have the backing of an "American hero and a giant of the civil rights movement." Clinton said Lewis had "been my friend and he will always be my friend." Congressman Lewis is the latest in a series of superdelegates that have switched support to Senator Obama in the last week and is attracting more high-profile party endorsements by the day.

Senator Obama, meanwhile, has turned his attention toward probable Republican nominee John McCain. In a possible preview of the general election match-up, both candidates sparred over the Iraq war in the news media. "Where is the audacity of hope when it comes to backing the success of our troops all the way to victory in Iraq?" Senator McCain said in a statement issued after Obama and Clinton traded blows at a debate late Tuesday. Obama, who opposed the Iraq war and says he will end it in 2009 if elected president, hit back hard at McCain while campaigning in Ohio. "John McCain may like to say that he wants to follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell, but so far all he's done is follow George Bu$h into a misguided war in Iraq that has cost us thousands of lives and billions of dollars."