WASHINGTON—Democrat Barack Obama focused on unifying a fractured party for the five-month battle for the White House on Wednesday and announced a high-profile three-person team to head the search for a running mate.
Caroline Kennedy, daughter of the late President John Kennedy, will vet prospective running mates along with former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson, who performed the same task for John Kerry in 2004 and Walter Mondale in 1984, and former deputy Attorney General Eric Holder.
Obama clinched the Democratic nomination on Tuesday and will be the first black candidate to lead a major U.S. party into a White House race. His last Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, refused to concede but called it "an honor" to have competed against him.
Clinton's supporters turned up the pressure for the New York senator to be named as Obama's No. 2, but Obama's campaign said the search process was just beginning.
"Senator Obama is pleased to have three talented and dedicated individuals managing this rigorous process," spokesman Bill Burton said. "He will work closely with them in the coming weeks but ultimately this will be his decision and his alone."
Obama returned to Capitol Hill to a hero's welcome from Democrats who swarmed to shake his hand, pat his back and hug him. He gained more support from prominent Democrats as the party turned its focus to the November election against Republican John McCain.
The Illinois senator took aim at McCain for his staunch support of the Iraq war during a speech to a pro-Israel lobbying group in Washington, saying the Arizona senator "refuses to understand or acknowledge the failure of the policy that he would continue."
Spoken to Clinton
"He criticizes my willingness to use strong diplomacy, but offers only an alternate reality—one where the war in Iraq has somehow put Iran on its heels," he said. "Senator McCain offers a false choice: stay the course in Iraq, or cede the region to Iran."
In the same speech, Obama tried to smooth relations with Clinton after their long and sometimes bitter nominating fight, calling her an "extraordinary candidate and extraordinary public servant."
He told reporters at the Capitol that he had spoken to Clinton "and we're going to be having a conversation in coming weeks. And I'm very confident how unified the Democratic Party's going to be to win in November."
Clinton, in a later speech to the same group, complimented Obama but offered no sign of when she would end her campaign.
"It has been an honor to contest these primaries with him. It is an honor to call him my friend," she said. "I know that Senator Obama will be a good friend to Israel."
Democratic leaders urged the remaining undecided delegates to the August convention to make up their minds by Friday, but few tried to hurry Clinton out of the race.
"That's up to her," House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi said of a timeline for Clinton to end her race. "She been through a very long and rigorous campaign. She's done beautifully. She has to wind down in her own time."
The victory by Obama, son of a black Kenyan father and white mother from Kansas, marked a milestone in U.S. history. It came 45 years after the height of the civil rights movement and followed one of the closest and longest nomination fights in recent U.S. political history.
Obama clinched the win after a wave of uncommitted delegates announced their support on Tuesday, pushing his total to 2,156, according to an MSNBC count. Clinton, who would have been the first woman nominee in U.S. political history, won more than 1,900 delegates.
Obama's achievement drew praise from a Republican Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, the highest-ranking black in President George W. Bush's Cabinet.
"It's a country that has overcome many, many, now years, decades of, actually a couple of centuries, of trying to make good on its principles," Rice said.
"And I think that what we're seeing is, an extraordinary expression of the fact that 'we the people,' is beginning to mean all of us," Rice said, a reference to the opening line of the U.S. Constitution.
Clinton told New York members of Congress on Tuesday she would be open to becoming Obama's vice presidential running mate, and her backers turned up the pressure on Obama to pick her as his No. 2.
Robert Johnson, founder of Black Entertainment Television, said he wrote to the Congressional Black Caucus urging members to push Obama to choose Clinton.
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