Senator Fulfils Pledge to Secure Victory With Joint Appearance

Hillary Clinton was scheduled to join Barack Obama on the campaign trail last night for the first time since the two held a rally in New Hampshire in June.

The joint appearance in Orlando, Florida, is a fulfillment of her promise to campaign aggressively for him.

The rally was part of a two-day blitz in Florida, where the polls opened yesterday for early voting in an effort to avoid congestion and confusion on November 4.

Clinton had a campaign stop earlier yesterday in Fort Lauderdale that saw many supporters flee when it began to rain heavily. At his rally in Tampa yesterday, Obama attacked negative campaigning by the Republicans.

"That's what you do when you're out of ideas, out of touch and running out of time," said Obama, who is expected at a campaign event in Miami today.

Clinton, who turns 61 on Sunday, still harbors hopes of a presidential run, even if Obama was to be a two-term president.

According to those close to her, she does not anticipate Obama, if he becomes president, will offer her a job that would appeal. He already has figures in mind for senior cabinet posts such as secretary of state and sensitive posts such as health reform.

Having ruled out in a television interview an appointment to the supreme court, Clinton is planning to focus on fighting for health reform from the senate.

Her supporters have been slow to warm to Obama and demonstrated their unhappiness at the Democratic convention in August. But she used her convention speech to urge them to rally behind him.

According to internal Democratic polls, before the convention only about 30% of her supporters had been planning to back Obama but that has now shifted to 80%.

Victory in Florida would almost guarantee Obama the presidency. Although George Bush took the state in 2000 and 2004, Obama has a three-point lead over John McCain, according to RealClearPolitics, which takes the overall average of recent opinion poll figures.

The Democratic party reported over the weekend that it had registered 400,000 more Democrats than in 2004, while the Republican party has registered 150,000 more Republicans in comparison.

Though Clinton remains bitter about her bruising defeat at the hands of Obama in the primaries, she has been out on the campaign trail for him over the last month. This, however, has gone largely uncovered by the US media.

She has been campaigning in states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania, where she beat him in primaries, mainly because she won over white, working-class voters who have proved resistant to Obama. Her constant refrain on the campaign trail is that he will look out for the working class.

Last week she said Obama had closed the deal with the US public and predicted "a great victory" for him on November 4.

Clinton, who wants to avoid accusations that she did not do enough to secure a Democratic victory, has also put in appearances in recent weeks in swing states such as Michigan, West Virginia New Hampshire, Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado.