Bruised Democrats vow to heal wounds for US election

AFP, May, 2008

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Top Democrats were adamant Wednesday the party would unite behind a champion and take back the White House, despite the bruising nature of the slugfest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

There was some anxiety that the protracted bout between the two senators, which has six more rounds to go after Tuesday's primaries in North Carolina and Indiana, could leave the party too bloodied for November's election.

Representative Rahm Emanuel, one of the chief architects of the Democrats' seizure of Congress in 2006, said on National Public Radio that by the end of May, "we're going to have our nominee, and we're going to have a united party."

But Emanuel, one of nearly 800 Democratic "superdelegates" who look set to decide the presidential nominee, said much hinged on how the eventual loser behaves in defeat.

History backs the Illinois congressman's point. In 1976, ...