Jonathan Mantz, Clinton’s national finance director, notified donors about the meeting by e-mail Tuesday and urged them to attend and to contribute to Obama, who clinched the Democratic Party’s nomination on June 3.

Two people closely involved with Clinton’s fundraising said the meeting had taken on added urgency after several of her money “bundlers” complained that they felt their concerns weren’t heard during meetings last week with Obama campaign officials in New York and Washington.

Both individuals spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the meeting.

Among other things, the donors want to make sure Obama knows that in order to get their help he needs to help Clinton pay down her campaign debt. As of the end of April, Clinton had more than $20 million in debt, a figure that likely increased by the time she suspended her campaign June 7.

Obama cannot use his campaign money to help Clinton with her debt, which includes at least $11 million of her own money. But he can encourage his donors to contribute to her campaign.

The two fundraisers who discussed the meeting said many donors also are furious that Obama’s campaign hired Patti Solis Doyle as chief of staff to Obama’s eventual running mate, calling it a slap in the face to Clinton and an implicit acknowledgment that she would not be on the ticket with him.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said no inference about the selection of a running mate should be made from Solis Doyle’s hiring.

“This was a long and hotly contested fight, so obviously there are some strong feelings about how it turned out and what needs to happen moving forward,” he said. “But we’re confident that the Democrats are united in their desire to defeat (Republican) John McCain.”

Clinton and Obama will meet with two different groups of donors at the Mayflower a week from Thursday. One larger group will include donors who raised $250,000 for Clinton’s campaign. A more intimate session will be reserved for about 30 fundraisers who collected $1 million or more.

“The challenge is reaching out to donors to ask them for money for a candidate that they’ve been on the opposite side of for a year and a half,” said Alexander Heckler, Clinton’s Florida finance chairman. “However, we have to take a deep breath and realize that we need to all work together and have a Democratic president elected.”

Another Clinton fundraiser suggested there was no rift, noting that a vigorous primary contest had just ended.

“The Obama campaign has reached out to the Clinton people,” said Hassan Nemazee, Clinton’s national finance co-chairman. “I think this is a process that is being undertaken and hopefully we will be in a position to assimilate the Clinton fundraising operation and the Obama fundraising operation together in the near future.”

“The reality is that we’re two weeks from the day that the last primary was held,” he added. “It takes a little while for staff to talk to each other, for lay organizations to talk to one another. It’s taken a while to get the candidates available.”

Heckler said he has been working with Obama’s camp and said he and Obama’s Florida finance chairman, Kirk Wagar, have been speaking daily to discuss fundraising strategies.

Separately Tuesday, Obama met in Washington with most members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, many of whom had supported Clinton. Obama acknowledged that he still has work to do to win Hispanic votes.

All the caucus members who attended the meeting pledged to support Obama, according to several members who spoke privately afterward.

Democratic Rep. Henry Cuellar of Texas said he told Obama he had worked his heart out for the former first lady and would work just as hard for Obama’s election.

___

Beth Fouhy reported from New York. Associated Press writer Suzanne Gamboa contributed to this report.

We also have Hillary to thank for putting issues of gender and power back into American politics.

As an intelligent and formidable opponent to Obama, Hillary brought the debate to a higher level.

I’ve enjoyed every minute of the debates between Obama and Hillary—all the mud slinging aside.

But why didn’t the most qualified person for the job become our Democratic nominee? Sexism alone can’t explain it all.

Did She Just Say That?
Strategic blunders and hurtful, sometimes stupid remarks—did she have to invoke Bobby Kennedy’s assassination?—did nothing to make her likeable to voters.

And the misspeak about her helicopter landing in “sniper fire” in Bosnia? And why did Bill liken Obama to Jesse Jackson? In the last eighteen months, the Clinton campaign sometimes felt like nails on a chalkboard, even for the staunchest of Hillary supporters. Make them stop!

Bush Clinton Bush Clinton
History has not been on her side either. When Nixon resigned from office (Bush II’s popularity is not much better than Nixon’s right now), the country wanted change. When Bush leaves office, the country will again want a sense of change.

The proposition of Bush Clinton Bush Clinton is not something many Democratic voters can stomach. Hillary was fairly or unfairly dubbed part of the “Clinton machine”—which brought little comfort to Democratic voters, despite how similar her policies were to Obama’s.

The Power of the Web
Hillary failed to gather the viral power of the Internet like Obama did, and as a result, lost with a lot of younger, more Web-saavy voters. (Her frequent request at the end of speeches to log on to her Web site: “Go to www …” sounded hollow and might not have resonated with younger voters. It’s a minuscule point, but no one under the age of thirty-five says “www” aloud anymore.)

Media Bias
The media’s obvious dislike of her had a snowball effect, too. The bias against Hillary got bigger and bigger as the months wore on. A Gallup poll suggests that many voters felt the media was harder on Hillary than Barack or John. In the last two months, the media kept telling her it’s time to quit and resented her defiance. (If the tables were turned, I doubt the media would have pressured Obama to quit.)

The nation’s major newspapers, blogs, and mainstream television networks have little love for Hillary. Some voters bristle at a powerful woman, too—if you’re too soft, you’re considered weak and if you’re too hard or aggressive, you’re considered a bitch. Powerful women are always walking a tightrope, no matter how qualified and deserving of the job.

Moving On
But it’s time to move on. As Obama becomes the Democratic nominee, pundits are talking furiously about where Hillary’s eighteen million supporters will go as if we voters are disinterested little children who will wait and be told which line to get into. The pundits will tell us that feminists are angry that she did not win and that we women will then vote against Obama. Ouch!

Perhaps there is a small minority of Democratic women who are disinterested in the issues and will vote for McCain instead, but the majority of Hillary supporters are apt to vote for Obama now.

I can’t imagine that anyone seriously interested in Hillary would suddenly rally around an anti-choice Republican who does not seem concerned about the forty-seven million uninsured Americans or the rising numbers of American soldiers who are committing suicide.

The assumption that even a sizable segment of Hillary supporters are pissed off and will vote against Obama—or worse, will need the security of McCain in an age of terrorism—is patronizing at best, misguided at worst. We Hillary supporters are not so mercurial.

Hillary’s female supporters are practical. And although many of us—myself included—were invested in seeing the first qualified woman run this country, we’re not so stubborn to leave the Democratic party in the dust, are we? Barack Obama’s platform is very similar to Hillary Clinton’s. We’re excited about Obama—but more important, we’re hopeful of our nation’s future, too.

Source: divinecaroline.com