NORTH LITTLE ROCK, Ark. — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton is going national, with plans to talk to voters in 21 states at once on the eve of Super Tuesday and by urging Democrats to recognize the results from this week’s Florida vote to help the party in the general election.
Photos: Hillary campaigns through Arkansas
What was a three-person race was winnowed down to two yesterday as former Sen. John Edwards abruptly ended his bid for the White House. Neither she nor Sen. Barack Obama will get an immediate boost from Mr. Edwards, who said he won’t endorse anyone yet.
Mrs. Clinton, meanwhile, called for Democrats to cast aside party rules and reinstate the delegates from Michigan and Florida, two states where she won victories that won’t count toward earning the party nod. She said the states are crucial for a Democratic win in November, especially after Republicans campaigned there vigorously.
“I would ask Democrats to start thinking about what we need to do to win. And we need Michigan, and we need Florida,” Mrs. Clinton, of New York, told reporters.
She said that looking back in party history, “there is precedent” for seating the delegates at the nominating convention despite party rules ordering those states be punished for holding their contests too early, and added, “this is about how we’re going to win an election.”
She said the competitive Republican race in the Sunshine State allowed Republicans to spend millions and “laid the groundwork” for the general election in the key swing state.
National party officials said yesterday that there is no way the delegates will count toward the nomination contest unless state officials in Michigan and Florida petition the Democratic National Committee and then hold a new election.
Mr. Obama of Illinois yesterday suggested Mrs. Clinton is too polarizing to lead the nation and framed his bid as the future versus a Clinton past.
“When I am the nominee, the Republicans won’t be able to make this election about the past because you will have already chosen the future,” he told an overflow crowd of more than 18,000 in Denver.
But Mrs. Clinton yesterday was warmly received for a homecoming rally as she returned to the state where she served as first lady in the 1980s.
The candidates are targeting Super Tuesday states like this one with personal appearances, but Mrs. Clinton will host a “Voices Across America” national town-hall forum from New York that will be broadcast in 22 cities — two in California and one in all the other states that will vote Tuesday except Alaska.
At stops here yesterday, Mrs. Clinton kept it personal, exchanging embraces with old friends and promising voters that like her husband, she won’t forget her roots.
“Arkansas runs deep in me, and I will be there for this state no matter what it takes,” Mrs. Clinton told 4,000 voters crammed into a high school gym. “I hope that I can count on you on Tuesday.”
She beamed and pointed out longtime pals in the crowd, many who say they would do anything to return her and former President Bill Clinton to the White House.
Mr. Obama suggested that should not happen if the nation wants to move past the politics of yesterday and learn from the “bitter partisanship of the last two decades.”
He said that Democrats will win in November “not by nominating a candidate who will unite the other party against us, but by choosing one who can unite this country around a movement for change.”
Like Mrs. Clinton, he was thinking ahead to a general election and said he can win in more conservative states such as Kansas and Missouri while his rival starts out with half the country against her.
Both Democrats spoke to Mr. Edwards, of North Carolina, promising they would adopt his cause of fighting poverty within their own campaigns.
“It’s time for me to step aside so that history can blaze its path,” Mr. Edwards said from New Orleans, ending his bid in the same place he began it in December 2006.
“We do not know who will take the final steps to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but what we do know is that our Democratic Party will make history,” he said. “We will be strong, we will be unified, and with our convictions and a little backbone, we will take back the White House.”
Mrs. Clinton praised him for running “a great campaign” that was “really important to millions and millions.”
Mr. Obama responded similarly, saying that “at a time when our politics is too focused on who’s up and who’s down, he made a nation focus again on who matters.”
Mrs. Clinton is counting on winning here next week, and said during the rally that she was feeling “real sentimental” being back home in Arkansas. Earlier yesterday at a stop at a local diner, she was serenaded by the “Black Elvis,” Little Rock resident Dwayne Turner, who credits her husband with improving his life.
“I’m really having a lot of flashbacks here,” she said, to loud cheers. “There are so many stories that come flooding into my mind.”
She ticked off her work when Mr. Clinton was governor, such as expanding rural health care and noted she “went to every county” to get things done.
She painted herself as more ready than her opponents to roll up her sleeves and work with others.
“It’s about solving people’s problems. It’s about going into people’s homes, listening, eating some catfish or some barbecue and figuring out what you’re going to do to help somebody have a better life,” she said.
• S.A. Miller and Sean Lengell contributed to this report.
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