ATHENS, W.Va. (AP) _ Hillary Rodham Clinton is counting on a victory in West Virginia, and it's her husband's job to run up the score.
Former President Bill Clinton traveled much of the state Thursday and Friday, hoping to inspire voters in out-of-the-way places like Sutton and Fayetteville to turn out in large enough numbers to silence some of the national speculation that his wife's bid for the Democratic nomination is essentially finished.
Speaking to an enthusiastic crowd Friday morning at the Madison Fire Department, Clinton reiterated that large turnouts in West Virginia and Kentucky are essential to his wife's chances of winning.
"She can win the popular vote, she's clearly the most electable according to all the national polls," he said. "Between now and August the superdelegates are going to have to do a lot of thinking if they want to win."
Some people who turned out to hear Clinton said they still think his wife will be the nominee.
"I do think she can win, but I would like to see the superdelegates lose their power and have the people choose the president," said Barbara Stone of Madison.
The Clinton campaign is hoping that West Virginia — a state rich in the white, older, working class voters who have doggedly supported her — will provide a lift after the damaging results of Tuesday's primaries, in which she lost North Carolina and won Indiana by too small a margin to derail rival Barack Obama's bid for the nomination.
Speaking in gymnasiums and fairgrounds in rural towns, Bill Clinton returned repeatedly to the words "people like you and places like this" as the keys that could help his wife stop Obama's momentum.
"They want you to vote in low numbers so she doesn't get ahead in the popular vote," he told a crowd Thursday in Sutton.
Going from early morning to nearly midnight, from Barbour County in the north to the Virginia border in the south, Clinton clearly relished the chance to be on the stump again for an underdog campaign hoping for a miracle.
But there were signs of weariness. He snapped at a heckler in Fayetteville who shouted that neither he nor Hillary had done anything to work toward universal health coverage during his presidency.
"You're wrong. I can't believe you're saying this," he said, in a rejoinder that brought the biggest cheers of the stop. "For you or any other person to claim she didn't work hard is the craziest thing I ever heard."
West Virginia votes on Tuesday. The Clinton campaign is hoping for a big win here and in Kentucky to give the New York senator some needed breathing room. Although Clinton campaigned here on behalf of his wife as recently as last week, on Thursday volunteers were circulating volunteer sign-up sheets for get-out-the-vote drives, underlining how crucial the campaign sees a large win here.
With another visit by their candidate possible before Tuesday, Obama supporters were doing much of the same. On Thursday, the campaign sent Max Kennedy, son of Robert and Ethel Kennedy, to Huntington and Pittsburgh Steelers' owner Dan Rooney to Wheeling and Weirton.
"We are communicating every day with West Virginians and this weekend we'll be canvassing their neighborhoods and talking with them at their doorsteps about Senator Obama's ability to change the broken ways of Washington," Obama campaign spokesman Thomas Bowen said Friday. "With 11 offices opened in every region of the state, we're committed to taking that message into the communities where voters work, live and raise their families."
Obama's convincing lead in delegates and the popular vote is showing signs of dispiriting even some of Clinton's supporters.
Jean Miller of Union came out in a downpour Thursday to see the former president speak in Fairlea, and although she proudly wore a Hillary Clinton sticker, she doesn't have much hope for her candidate's success.
"The way it is now, with the primaries that are left, she still won't have enough delegates," Miller said. "She can't win, and sometimes I think it's hurting our party."
Miller said the longer the Democratic race continues, the better it is for the presumptive Republican nominee John McCain.
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