Obama plays family card

MICHELLE Obama has been thrown as a media weapon into America's primary race as it enters its latest bruising round, with her husband Barack struggling to win back ground lost to Hillary Clinton.

The senator's wife has teamed up with Caroline Kennedy, daughter of the late John F Kennedy, to tour Indiana ahead of its primary next week.

In her first full media interview for weeks, she was at pains to show she identified with blue-collar voters who polls show distrust her husband.

Sporting signs of a dress and hair makeover, Mrs Obama told CNN: "We're a young couple with small kids with all the challenges and the emotions and the stresses that come with raising kids, like being a working mum."

Later, she described to an audience in Indianapolis how they struggled, like any other young couple in Middle America, to raise two children and pay off debts. "We are still so close to the lives that most Americans are living," she said.

A Harvard-trained lawyer, Mrs Obama, 44, is on leave from her job as a hospital administrator and now divides her time between campaigning and raising the couple's two daughters – Sasha, six, and Malia, nine.

The move to bring her forward comes as Mr Obama continues to count the cost of comments from his former pastor, the Rev Jeremiah Wright, which have seen the senator's poll numbers tumble.

Mr Wright's assertion that Mr Obama secretly held his views, which include the assertion that the US government invented the Aids virus, has seen Mr Obama's ten point poll lead over Mrs Clinton evaporate. Mr Obama earlier this week branded Mr Wright's views, including his support for anti-semitic black leader Louis Farrakhan, as "divisive and destructive".

Mr Obama himself yesterday sought to convince Americans he was not elitist. In an interview on NBC's Today Show, he said both his rivals, Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican John McCain, come from more privileged backgrounds than his.

North Carolina's large African-American population is expected to give Mr Obama a victory when that state votes next Tuesday. But it is in Indiana, which votes on the same day, that he needs a win. This state, like Ohio and Pennsylvania, is dominated by white blue-collar voters who have until now backed Mrs Clinton.

And it is Mrs Clinton's success in holding on to these voters, despite being behind Mr Obama in the primary contest, that is keeping her campaign alive.

She has drawn strength from polls showing that 64 per cent of Democrats think the Wright affair has harmed Mr Obama.

Race is the great unspoken factor in these elections. Few opinion polls even ask whether white voters would object to a black president, though one poll that did last week found 19 per cent declaring they would not. More voter doubts are likely to be stirred by Mr McCain's mention of another unwanted Obama endorsement, that of Hamas, an organisation pledged to wipe out Israel.

Mr Obama himself has long recognised that for a black to be accepted in white society is a delicate issue, writing in his book Audacity of Hope that it depended on "making no sudden moves".

Mrs Clinton, meanwhile, insists her campaign is rejuvenated. After last month's victory in Pennsylvania, her campaign claimed she raised $10 million in contributions in a day.

And she continues to get high-profile endorsements, the latest being from North Carolina governor Michael Easley. A win in Indiana will keep alive a campaign strategy that depends on convincing party superdelegates that, while Mr Obama has won the most votes, she is the sounder candidate.

Yet for all the bluster surrounding the Wright affair, and Mr Obama's earlier comments in which he labelled small town Americans as "bitter", Mrs Clinton's chance of success remains a long shot. This is because Mr Obama has the numbers on his side. Assuming there is no further collapse in his support, even a win in Indiana will leave Mrs Clinton further behind Mr Obama in pledged, or elected, delegates than the 160-vote gap that now separates them.

Try though she might, Mrs Clinton is a long way from convincing superdelegates that they should go against the popular vote and make her the nominee. Such a thing has never happened in primary history and the party top brass fear it would haemorrhage support.

The latest to say so publicly is former president Jimmy Carter, who has gone public in insisting that were the elite to go against the candidate with the most pledged votes "it would be very uncomfortable".

He was joined by former Democratic national committee chairman Joe Andrew, a superdelegate, who announced yesterday he was switching his support from Mrs Clinton to Mr Obama, saying it was for the good of the party.

'YOU CAN TALK TO HER. SHE'S LIKE YOUR FRIEND'

IN AN interview on NBC's Today Show, Michelle Obama yesterday said she was sometimes angered by coverage of the campaign.

"I take the newspaper and I ball it up and I throw it in the corner," she said. "You don't want anybody talking poorly about the people you love."

The sometimes blunt-spoken Michelle Obama grew up on the South Side of Chicago, raised by her father, a city worker, and her mother, a secretary and then a stay-at-home mother.

The Obama campaign sees her as someone whose down-to-earth style goes over well.

But she has stirred controversy, such as when she said in February: "For the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country." Critics said the comment suggested she had not been proud of her country before her husband's candidacy.

Yesterday, the Obamas visited the home of Cheryl and Mike Fischer in Indiana for a lunch of sandwiches.

"You can just talk to her. She's like your girl friend," Mrs Fischer said afterwards.