Obama adviser touts ‘cohesive’ relations with Clinton

DENVER — Valerie Jarrett, a senior adviser to Barack Obama, on Monday denied the existence of any acrimony between the Illinois senator’s inner circle and that of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

“The people who have always been involved in talks between Sens. Obama and Clinton have a very strong, cohesive, good working relationship,” said Jarrett during a breakfast with reporters at the historic Brown Palace Hotel.

{mosads}Jarrett said that sources who are telling media outlets about friction between the Obama and Clinton camps are not members of the two lawmakers' inner circles who have conducted the delicate negotiations over what roles Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, will play at the convention and beyond.

Scrutiny has focused on the two Democrats’ relationship since the end of the protracted, and at times combative, primary. Many Clinton supporters remain bitter over the contest, which Clinton lost despite winning by large margins in states such as Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Kentucky. Twenty percent of voters who supported Clinton in the primary now say they favor Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the expected Republican nominee, over Obama.

But Jarrett insisted Thursday morning that the disaffection is limited to outsiders and not members of Clinton’s or Obama’s inner circle.

“There is no stronger surrogate for Obama among Clinton supporters than Sen. Clinton,” said Jarrett.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), co-chairman of Obama’s campaign, said that polls show the number of Clinton supporters opposed to voting for Obama in the general election is shrinking.

He said older women are among the most upset by Clinton’s loss.

“Most prominent are older women who saw this as the last chance of their lives to elect a woman president,” said Durbin.

Defending Clinton, Jarrett said the New York senator has sent a clear message to those supporters that if they believe in her than they also have to believe in Obama and vote for him in November.

Former Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson said Monday in an op-ed in The New Republic that there is “still work to do on the Bill Clinton front,” noting that the former president “feels like the Obama campaign ran against and systematically dismissed his administration’s accomplishments. And he feels like he was painted as a racist during the primary process.”

Wolfson argues that “Obama would go a long way towards healing these wounds if he were to specifically praise the accomplishments of the Clinton presidency in a line or two during his speech on Thursday."

“What both Clintons say about Sen. Obama —and what Sen. Obama says about both of them during this week — can go a long way towards tamping down whatever disunity still exists between the two camps and their supporters,” Wolfson added.