Dean: ‘We can’t have a divided convention’

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said Monday that his party “can’t have a divided convention,” arguing that if the presidential nomination is not settled ahead of the meeting in Denver it would be “very hard to heal the party afterwards.”

Dean hopes that all Democratic superdelegates will have picked a candidate to support by the end of June, although he admitted in an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America that he does not have the power to make them pick between Sens. Barack Obama (Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) by then.

{mosads}However, the DNC chairman said that it is imperative that the candidate is known shortly after the last primary votes are cast on June 3.

“None of the so-called party elders that I talked to thought that this should go to the convention, and I agree with that,” he said.

Dean expressed confidence that one of the two candidates would bow out of the race gracefully.

“This is not about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. This is about our country,” Dean said, adding, “I think these two folks are wonderful people, in my view, and I think they know what's right for the country.”

That decision, however, should come on a candidates' own accord, he argued.

“Either of these candidates, if it's time for them to go, they'll know it, and they will go. They don't need pushing from people like me or anybody else, or the newspapers or anybody else,” said Dean, who ran for the Democratic nomination in 2004 and campaigned for Sen. John Kerry (Mass.) after losing. “You know when to get in, and you know when to get out. That's just part of the deal.”