Obama's white problem: it could cling to him all the way to November.(2008 II)(Barack Obama)

Charlotte, N.C.

CAN Democrats unite after the long and bitter primary battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton? The question most often asked is whether disappointed Clinton supporters will shift their allegiance to Obama. But there is also the question of whether Obama's supporters will welcome them.

There are nearly a thousand hardcore Obama fans here in the Ovens Auditorium in Charlotte on this night before the North Carolina primary. They've come to hear not the man himself but his wife, Michelle Obama, who is headlining the Obama campaign's get-out-the-vote effort. It's a fair guess that almost every single one of them, at least the ones who are old enough, voted for Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. Some of them supported Hillary Clinton early in the Democratic race. Talk to them now, though, and it's clear the love is gone.

"I'm really disappointed in Hillary, with the lies that she's coming up with," a woman named Evanda tells me. I ask her what in particular caught her attention, and she starts laughing about the Bosnia "dodging bullets" story. A woman named Clair adds, "She has done some things that I really don't like. When Barack wins the nomination, the Republicans can go out and play on what she has already brought out--she has already crippled him." Another woman, Ella, adds, "There has been a lot of divisiveness that has come out of her campaign."

And don't get them started on Bill. "I used to like him," says Clair. "He was one of my favorite presidents. But I think this race has brought out something in him that I didn't know was there, because he started to play the race card. He just turned me off." Clair's husband, Alan, chimes in that the Clintons "are a little bit desperate now to cling to power." And a woman sitting in the first row, Elloree, says, "It just goes to show you that a man of his stature--of what I thought was his stature--can stoop so low for power."

Sentiments like that have created a certain amount of bad blood between the two camps. "I wouldn't use the word 'hostility,'" Jerry Meek, chairman of the North Carolina Democratic party, tells me. "I would use the word 'tension.'" If that's right, then what's cooking in the Ovens Auditorium might be called hostile tension, or tense hostility, and there's a lot of it. Not a particularly good recipe for party unity.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]