CHARLESTON - While Democrats fret over the lengthy nomination battle and pundits wring their hands over whether Sen. Hillary Clinton should pull out, the candidate is out campaigning as if all those political storm clouds were not hanging over her head.

On Tuesday, as West Virginia voters headed to the polls, Clinton stopped to greet people at an outdoor flower market in Charleston. She was met with enthusiasm, especially from older, white women who have proven to be a pillar of her support.

“West Virginia is behind you, darling,” one woman shouted.

Clinton shook hands, posed for pictures and cooed over babies as shoppers lined up to meet her. Shouts of “She’s here, she’s here” rippled through the market.

“I’m so excited. I just voted and here you are,” Julie Watkins squealed to the candidate. The 42-year-old social worker said she had to rush off to take her grandmother to vote.

Another supporter, Mary Lou White, cupped a lit cigar in her hand as she met the former first lady.

“I told her to keep fighting. That’s what you do,” said the 69-year-old plant vendor from Kenna, West Virginia, afterward.

Clinton stopped to eat a cup of Espresso Oreo ice cream from Ellen’s Homemade Ice Cream stand.

“I’m an equal opportunity ice cream eater,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever eaten ice cream I didn’t like.”

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CHARLESTON, W.Va. - We’ve seen him play basketball, he has been teased mercilessly about his dismal bowling skills and he even pretended to take part in a 400-meter hurdles race at a track meet last week. But pool?

Barack Obama loves it. And he decided to spend part of a 6-hour campaign stop in West Virginia — just one day before the primary election there — playing pool.

“The sign of a misspent youth,” Obama joked as he walked around and eyed the table in the smoky Schultzie’s Billiards in South Charleston.

“Obviously I wasn’t doing wholesome things like bowling,” Obama added to laughter, referring to a horrible showing in the bowling alley during a stop in Pennsylvania a few weeks ago.

The days of his youth came back quickly in the game against against Paul Scott, a local army veteran of the Iraq war. From the opening break, Obama sank several good shots — drawing some shouts of ‘whoa’ from the steadily growing crowd.

“Oh, it worked,” he said after he made one particularly tricky shot that sunk a ball into the opposite corner pocket. He also hammed it up for the crowd of photographers: contorting himself as he played with the idea of a behind-the-back shot.

The men played a gentleman’s game of pool, continuing on even though Obama sank the 8-ball early on. ”That’s what you’re supposed to do with a senator,” he said to his opponent as they kept playing.

After Scott sank his final ball with one of Obama’s remaining, the presidential candidate shook his hand and patted him on the back.

“I didn’t embarrass myself,” Obama said, then went on to the business of campaigning during his final minutes in the state.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Jason Reed (Obama plays basketball during a campaign stop in Indiana on May 4) 

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - As Barack Obama gains momentum in his battle with Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party’s 2008 presidential nomination, there are signs that the scrappy New York senator’s inner fighter may be giving way to the uniter who will knit the fractured party back together once the bruising nomination process ends. 

But parsing her recent campaign speeches from West Virginia and South Dakota to Oregon and Kentucky, Clinton does not appear ready to give up the fight just yet.  

At a speech late on Friday here, Clinton appeared initially to aim for a conciliatory tone toward Obama, only mentioning her challenger to draw comparisons between women and blacks — two groups that she said had suffered greatly under the original U.S. Constitution written by America’s founders. 

“Neither Senator Obama nor I nor many of you were fully included in the vision of our founders,” Clinton said.

“We’re here for one reason - to make sure the next president is a Democrat,” Clinton told the dinner held by the Kentucky Democratic Party. “Once we have a nominee I know in my heart we will come together as a party.”

But later in the speech she used very specific pronouns: calling for “a Democratic president who will roll up her sleeves and get to work for all of you.”

A day earlier in Charleston, West Virginia, Clinton had dismissed calls for her to drop out of the race as “déjà vu all over again,”  and recalled similar entreaties before she won the Pennsylvania Democratic primary. 

“There are people who said we need to end this before we get to West Virginia. Well, I don’t think so,” Clinton said. “I was never supposed to win Indiana.” 

Clinton has vowed to continue running until the voting concludes on June 3, but she and campaign aides have hinted she would step aside if it is clear that Obama will be the nominee. 

So which is it? Hillary the Fighter or Hillary the Uniter? Time will tell.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/Chris Baltimore (A Clinton supporter holds up boxing gloves at fundraiser in New York City.)