The NY Times:

JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — Senator Barack Obama had a few words of advice Saturday for his rival, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton: Do not drop out on my account.

“My attitude is that Senator Clinton can run as long as she wants,” Mr. Obama, of Illinois, said at a news conference in a high school gymnasium here. “Her name is on the ballot. She is a fierce and formidable opponent, and she obviously believes she would make the best nominee and the best president.”

A few prominent Obama supporters have recently suggested that the time has come for Mrs. Clinton, of New York, to consider withdrawing from the race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Senator Patrick J. Leahy of Vermont, for one, said last week that Mrs. Clinton could not win the race and that her attacks on Mr. Obama were hurting “more than anything that John McCain has said.”

Mrs. Clinton’s forces have mounted a vigorous counterattack, saying she trails by a fairly narrow margin in the overall popular vote and in the delegate count. She has suggested to two allies that party leaders are trying to bully her.

The back and forth on Mrs. Clinton’s future is accompanied by a tactical subtext. Both she and Mr. Obama have applied pressure on each other, political and financial, and then taken the role of victim to rally their partisans and donors.

Former President Bill Clinton dismissed the notion that the discord had hurt the party’s chances of capturing the White House.

“We just need to relax and let this happen,” Mr. Clinton said in Girardville, according to The Associated Press. “Nobody’s talking about wrecking the party. Everywhere I go, all these working people say: ‘Don’t you dare let her drop out. Don’t listen to those people in Washington, they don’t represent us.’ ”

On Saturday, Mr. Obama, answering a question on the subject at the news conference here, seemed to agree with Mr. Clinton.

“You know, there’s no doubt that among some of my supporters or some of her supporters, there’s probably been some irritation created,” he said. “You can’t tell me that some of my supporters are going to say, well, we’d rather have the guy who may want to stay in Iraq for a hundred years because we’re mad that Senator Clinton ran a negative ad against Senator Obama. And I think the converse is true as well.”

All the mad talk of the divided party is simply heat-of-the-moment stuff. Some may choose to avoid voting for one of the two, but that’s more likely because of a complaint on an issue or three and not the tenor of this primary campaign. And for the thin-skinned, whatever the fight game, no-one’s ever become heavyweight champ without good sparring partners.