Obama and Clinton will know when to quit: party chief

GRAHAM, North Carolina (Reuters) - Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama will know when to pull out of the U.S. presidential race in order to unify the party for the general election, the chairman of the Democratic Party said on Monday.

In a round of network television appearances, Howard Dean warned that a prolonged battle between Clinton and Obama could hurt the party's chances in November's election against Republican John McCain.

"Either of these candidates, if it's time for them to go, they'll know it, and they will go," Dean said on ABC's "Good Morning America."

"They don't need pushing from people like me or anybody else, or the newspapers or anybody else," he said. "You know when to get in, and you know when to get out. That's just part of the deal."

Clinton, a New York senator, said she thought the tough race had been good for the Democratic Party because it fired up voters' interest.

"So we're going to go through these next contests. We're going to see where we end up. And we will take stock of where we are after they finish," she told reporters during a stop at a fire station in Graham, North Carolina.

North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley will endorse Clinton on Tuesday at an event in Raleigh, a source close to the Clinton campaign said on Monday. Opinion polls show Obama with a comfortable lead over Clinton in North Carolina.

Clinton and Obama, a senator from Illinois, are focusing on North Carolina and Indiana -- the next big tests on May 6 as the Democrats inch toward picking a presidential nominee in the state-by-state contest.

Obama, who would be the first black U.S. president, is leading Clinton in the popular vote, states won and committed delegates to the party's nominating convention in August.

But recent victories in Pennsylvania and Ohio by Clinton, who would be the first female U.S. president, have raised questions about Obama's ability to win big states.

Neither candidate can win without help from "superdelegates" -- nearly 800 party insiders free to support either candidate at the convention.

"In my experience, the superdelegates have always ended up deciding with the person who gets the most pledged delegates, but that doesn't always have to happen, and they are free agents," Dean said in an interview on CNN.

Obama has said he would battle through the final nine contests ending on June 3, then make his case to the party's undecided superdelegates.

Dean said superdelegates needed to make up their mind shortly after the final votes are cast.

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

Dean also told CNN that Democrats would be handing the general election to McCain if they went into the August convention divided.

When asked if it meant the Democrats would lose outright, he said: "I think absolutely, yes. I think if we go in divided we'll come out divided and it'll be much harder to win."

(Additional reporting by Andy Sullivan, Writing by Deborah Charles; Editing by David Storey and Peter Cooney)