U.S. presidential hopeful Barack Obama refused Saturday to go along with other Democrats who are calling for Hillary Rodham Clinton to step away from the race for the Democratic nomination.

Obama told reporters he did not agree with one of his supporters, Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy, when he said earlier last week that Clinton cannot win the nomination and should therefore drop out. “I hadn’t talked to Pat about it,” Obama said.

At stops throughout the day, Clinton raised the question of whether she should leave the race — eliciting loud jeers from supporters.

“There are some people who say we should just stop these elections. ‘Enough people have already voted, what’s a few million more?’” Clinton said in Louisville. “I don’t know about you but I’m glad Kentucky is going to be voting and you’ll be choosing because it’s such an important election.”

The state holds its primary May 20.

Campaigning in Pennsylvania, her husband, Bill Clinton, said party insiders looking to resolve the contest should step back and allow the process to move forward.

“We just need to relax and let this happen. Nobody’s talking about wrecking the party,” the former president said. “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.’”

The campaign released a fundraising e-mail Saturday signed by Bill Clinton, asking supporters to challenge talk of his wife departing the race by sending a check to her campaign.

Jobs and the economy are front and center in the remaining primary contests between the two Democratic hopefuls. Pennsylvania, which holds its primary April 22, has seen its manufacturing base and especially its steel industry weakened in recent decades, as has Indiana, which votes May 6.

While campaigning in Ohio, another big manufacturing state, both Clinton and Obama criticized free trade deals and insisted the other candidate was not as reliable a protector of U.S. jobs. Clinton won that state’s March 4 primary.

Also Saturday, former Democratic contender John Edwards made his first public comments on the race since dropping out two months ago.

“I have a very high opinion of both of them,” Edwards said of Obama and Clinton at the Young Democrats of North Carolina convention. “We would be blessed as a nation to have either one of them as president.”

At the same event, Chelsea Clinton said her travels have opened her eyes to sexism.

“I didn’t really get how much sexism there still was in our country until I was at a rally with my mom in New Hampshire, and someone came up to me and said, ‘I just can’t see a woman being commander in chief,’” the former first daughter said.

She has always been supported by both the men and women in her family, she said. “I have been so profoundly more grateful than I have ever been over the past few months for my parents because of that.”

(SD-Agencies)