From The Pgh Post Gazette
By Mackenzie Carpenter

Exhorting her followers to “work as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me,” Sen. Hillary Clinton today formally ended her historic, 16-month quest to become the first woman to win the White House, thanking her supporters and vowing to campaign for Sen. Barack Obama in his own groundbreaking bid to become the nation’s first black president.

“This isn’t the party I expected to have, but I sure like the company,” she joked at the beginning of a 30-minute speech in which she congratulated her former opponent on “the victory he has won and the extraordinary race he has run. I endorse him, and throw my full support behind him.”

“Today I am standing with Sen. Obama to say, ‘yes we can,’” she said, citing Mr. Obama’s trademark campaign mantra, to cheers — and some scattered boos from diehard supporters who thronged the National Building Museum near the Washington Mall to hear her speak.

At times wistful, but mostly upbeat, she urged her followers to look forward.

“When you hear people saying,’what if, if only’ please — don’t go there,” she said.

“Every moment wasted looking back keeps us from moving forward. Life is too short, time is too precious and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been,” she told the audience of more than a thousand. In this “turning point” of an election, she added, “it is critical that we all understand what our choice really is. Will we go forward together or will we stall and slip backwards?”

Standing under 89-foot columns in the Great Hall of the museum, which was built in the 19th century to provide pensions for civil war veterans, Mrs. Clinton was accompanied by her husband, former President Clinton, her mother, Dorothy Rodham, and daughter, Chelsea Cllinton.

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