(CNN) -- Friends and close associates of both Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are now convinced that, assuming she loses the race for the presidential nomination, she is going to fight to be the vice presidential nominee on an Obama-for-president ticket.

how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

It is difficult to overstate the negative effect this remark has had on superdelegates, party leaders and her Democratic colleagues in both houses of Congress. "That's not a way to land the plane," one of her key supporters said. "If you were a superdelegate, you'd say, 'We have to shut this down right away.' "

Former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown, an old Clinton friend, said Friday that she had made an important mistake in suggesting "that hardworking Americans are white people."