LAS VEGAS — Hillary Rodham Clinton told an exuberant crowd yesterday she wants Barack Obama to win the White House, even though he dashed her own presidential dreams — and she wants her supporters to vote that way, too.

"Anyone who voted for me or caucused for me has so much more in common with Sen. Obama than Sen. McCain," Clinton told her cheering audience in the suburb of Henderson. "Remember who we were fighting for in my campaign."

Though she has endorsed her former rival, the speech was Clinton's first appearance at a rally for Obama since the two appeared in Unity, N.H., in June.

CHENEY TO SPEAK ON GOP'S 1ST NIGHT

WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney, a conservative favorite but a divisive national figure, will join President Bush in addressing delegates on the opening night of the Republican National Convention, the White House said yesterday.

There had been doubts about a speech by Cheney. When asked earlier this week about the vice president's plans to attend the convention, spokeswoman Megan Mitchell left the question open by saying his schedule for September had not been set.

Cheney plans to speak the same Monday night that Bush will address delegates in St. Paul, Minn., Mitchell said yesterday. The convention is scheduled for Sept. 1-4, ending with John McCain's nomination.

Only 31 percent of Americans approve of the job Bush is doing, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll released this week.

GIRLFRIEND DEFENDS THREAT SUSPECT

MIAMI — The girlfriend of a man charged with threatening to assassinate Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said yesterday he would never have seriously threatened violence against anyone.

In fact, she said, Raymond Hunter Geisel came to Florida from Maine earlier this year in hopes that taking a bail bondsman training course would put him on a path to a law enforcement career or some other vocation in which he could help people.

"He'd never hurt a person. It would be completely against his character," said Geisel's girlfriend, 35-year-old Susanne Kynast. "He is so much for life. It's absolutely horrifying."

SUPREMACISTS HOPE FOR BACKLASH

PEARL, Miss. — They're not exactly rooting for Barack Obama, but prominent white supremacists anticipate a boost to their cause if he becomes the first black president. His election, they say, would trigger a backlash — whites rising up, a revolution of sorts — that they think is long overdue.

He'd be a "visual aid," says former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke, in trying to bring others around to their view that whites have lost control of America. Obama's election, says another, would jar whites into action, writing letters, handing out pamphlets.