WASHINGTON - (AP) - Sen. Christopher Dodd says the longer the bitter Democratic presidential nomination fight between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton goes on, the harder it will be for the party to win this fall.

“Winning an election is literally threading a needle - you need everything going right for you,” Dodd, D-Conn., said Thursday in an interview with The Associated Press.

Dodd, who dropped his own presidential bid after a poor showing in the leadoff Iowa caucuses earlier this year, is backing Obama.

He said it would be relatively easy for political professionals such as the candidates and their staffs to put aside their differences for the general election fight against Republican John McCain. But unifying passionate Obama and Clinton supporters across the country could be difficult.

“The problem as this thing goes further down the pike is that your supporters, the intensity, increases,” Dodd said. “Your loyalty deepens. Your feelings about the other side deepen … The question is really whether these other folks out there, who have really invested a great deal of their lives in this effort for the last two years, are going to be willing to sort of pat each other on the back and go charging off for eight weeks.”

Allowing the nomination fight to continue until the party’s convention, which begins Aug. 25 in Denver, could invite disaster for Democrats, Dodd added.

“I can’t imagine this party will allow itself to go into the end of August undecided,” he said. “I can’t think of anything worse we could do to the nominee than to give him or her a divided convention with eight weeks to go in a national election in a divided country. So, I’m sort of dazzled by the fact that this is ongoing.”