Barack Obama
swept five weekend contests, eroding rival Hillary Rodham
Clinton's narrow lead in their epic battle for the
Democratic presidential nomination. The former first
lady reshuffled her campaign staff in a bid to stop
his momentum before a trio of contests on Tuesday.
Clinton replaced
campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle with longtime aide
Maggie Williams ahead of nomination races Tuesday in
Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., where polls
showed Obama leading.
The two states
and the U.S. capital all have a sizable number of black
Democratic voters, a constituency that has aided Obama in
earlier contests.
Clinton lost in
Maine on Sunday, a day after the New York senator was
stung by defeats in Nebraska, Washington State, Louisiana,
and the U.S. Virgin Islands. She is struggling to
overcome Obama's financial and political rally that
came on the back of his impressive showing in last
week's ''Super Tuesday'' series of Democratic contests in 22
states.
Clinton on Monday
tried to play down Doyle's replacement, saying the
switch reflected a need to add more people to her campaign
staff and that Doyle will stay on as an adviser.
''There really is
not a significant change; we've really just got to get
more help,'' she told a Chicago television news crew.
The Democratic
nomination is far from decided, with weeks or months of
campaigning still ahead. Clinton is an experienced,
well-financed campaigner certainly capable of pulling
off more surprise wins, as she did January 8 in New
Hampshire.
But Obama is
riding a wave of support. An Associated Press-Ipsos poll
shows he would narrowly defeat presumptive Republican
nominee John McCain if the presidential election were
being held now. If Clinton were the Democratic
nominee, she and McCain would be about even.
The AP-Ipsos
poll, released Monday, is an initial look at voter sentiment
since the Super Tuesday contests. In the poll, Illinois
senator Obama leads McCain 48% to 42%. New York
senator Clinton gets 46% to 45% for McCain.
The poll shows
Obama leads Clinton in the race for the Democratic
nomination, 46% to 41%.
In the latest
overall totals in the Associated Press count, Clinton had
1,136 delegates to 1,108 for Obama. The totals include
so-called superdelegates, which are party leaders not
chosen at primaries or caucuses, free to change their
minds. A total of 2,025 delegates is required to win
the nomination.
Obama, who seeks
to be the U.S.'s first black president, was buoyant
after his weekend winning sweep. He even won a Grammy on
Sunday for his audio version of his book The
Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the
American Dream, beating former presidents Bill
Clinton and Jimmy Carter in the best spoken word album
category.
McCain was
nursing Saturday and Sunday losses. He took the weekend off
from campaigning despite embarrassing but not pivotal losses
to preacher-turned-politician Mike Huckabee in two
Republican races on Saturday. Huckabee, a favorite of
evangelical Christians, beat McCain in Kansas and
Louisiana, highlighting the difficulty the veteran Arizona
senator faces in convincing the party's core right-wing
blocs that he is one of them.
On Monday, McCain
challenged the notion he is struggling to rally
conservative critics as he picked up the endorsement of
evangelical leader and anti-abortion activist Gary
Bauer.
''We're doing
fine. We're doing fine,'' McCain told reporters in
Annapolis, dismissing the notion that the losses had hurt
his campaign.
Bauer, who
unsuccessfully sought the Republican presidential nomination
in 2000, said in a statement that McCain ''has dedicated his
life to defending human rights around the world,
including the rights of the unborn.''
McCain remained
far ahead of Huckabee in the delegate count and retained
his virtually assured nomination that came on the back of
rival Mitt Romney's decision to suspend his campaign.
McCain has 719 delegates out of a total 1,191 needed
to secure the Republican nomination. Huckabee had 234
delegates.
The former
Vietnam prisoner-of-war and decorated Navy pilot secured a
boost Sunday when Bush referred to him in a taped interview
as a ''true conservative.''
Bush's embrace
could prove troublesome for McCain by reducing his appeal
to independent voters in the November election. Bush reached
his lowest approval rating in the Associated
Press-Ipsos poll on Friday as only 30% said they
approve of his job performance.
McCain narrowly
won the Republican race in Washington State on Saturday,
but Huckabee's campaign on Sunday called the final results
in that state ''dubious.'' His campaign chairman, Ed
Rollins, accused the state's Republican Party chairman
of calling the race too early for McCain -- leaving
1,500 votes uncounted when the two candidates were just 242
votes apart.
Washington's
state Republican Party chairman, Luke Esser, said by Sunday
evening that McCain's lead had narrowed, but only slightly,
with about 93% of results in.
Huckabee, a
former Arkansas governor, on Monday resisted calls from some
Republicans for him to abandon his campaign. He told NBC's
Today show that ''it's not a healthy thing for
our party to sort of become lethargic, say it's [the
presidential race] over, have a coronation.''
McCain appeared
likely to rebound on Tuesday in the next Republican
contests. The Mason-Dixon polls showed the Arizona senator
leading Huckabee by nearly 30-percentage-point margins
in both Virginia and Maryland. The Republicans also
compete in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday.
New polls
released Sunday showed Obama leading by 16 percentage points
in Virginia and 18 percentage points in Maryland. The
polls conducted February 7-8 by Mason-Dixon
Polling & Research Inc. had a margin of error of
plus or minus five percentage points.
Clinton is
looking for a big rebound in the high-stakes March 4
primaries in Texas and Ohio. (AP)
