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Clinton Tries to
Stop Obama Momentum Ahead of Tuesday Primaries

Clinton Tries to
Stop Obama Momentum Ahead of Tuesday Primaries

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.

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)

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