Hillary Rodham
Clinton's struggling campaign for the Democratic
presidential nomination is showing new signs of life ahead
of must-win contests next week, finishing her best
month of fund-raising ever. But officials with the
campaign of her rival, Barack Obama, said he did even
better.
The former first
lady's campaign reported Thursday that she raised $35
million in February -- a remarkable recovery in her push to
become the United States' first woman president.
Obama's string of 11 victories since the February 5
''Super Tuesday'' contests, and her announcement that
she had loaned her campaign $5 million, had raised questions
about the viability of her candidacy.
Obama's campaign
reacted promptly, promising an even higher number but
divulging no totals.
Clinton, in a
push to capitalize on voter fears about the dangers America
faces in a hostile world, unveiled an ad Friday in Texas
that cast her as the candidate ready to face a crisis
from ''day one.''
The ad aims at
winning over women voters -- a bloc she needs in order to
prevail in Texas and Ohio.
Polls show she
has a double-digit lead among women in Ohio, and while she
also leads among female voters in Texas, the margin is
slimmer. The push is another jab at Obama's national
security and foreign policy experience, which Clinton
has dismissed as insufficient to deal with the
challenges a commander in chief grapples with daily.
Obama was
campaigning Friday in Texas, a conservative stronghold and
President George W. Bush's home state, where the Democratic
race is tight. A day earlier, the first-term senator
mocked and sparred with presumptive Republican nominee
John McCain and Bush on Iraq and the economy -- a
strategy of targeting Republicans in which he appeared to be
acting as if the nomination were already his.
The Democratic
front-runner stressed that while confident about his
chances, he was not writing an obituary for Clinton's White
House bid. ''Well, I am not. Remember New Hampshire,''
he said, referring to the January contest in the
northeastern state where Clinton won an upset victory.
Fundraising
totals help a candidate campaign aggressively, but are also
a reflection of a candidate's popularity. Obama has
stunned observers with the vast amount of money he has
garnered even without the established campaign
infrastructure of his more experienced rival.
Despite Clinton's
increased fund-raising, Obama is still outspending her
in Ohio and Texas.
Obama said if he
comes out of Tuesday's four contests -- including Rhode
Island and Vermont -- still leading Clinton by 100-150
pledged delegates, he would go to the convention with
the most pledged delegates ''and believe that we
should be the nominee.''
Obama, seeking to
become the nation's first black president, has 1,378
delegates to Clinton's 1,276. A total of 2,025 are needed to
secure the Democratic nomination at the party's
convention in late August.
Clinton has
pinned her candidacy on those states. Former president Bill
Clinton, campaigning for his wife at Bryant University in
Smithfield, R.I., said, ''If she can win a big victory
here in Rhode Island, win in Ohio, win in Texas,
she'll be on her way to the White House.''
The four contests
offer a total of 370 delegates.
Obama appeared to
be adopting a more confident tone going forward --
mocking Bush's seemingly optimistic economic picture of the
economy by saying Bush, McCain, and fellow Republicans
had brought the country to the ''brink of a
recession.''
The economy has
become the dominant theme in the election, so far,
eclipsing the Iraq war as Americans grow increasingly wary
about recession risks.
Obama was the
focus of Republican jabs that tried to present him as naive
on foreign affairs. In thinly veiled comments, Bush on
Thursday criticized Obama's willingness to meet the
leaders of U.S. adversaries Iran and Cuba.
Obama leads
Clinton 49% to 40%, according to a national poll released
Thursday. The results, which showed only a third of
Clinton's supporters believe she will secure the
nomination, are a marked contrast to the lead she held
in similar polls just three weeks ago. The Pew Research
Center poll was conducted from February 20-24 and had
an overall margin of error of plus or minus three
percentage points.
The Republican
race is considered settled in favor of McCain, a senator
and former Vietnam prisoner of war. He has a total of 1,014
of the 1,191 delegates needed to clinch the nomination
at the Republican convention in September. Mike
Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, trails with 257
delegates. (AP)
