NEW YORK: Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and her advisers, increasingly convinced that she has been boxed into a must-win position in the Ohio and Texas primaries on March 4, have begun reassuring anxious donors and superdelegates that the nomination is not slipping away from her, aides said.
Clinton, who already on Tuesday was campaigning in Texas - though contests in Wisconsin and Hawaii were only a week away - held a buck-up-the-troops conference call with donors, superdelegates and other supporters Monday; several said afterward that she had sounded tired and a little down, but determined about Ohio and Texas.
They also said they believed recent losses might jeopardize her competitiveness in those states.
"She has to win both Ohio and Texas comfortably, or she's out," said one superdelegate who has endorsed Clinton, and who spoke on condition of anonymity to share a candid assessment. "The campaign is starting to come to terms with that." Campaign advisers, also speaking privately in order to speak plainly, confirmed this view.
Primaries were being held Tuesday in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia, and Clinton's rival, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois, has shown strength in all three.
While Clinton is banking on a strong showing March 4, Obama has been concentrating on the near-term primaries, hoping to fashion a string of victories.
Several Clinton superdelegates, whose votes could help decide the nomination, say they have been wavering in the face of Obama's momentum after victories in the state of Washington, Nebraska, Louisiana and Maine last weekend.
Some said that they, like the hundreds of uncommitted superdelegates still at stake, might ultimately "go with the flow," in the words of one, and support the candidate who appears to show the most strength in the coming primaries.
Asked Tuesday about the March 4 contests, Obama said he was focused on the day's primaries.
"It's very early," he said while campaigning in Washington with Mayor Adrian Fenty, like him a rising young Democrat with a white mother and a black father. "We haven't even gotten through this yet."
On the Republican side, Senator John McCain was back on the Senate floor Tuesday, where he received a warm welcome even from some erstwhile critics. Senator Thad Cochran, a Mississippi Republican who recently said the thought of McCain as the party's nominee sent a chill down his spine, gave the Arizonan a smile and a hug, The Associated Press reported.
Though McCain holds an almost insurmountable lead in delegates, he was hoping in the Tuesday primaries to stop the progress of his last major opponent, Mike Huckabee.
The Clinton team, for its part, has been trying to shift the spotlight off their candidate's short-term challenges and focus instead on "the long run," in the words of her senior strategist, Mark Penn.
"She has consistently shown an electoral resiliency in difficult situations that have made her a winner," Penn said. "Senator Obama has in fact never had a serious Republican challenger."
Superdelegates are Democratic Party leaders and elected officials, and their votes could decide the nomination if neither candidate wins enough delegates to clinch a victory.
As polls show Obama gaining strength in Wisconsin and Hawaii, advisers, donors and superdelegates said they were ready for a possible Obama sweep of the other contests in February.
Some donors also expressed concern about a widening money imbalance: Obama fund-raisers say he is taking in roughly $1 million a day, while Clinton fund-raisers say she is taking in about half of that. Clinton's aides say that the campaign was virtually broke as of the Feb. 5 primaries, but that finances have stabilized.
"Clearly, things have not been going as great as they were with her victories on Super Tuesday, and we can't wait to get to March 4," said Alan Patricof, one of Clinton's national finance chairmen.
Clinton will campaign in Wisconsin, an adviser said, but the bulk of her time will be devoted to campaigning in Ohio, Texas and a bit in Rhode Island.
While Clinton's advisers and allies emphasize that she has the time and the financial resources to regroup, they say she will have to take more significant steps to shore up her candidacy beyond the staff shakeup she engineered Sunday, when she replaced her campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, with another veteran adviser, Maggie Williams.
Campaign advisers said they expected Williams to bring new energy to the campaign team and to encourage Clinton to show more spunk and determination on the campaign trail. They do not expect the candidate's political message to change appreciably.
Clinton will deploy her husband, former President Bill Clinton, in the March 4 states, particularly Ohio.
But some Clinton donors and superdelegates worry that strategic decisions by the campaign, like a reliance on the contested votes in Florida and Michigan eventually being counted, show faulty thinking.
"Obama has momentum that has to be stopped by March 4," said a Democrat who is both a Clinton superdelegate and major donor, and who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Still, Hassan Nemazee, a national finance chairman for Clinton, pointed to the campaign's announcement that Clinton had raised $10 million online so far this month.
"I predict for you we will have our best single fund-raising month in February, and that's significant," he said.
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