Obama's Wave Fails to Sink Extraordinary Foe

After storming five presidential-nominating contests over the weekend, Sen. Barack Obama is favored to take three more primaries today and two later this month -- a potential 10-contest run that will give him wins in nearly half the states compared with Sen. Hillary Clinton's total of just 10 wins since voting began in Iowa.

In another year, against another candidate, Illinois's Sen. Obama might be on the verge of nabbing the Democratic nomination. A few Democratic strategists, and some Republicans, think he is almost there now. But Sen. Clinton is no average candidate, and party rules give the New York senator enough convention delegates to weather February's squalls until contests in March.

The campaign's calculation about the March 4 races in big states Texas and Ohio has elevated them to must-win status for Sen. Clinton, said Democratic strategists. She leads in state polls, but that has been true in other states where Sen. Obama came from behind to win. And he is pushing hard; flush with funds, the Obama campaign begins statewide television advertising today in both Texas and Ohio, promoting his health-care plans.

He has momentum and money, and the potential for a month of good news that will further stoke both. Meanwhile, Sen. Clinton recently loaned her campaign $5 million to goad others to give, and, in a further take-charge signal to discouraged donors, replaced longtime campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle and put out a net for additional new political hands to right the ship.

Today, Sen. Obama is favored to win the "Potomac Primary" in neighboring Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia. A week later come caucuses in his childhood home of Hawaii and a primary in Wisconsin, a state historically receptive to reformist candidates like Sen. Obama, and one familiar with the candidate from nearby Chicago.

"I think he's just about put it away," said Joe Trippi, former senior strategist to John Edwards, the former North Carolina senator who abandoned his own presidential campaign last month. "He doesn't have it yet. But all the momentum, all the victories are on his side." Sen. Clinton, he added, has "got to do something, and replacing Patti isn't enough."

Stumping yesterday in Maryland, Sen. Clinton dismissed a reporter's remark that hers didn't look like a winning campaign. "Well, to the contrary, I think it exactly is," she said, noting big-state victories in last week's Super Tuesday sweepstakes, including in California and New York. "I am absolutely looking to Ohio and Texas because we know those are states that represent the broad electorate in this country." Her $5 million loan had spawned twice that in donations in the past six days, she added.

Sen. Obama, however, raised $32 million in January -- a record for either party -- and could well raise as much this month, campaign advisers said. While her crowds remain large and enthusiastic, his are bigger, filling small arenas.

For Republican strategists and leaders, facing divisions over presumptive nominee John McCain, the Arizona senator, and demoralized over President Bush's and the party's unpopularity, the potency of both Democrats' candidacies is both fearsome and impressive.

"The Obama wave is unlike anything I have seen during my career. It would have totally swamped any traditional candidate," said Republican pollster Bill McInturff, who conducts The Wall Street Journal/NBC News polls with Democratic pollster Peter Hart. "The fact that Clinton is still standing and breaking even is actually a remarkable statement about how unique a candidate she is and what an exceptionally strong candidate."

Though Sen. Obama has won far more states, he and Sen. Clinton are roughly equal in delegates, with more than 1,000 apiece toward the 2,025 needed for the nomination at the August convention in Denver. Under party rules, all states must allocate delegates proportionately to each candidate's vote in primaries or caucuses, though states' formulas vary.

Sen. Obama's campaign said he has 84 more "pledged" delegates, which are those won in the state contests, after his weekend wins in the Louisiana primary and caucuses in Nebraska, Washington state, the Virgin Islands and Maine -- the last an upset. Sen. Clinton's campaign figures she has a dozen more delegates than her rival, counting her advantage among the "superdelegates" -- party leaders, governors and members of Congress -- who have committed.

The Clinton campaign had anticipated the post-Super Tuesday February losses -- though not the two-to-one margins of victory in several -- and early on sought to manage expectations. In late January, Clinton advisers insisted that beyond Super Tuesday, on Feb. 5, the next meaningful contests were in Texas and Ohio in March -- effectively playing down the expected string of Obama victories for most of February.

"Apparently they have an 11-month calendar over there that's missing the month of February," Obama strategist David Axelrod said yesterday. "At some point this becomes a matter of math. We are building a lead among pledged delegates. And as we look at the rest of the states, the question is: Can they even that up?"

In managing expectations for February, the Clinton campaign has taken the risk of raising them for March 4. "If they lose Texas, it's bad," Mr. Trippi said.

The Clinton campaign banks on support there from Hispanic voters; about six out of 10 have given Sen. Clinton support in other states with significant Hispanic populations. But Texas holds a complicated combination of a primary and caucuses. Sen. Obama has won most caucuses to date, reflecting his grass-roots appeal as the fresh-faced change candidate, especially among younger voters who have the time and inclination to volunteer for the get-out-the-vote operations so necessary to time-consuming caucuses.

As for the Texas primary, delegates are allocated to the winners in each of 31 state Senate districts, with more delegates in districts with better records of Democratic turnout. Consequently, some districts with heavily black populations, which have overwhelmingly favored Sen. Obama, have more delegates at stake than those in mostly Hispanic districts, where voter participation is relatively low.

"We expected this would be a very difficult period for us," said Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson. But, he added, "We believe next month is going to be a better month than it will be for him." Then, Mr. Wolfson predicted, the two would continue battling for delegates "on through the spring and likely to Denver."

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