Patarkatsishvili, a Georgian opposition leader, dies suddenly in Britain

MOSCOW: Arkadi "Badri" Patarkatsishvili, the exiled Georgian oligarch and opposition politician who had accused the pro-Western Georgian government of tilting toward autocracy and corruption, died unexpectedly at his home outside London, the authorities said.

Patarkatsishvili had been accused in Georgia of plotting a coup against President Mikheil Saakashvili, and faced criminal charges at the time of his death.

His friends at first said he appeared to have suffered a heart attack Tuesday night. But intrigue followed Patarkatsishvili in death as it had in life, and the British police said an autopsy would be required to be certain of the cause of death.

Boris Berezovksy, the exiled Russian oligarch and bitter foe of President Vladimir Putin of Russia, indirectly suggested the possibility of foul play, although there was no publicly known evidence as yet that pointed to that. Berezovksy was Patarkatsishvili's long-time business partner.

"I have lost my closest friend," Berezovsky said in a statement. He added, "I shall make no further comment on the circumstances of Badri's death. I shall wait for the authorities to complete their investigation."

Patarkatsishvili, 52, had long been one of Georgia's most public citizens, amassing a fortune after the fall of the Soviet Union and facing accusations at home and in Russia of corruption and white-collar crime on a monumental scale.

But by using his own money and his editorial influence at Imedi TV, a television station he owned in Georgia, he became a prominent and influential opposition leader, and even in exile emerged as a foil to Saakashvili and his government.

Saakashvili, who rose to power in a bloodless revolution in 2003, has cast himself as a democrat who is pushing post-Soviet Georgia toward the West. He had closely aligned himself with the United States.

But by Patarkatsishvili's telling, Georgia's young president was an arrogant and impulsive neophyte who squandered the revolution's potential by crushing opposition politicians, succumbing to corruption and turning the police against crowds of demonstrators last November in Tbilisi, the capital.

In that episode, the police used rubber bullets, tear gas, water cannons and batons on thousands of unarmed demonstrators. Saakashvili declared a state of emergency and masked police officers ransacked the Imedi TV station - a deep setback to Georgia's effort to portray itself as a modernizing state.

Patarkatsishvili said that the crackdown was evidence that Saakashvili had not only failed to fulfill his promises, but had become covetous of power and placed himself beyond the checks and balances of a truly democratic government.

He also suggested that Saakashvili had prepared in advance for a confrontation with the public, at the expense of investing in social programs or public works.

"Now we know what he has spent our citizens' money on," he told The New York Times, after seeing the formidable roll-out of new police equipment used against the demonstrators, many of whom were poor.

Patarkatsishvili ran unsuccessfully for president in elections in January, but his own credibility was undercut by audiotapes that appeared to show him plotting to overthrow the government by offering to pay a Georgian law enforcement official to organize a coup.

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Hillary Clinton taking aim at Texas and Ohio

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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2 boys, 2 sides, 2 beds in an Israeli hospital ward

TEL HASHOMER, Israel: Two small boys lay sedated in a hospital ward in this Tel Aviv suburb on Tuesday, unaware of each other or of the growing commotion around them.

One was Osher Twito, 8, an Israeli boy from the town of Sderot, was seriously wounded Saturday by shrapnel from a rocket fired by Palestinian militants from Gaza. The other was Yakoub Natil, almost 7, a Palestinian who was brought here three weeks ago from Gaza City after he was badly hurt by shrapnel from an Israeli Air Force strike on Jan. 18.

Sderot is less than two miles from the Gaza border, making it a prime target for the crude and inaccurate rockets that have killed 13 Israelis over the past seven years. Now Osher and Yakoub lie in booths across from each other a few paces apart in the pediatric intensive care department of the Chaim Sheba Medical Center at Tel Hashomer.

Here, the conflict's pain has been compressed into an improbable intimacy. There is pathos. "The Palestinian boy on one side, Osher on the other — it's something that gets to your heart," said Prof. Gideon Paret, the director of the department.

But there is anger and repudiation as well, and the proximity of the two boys has not brought reconciliation. Osher's parents, Iris and Rafi Twito, are outraged at the thought of comparing the boys' cases. They refuse to allow them to be photographed together.

"The Palestinians aim to hurt our sons and rejoice at their injuries," they said in a statement issued Tuesday, "while neither we, nor our army, intended to hurt them."

The statement, relayed through a hospital spokeswoman, continued: "The State of Israel took the decision to treat the boy," meaning Yakoub. "That is its right. We protest the fact that he is lying here by our son and his brother." Osher's older brother Rami, 19, is being treated in another wing of the same hospital.

Many major hospitals in Israel regularly treat Palestinians and are no strangers to such mixed feelings or incongruous scenes. Here at Sheba, the anomalies are cast in sharper relief.

This was a military hospital from 1948, when Israel fought its war of independence, until 1953. It has since operated as a civilian hospital that works in special cooperation with the army, treating many of its soldiers and charged with educating its medical corps.

"It's like a theater of the absurd," said Prof. Zeev Rotstein, the chief executive officer and director of the hospital. "You have army doctors in white gowns alongside Palestinian doctors who are being trained, at the same time treating Israeli casualties of terrorist attacks and Palestinians who may have been hurt in army actions."

Yakoub was hurt when Israel bombed an empty, half-ruined Palestinian Interior Ministry building that had been used by Hamas. He was at a wedding party with his family next door. The army said that it had meant to hit the ministry building and that the raid was a response to days of increased rocket fire, mostly aimed at Sderot.

Osher and Rami were hit in the street. They had gone out to buy a birthday present for their father when the rocket crashed down.

Yakoub's grandmother, Amira Natil, 52, was at the boy's bedside on Tuesday. She and Yakoub came here with Israeli permission three days after the airstrike from the more basic hospital Al Shifa in Gaza City. "Thank Allah, the lord of the universe," Amira Natil said, kissing her hand and placing it on her brow in a gesture of religious reverence.

Amira Natil had not met Osher's parents and was speaking shortly before they issued their statement, unaware of its contents. About the Israeli boy, she said: "They are children. Haram," using an Arabic word that denotes something shameful, forbidden or taboo.

The story of the Twito brothers has particularly moved Israelis, in large part because of their youth. Osher, described by his family as a keen soccer player, has had his left leg amputated from the knee down. The doctors are still battling to save his right leg. Rami suffered damage to his legs, too. Both boys were transferred to Sheba on Sunday from Barzilai hospital in Ashkelon, a city north of Gaza that has come under rocket fire.

Yakoub was wounded in both legs and his spine. He suffered renal failure but is said by the hospital staff to be getting better. "This is the best day he's had," his grandmother said.

It is not clear who will pay for Yakoub's treatment. "To date we are treating him without any financial commitment from the Palestinian authorities or anyone else," said Ulrike Haen, a spokeswoman for Sheba.

In similar cases, she said, money has come from the Israeli Ministry of Defense; or from the Peres Center for Peace, a nonprofit organization founded in 1996 by Shimon Peres, the current president of Israel; or from the Palestinian Authority, with supplements from the hospital.

Since Hamas took control of Gaza last June after a brief but bloody factional war, the issue of Gaza residents' access to medical treatment in Israel has become increasingly charged. Israel refuses all dealings with Hamas, whose charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state, and has recently blockaded the area in response to the intensified rocket fire.

In an article published in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz on Tuesday, Ahmed Youssef, an adviser to the Hamas government in Gaza, wrote that "30 people have died in the last month for lack of medical care brought on by the embargo."

According to recent statistics from the Israeli Coordination and Liaison Administration, more than 7,000 permits were issued for Palestinian patients from Gaza in 2007, along with nearly 8,000 permits for their escorts, representing a 50 percent increase over 2006. Shadi Yassin, a spokesman for the Coordination and Liaison Administration, said Tuesday that medical patients were still leaving Gaza every day to receive treatment in Israel.

But Yakoub is the exception, not the rule. "We know of others who can't get out and die there," said Professor Rotstein of Sheba's pediatric intensive care department. "It is so complicated now."

U.S. mortgage crisis spreads beyond subprime loans

NEW YORK: The U.S. credit crisis is no longer just a subprime mortgage problem.

As the world's largest economy grapples with the worst housing slump in two decades, people with good credit histories are falling behind on house payments, auto loans and credit cards at an accelerating pace.

The problem, spurred by a sharp decline in home prices and a clampdown on loans by banks, poses a new a threat to the housing market and weakening economy, which some specialists say is in a recession or headed for one.

The Bush administration, scrambling to keep the U.S. economy from skidding too sharply, on Tuesday released a plan to help qualified homeowners in distress hang on to their homes.

The initiative was announced as Warren Buffett, the billionaire investor, offered to reinsure the municipal bond portfolios of three troubled bond guarantors, a move that, together with the Bush plan, bouyed Wall Street investors searching for any good news about the troubled mortgage market.

But Buffett's offer, already rejected by one of the companies, would do little to alleviate the problems they are facing on the guarantees they have made to investors who hold securities backed by mortgages, consumer loans and other assets. (Page 11)

Until recently, people with prime credit histories, who tend to pay their bills on time and manage their finances well, were viewed as a bulwark against strains posed to the U.S. economy by rising defaults among borrowers with blemished, or subprime, credit.

"This collapse in housing value is sucking in all borrowers," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Economy.com.

Like subprime mortgages, many prime loans made in recent years allowed borrowers to pay less initially and face higher adjustable payments a few years later. As long as home prices were rising, borrowers on these terms could refinance their loans or sell their properties to pay off their mortgages.

Although the rise in prime delinquencies is less severe than the one in the subprime market, with prices falling and lenders clamping down, homeowners with solid credit are starting to come under the same financial stress as those with subprime credit.

"Subprime was a symptom of the problem," said James Keegan, a bond portfolio manager at American Century Investments, a mutual fund company. "The problem was, we had a debt or credit bubble."

The bursting of that bubble has led to steep losses across the financial industry. American International Group said Monday that auditors found it might have understated losses on complex financial instruments linked to mortgages and corporate loans.

The turmoil is also stirring fears that some hedge funds may run into trouble.

At the end of September, nearly 4 percent of prime mortgages were past due or in foreclosure, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. That was the highest rate since the group started tracking prime and subprime mortgages separately in 1998.

The delinquency and foreclosure rate for all mortgages, 7.3 percent, is higher than at any time since the group started tracking that data in 1979, largely as a result of the surge in subprime lending during the past few years.

Personal bankruptcy filings, which fell significantly after a 2005 law made it harder to wipe out debts in bankruptcy, are also starting to inch up.

An example of the spreading credit crisis is Don Doyle, a computer engineer at Lockheed Martin who makes a six-figure income and had a stellar credit score in 2004, when he refinanced his home in northern California to take cash out to pay for his daughter's college tuition.

Doyle, 52, is now worried that he will have to file for bankruptcy because he cannot afford to make the higher, variable payments on his mortgage, and he cannot sell his home for more than his $740,000 mortgage.

During the past few years, his mortgage rate rose as high as 7.5 percent, up from an original 3.8 percent, but he managed to negotiate it down to 5.6 percent, where it is now. That new rate, however, is set to rise in the next few months.

"The whole plan was to get out" before his rate reset, he said. "Now, I am caught. I can't sell my house. I'm having a hard time refinancing. I've avoided bankruptcy for months, trying to pull this out of my savings."

The program announced Tuesday by the Bush administration, crafted by six of the largest U.S. lenders, would offer both prime and subprime borrowers who are more than three months behind with their payments the chance to halt foreclosure proceedings for 30 days and work out new loan terms.

Bank of America, Citigroup, Countrywide Financial, JPMorgan Chase, Washington Mutual and Wells Fargo will contact homeowners who are 90 or more days overdue on monthly mortgage payments to work out a way to make the mortgage more affordable.

In a conference call with analysts in December, Kenneth Lewis, the chief executive of Bank of America, said more borrowers appeared to be giving up on their homes as prices fell, noting a "change in social attitudes toward default."

The default rate for prime mortgages is still far lower than for subprime loans, about 24 percent of which are delinquent or in foreclosure. Some economists note that slightly more than a third of American homeowners have paid off their mortgages completely. This group is generally more affluent and contributes more to consumer spending and the economy relative to its size.

Unlike subprime borrowers, who tend to have lower incomes and fewer assets, prime borrowers have greater means to restructure their debts if they lose their jobs or encounter other financial challenges. The recent reductions in short-term interest rates by the Federal Reserve should also help by reducing the reset rate for adjustable-rate loans.

Economists say the rate cuts and the stimulus package are unlikely to make a significant dent in Americans' large debts, because banks have tightened lending standards, and expected rebates from the government will not cover most house payments.

Obama and McCain sweep 3 primaries

WASHINGTON: Senator Barack Obama rolled to victory by big margins in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia on Tuesday, extending his winning streak over Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton to eight Democratic nominating contests.

The outcome provided him his first chance to assert that the Democratic race, which had seemed to be heading into a protracted standoff, is beginning to break in his direction. And it left Clinton facing weeks in which she has few opportunities for the kind of victory that would alter the race in her favor after a string of defeats notable not just for their number but also their magnitude.

In Tuesday's contests, Obama showed impressive strength among not only the groups that have backed him in earlier contests — blacks, younger voters, the affluent and self-described independents — but also among older voters, women and lower-income people, the core of Clinton's support up to now, according to exit polls. Obama also won majorities of white men and Hispanic voters in Virginia, though not in Maryland.

On the Republican side, Senator John McCain won in Virginia over Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas, all but eliminating any threat that Huckabee might have posed to McCain's status as his party's all but certain nominee.

Huckabee got a boost from conservative and evangelical Christian voters in the state, but not enough to overcome McCain's vote among moderates and non-evangelical Christians. McCain also prevailed in Maryland and the District of Columbia, and turned his attention to attacks on the Democrats.

McCain said his Democratic opponents "promise a new approach to governing, but offer only the policies of a political orthodoxy that insists the solution to government's failures is to simply make it bigger."

He also said of Huckabee, "He certainly keeps things interesting maybe a little too interesting at times tonight, I must confess."

In all, 168 pledged delegates were at stake for the Democrats and 116 for the Republicans. The Democrats will divide delegates proportionally to the candidates' vote statewide and at the congressional level while the Republican races were winner-take-all.

Obama's victories gave him a lead over Clinton among pledged delegates, according to preliminary counts by the Obama campaign and some news organizations. Obama aides calculate that he also leads in delegate counts that include so-called superdelegates, the party officers and elected officials who control 20 percent of the total delegates to the Democratic convention.

Clinton's campaign has suffered in recent weeks from overspending and internal upheaval, including the demotion of the campaign manager, Patti Solis Doyle, late last week and the resignation Tuesday of the deputy campaign manager, Mike Henry.

Obama, looking ahead to the next contest, was in Madison, Wisconsin, when the results came in. In remarks to a boisterous rally, he did not mention Clinton by name. But over loud applause he declared, "We also know that at this moment the cynics can no longer say our hope is false. We have now won east and west, north and south, and across the heartland of this country we love."

Clinton essentially conceded the three contests Tuesday morning by leaving Washington to campaign in Texas. She scheduled four days of appearances in Wisconsin, which holds its primary next Tuesday, but where Obama already has a significant ground operation and is spending heavily on advertising. Hawaii, where Obama largely grew up, also holds its nominating caucuses next Tuesday. But the Clinton campaign's major efforts will be in Texas and Ohio, which vote on March 5. Rhode Island and Vermont also hold primaries that day.

Clinton's advisers say she will focus on winning over voters in Ohio and Texas to halt Obama's growing momentum and to try to stay close in the count of pledged delegates. The Clinton campaign hopes that Ohio, with large numbers of lower-income and older voters, and Texas, with a large Latino electorate, will serve as a seawall against the Obama surge. The Clinton campaign is also looking to Pennsylvania, which votes on April 22, to provide another big-state victory and to stay competitive in the delegate chase.

"We are going to sweep across Texas in the next three weeks bringing our message about what we need in America, the kind of president we need on Day One to be commander in chief and turn the economy around," Clinton said at a rally in El Paso Tuesday night, making no reference to her losses back East. "I'm tested. I'm ready. Let's make it happen."

But in the meantime, Obama will have a chance to begin convincing his party that his series of convincing wins in the last week represents a turning point in the campaign and that now is the time for Democrats to begin rallying around him as the strongest candidate to take back the White House.

Turnout was brisk in all three jurisdictions, with long lines at polling stations but few serious problems reported. Bill O'Field, spokesman for the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics said that turnout had surpassed previous primaries and some precincts ran out of paper ballots but that voting was never halted because the stations had electronic voting machines as well.

In Maryland, polls stayed open an extra 90 minutes, until 9:30 p.m., because of bad road conditions caused by sleet and freezing rain.

Three in 10 voters in Tuesday's Republican primary in Virginia described themselves as very conservative, and two-thirds of them supported Huckabee. And six in 10 evangelical Christians, who accounted for nearly half of Republican voters here, backed Huckabee.

McCain, for his part, had an edge among voters who said they were "somewhat" conservative, as well as broad support among moderates and non-evangelical Christians.

But the exit poll further underscored some of McCain's potential vulnerabilities among conservatives going forward. Half of all Republican voters in Virginia said his positions on the issues were not conservative enough. And while 7 in 10 conservative voters said they would be satisfied if McCain wins the nomination, fewer than four in 10 of them would be "very" satisfied.

Obama's strength in Virginia and Maryland crossed a range of demographic groups, according to exit polls conducted by Edison/Mitofsky for the National Election Pool. He received support from voters across all income and education levels, as well as across political ideologies, from those who described themselves as liberal, moderate and conservative Democrats. And independents, who were allowed to vote in Virginia's Democratic primary and accounted for 2 in 10 voters there, supported Obama two to one over Clinton.

Clinton received the support of a majority of white women voting in Virginia and Maryland, but Obama countered with overwhelming support among black voters, men and women alike. Among white men, Obama won a majority in Virginia and ran close to Clinton in Maryland.

The two Democratic candidates roughly split the white vote in the two states, while Obama was backed by nearly 90 percent of black voters.

More than six in ten men in both states supported Obama, as did a majority of women, big changes from numbers in earlier primaries.

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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