The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Washington

White House hopeful Barack Obama rallied support in Wisconsin Friday as he sought to notch another win over Democratic nomination rival Hillary Clinton, who was eyeing bigger prizes in Ohio and Texas.

On the Republican side, front-runner John McCain could take one step closer to the 1,191 delegates he needs to secure the party's presidential nomination for when Wisconsin holds its primaries on Tuesday.

Obama is heading to the Tuesday primary on a high after winning eight straight nomination contests, giving him a slight delegate lead over Clinton, who has re-shuffled her campaign team in the past week.

The Illinois senator was given another boost in the last two days when the 1.9-million strong Service Employees International Union (SEIU) and the 1.3 million-strong United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) endorsed him.

With polls giving him a four-point lead in Wisconsin, Obama hit the trail in the Midwestern state, which has 74 delegates at stake. His home-state of Hawaii, which has 20 delegates, is also voting Tuesday.

Clinton -- who finally got some good news Thursday when New Mexico finally announced she had narrowly won its nine-day-old caucuses -- is hoping to bounce back on March 4 when delegate-rich Ohio and Texas hold their votes. The Democrats are battling for the workers' vote, vowing to reverse President George W. Bush's tax cuts for the rich and raise the minimum wage.

Despite their similar messages, the two candidates have been exchanging sharp words as they each vie to make history as the first black or the first woman US president.

Clinton has been hammering her silver-tongued rival hard over his platform, charging that his eloquent speeches lack substance.

"Speeches don't put food on the table. Speeches don't fill up your tank, or fill your prescription, or do anything about that stack of bills that keeps you up at night," Clinton said Thursday in Ohio. "That's the difference between me and my Democratic opponent. My opponent gives speeches, I offer solutions."

Obama has countered by criticizing Clinton as too ingrained in Washington politics.

"You know, after defending Washington lobbyists as people who 'represent real Americans' at a debate in August, Senator Clinton said yesterday that she would take them on as president," he said.

"But in this campaign, she's taken nearly double the amount of money from lobbyists than any Democrat or Republican running for president. That's not being a part of the solutions business. That's being a part of business-as-usual in Washington," Obama said.

Clinton was the only one of the leading presidential candidates to campaign in Ohio Friday, an industrial state with 141 delegates in play. She also deployed her husband, former president Bill Clinton, to Texas, where 193 delegates are at stake.

Polls out this week have given her an edge in Ohio and Texas.

In Ohio, she leads with 55 percent to Obama's 34 percent, according to a Quinnipac University poll released Thursday.

A Texas Credit Union survey published Friday gave her a 49 percent lead over 41 for Obama.

Obama has 1,289 delegates so far, compared to 1,237 for Clinton, according to independent website RealClearPolitics. At least 2,025 delegates are needed to win the Democratic nomination at the convention in Denver in August.

For his part, McCain has taken big strides toward becoming the Republican nominee. With 825 delegates in hand, his former rival Mitt Romney endorsed him Thursday and urged his 291 delegates to vote for McCain.

Former president George Bush, the father of the current president, is also due to endorse him on Monday.

Even though McCain appears to have an insurmountable lead, ordained Baptist minister Mike Huckabee has remained in the race, hoping to pull of a miracle with only 240 delegates on his side so far.

In Wisconsin, which delivers a total of 40 Republican delegates, McCain has an 18-point lead over Huckabee, according to a poll by Strategic Vision last week.