Clinton says she can win it

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama each said this morning they see a path to the Democratic presidential nomination as their teams braced for at least seven more weeks of campaigning.

Mrs. Clinton, buoyant after winning the two big prizes last night that she had to capture in order to continue her candidacy, said on NBC’s Today show she believes voters are looking at the race as a hiring decision.

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Voters are finally focused on who they think would be the best commander in chief, the New York Democrat said.

Now that Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona has secured his party nomination, Democratic voters are taking their decisions really seriously and are now really concerned about who can be the best candidate to face him in November, she said.

The Democrats each did the rounds on the morning talk shows, with Mr. Obama saying he faced two tough opponents in Mrs. Clinton and her husband, the former president.

Mr. Obama insisted on MSNBC, we continue to be in a good place and pledged he would steadily build on his delegate lead with contests in Wyoming Saturday and Mississippi Tuesday.

We’re running against the Clintons, he said.

He also said he was able to close a double-digit gap with Mrs. Clinton in both Texas and Ohio, though not as much as we’d like.

On the Today show, Mr. Obama said the former first lady had barely dented his delegate lead.

Results from the caucus in Texas were still being tabulated this morning, but Mr. Obama was likely to retain a lead of about 100 delegates.

We’ve won more primaries, more caucuses … you can’t discount the fact that we won 11 previous contests by big margins, Mr. Obama said this morning. We have just taken it one state at a time and we feel very confident that by the time we get to the convention we will have the most.

After the next two contests, there is a 6-week gap until the April 22 Pennsylvania primary when 151 delegates are up for grabs.

The Clinton campaign’s surrogate talking points from last night were tougher than the candidate seemed on the shows this morning.

Sen. Obama poured everything he had into scoring a decisive knockout and failed, the talking points stated.

Despite the advantages of outspending his rival and enjoying frontrunner status, he couldn’t close the deal with voters, they continued, calling last night the start of our upswing.

Her campaign also put out a memo suggesting bellwether Ohio has demographics that closely mirror voters in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Indiana and Kentucky, and she looks strong in each.

Her campaign memo noted the key voters who helped Clinton win last night — women, Hispanics and blue collar workers — are crucial to a general election victory.

Senator Obama has not brought these voters out in the same numbers, the memo asserted with a notation that both women and Hispanic voters helped President Bush win reelection in 2004.