SAN ANTONIO -- As Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama prepare to debate in Texas tonight, the Democratic presidential contest appears to be nearing a tipping point, say party strategists.
Obama has won 10 straight contests, most by landslide margins, and built a delegate lead that Clinton might soon be unable to overcome. Clinton, once the front-runner, must win Ohio and Texas to start narrowing Obama's edge, or her dwindling chances of becoming the nominee could vanish.
The race is nearing "a point of no return" for Clinton, said Tad Devine, a veteran delegate-counter who is neutral this time. "I don't think it's there yet, but we're getting there. When you do the number-crunching, it's almost reached a point where it's arithmetically impossible for her to catch him in pledged delegates."
Warming up for their televised encounter, the Democrats engaged in a long-distance exchange yesterday.
In her first speech since losing Wisconsin and Hawaii, Clinton returned to the same themes that failed to prevent what will become a monthlong winless streak by the next primary day.
"It is time to get real," she said. "To get real about how we actually win this election and get real about the challenges facing America. It's time we moved from good words to good works, from sound bites to sound solutions."
Obama responded at a rally with 17,000 supporters in downtown Dallas, arguing that he would be the stronger candidate in the fall.
"Contrary to what she's been saying, it's not a choice between speeches and solutions. It's a choice between a politics that offers more of the same divisions and distractions, that didn't work in South Carolina and didn't work in Wisconsin and will not work in Texas," he said.
"It's a choice between having a debate with John McCain about who has the most experience in Washington, or having a debate about who's most likely to change Washington, because that's a debate we can win."
Democrats intensified their criticism of Clinton's struggling campaign, which ran short of money despite raising more than $120 million.
Former Clinton White House aide William Galston called her failure to budget for post-Super Tuesday contests "one of the greatest strategic errors since the modern nominating process was established more than three decades ago."
The Democratic race might "effectively end" before the primary season is over in early June, unless Clinton wins both Texas and Ohio "by margins wide enough to eat into Obama's lead in pledged delegates," said Galston, a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park and a Brookings Institution fellow.
Because Obama has begun capturing voters who had been her core supporters, including working-class white men, Catholics and women, "this will not be easy" for Clinton, he said.
Aides said Clinton's inability to compete effectively since Super Tuesday was the result of various factors, including a cash squeeze. Other Democrats credited Obama.
"You start looking at the numbers across the board and you start to see acceptance" of Obama. "He's very acceptable to a broader base of people, and that's what's hurting her," said former Rep. Tony Coelho, who ran Al Gore's presidential campaign in 2000 and is a Clinton donor.
Obama aides claimed a lead of 159 pledged delegates. Because party rules allocate delegates on a proportional basis, Clinton would need to win the remaining contests by near-landslide proportions to whittle that number down significantly, they said.
Clinton still has a residual advantage among superdelegates, but Obama has reduced her lead by more than half among that group since the primaries began. In a worrisome trend for Clinton, some superdelegates who had previously announced support for her have either switched to Obama or moved to uncommitted status.
About 800 elected officials - including Democratic governors and members of Congress - and party activists are automatic convention delegates, dubbed superdelegates because they can vote for any candidate they choose. The other four-fifths of the convention delegates are pledged to one candidate or another through primaries and caucuses.
Clinton's failure to keep pace with Obama, after contests in more than 30 states, is forcing her campaign to put increasing emphasis on arguments aimed at superdelegates, rather than ordinary voters. The goal is to keep party officials from backing Obama and, eventually, persuading them to support her.
Their argument - that she is the stronger candidate - is being undermined by the reality of the race. Recent polls, nationally and in key states, have shown Obama outperforming Clinton in test matches with McCain.
Clinton strategist, Mark Penn, a pollster, brushed aside those numbers in a conference call, contending that they were a "reflection of the recent primary wins" by Obama and are a poor indicator of who would do better in November.
paul.west@baltsun.com
Debate
Tonight's debate between Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will take place from 8 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. and will be aired on CNN.