By John Whitesides, Political Correspondent
WASHINGTON, March 5 (Reuters) – Hillary Clinton swept critical showdowns with Barack Obama in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday to keep her Democratic presidential bid alive, and John McCain clinched the Republican nomination and looked ahead to the November election.
The victories for Clinton, a New York senator, snapped Obama’s presidential winning streak at 12 and defied widespread predictions of defeats in Ohio and Texas that would force her out of the White House race.
The hard-fought Democratic presidential duel now moves to contests in Wyoming and Mississippi and the next major showdown in Pennsylvania on April 22, with Clinton still trailing Obama in pledged delegates who will choose the nominee at the August convention.
“We’re going on, we’re going strong, and we’re going all the way,” Clinton, 60, told roaring supporters in Columbus, Ohio. “We’re just getting started.”
McCain’s four big victories in Vermont, Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island drove his last major rival, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, out of the race and gave McCain more than the 1,191 delegates needed to win the Republican nomination.
President George W. Bush will endorse the Arizona senator at the White House on Wednesday, capping McCain’s comeback from the political scrap heap last year when his campaign was down in the polls and counted out.
“I am very pleased to note that tonight, my friends, we have won enough delegates to claim with confidence, humility and a sense of great responsibility that I will be the Republican nominee for president of the United States,” McCain, 71, told supporters in Dallas.
“The contest begins tonight,” the former Navy fighter pilot and prisoner of war in Vietnam said, looking ahead to a match-up with either Obama or Clinton in November.
Clinton’s wins were the third time this year she has dodged a potential knockout blow from Obama. She won in New Hampshire after a loss in Iowa, and split the Super Tuesday contests after a blowout defeat in South Carolina.
“Some people were ready to count us out. But you and I proved them wrong, just as we have every time they tried to declare this race over prematurely,” Clinton said in a thank-you e-mail to supporters.
Exit polls showed she won big among voters who decided in the last few days, when she questioned Obama’s readiness to be commander in chief in a dramatic television ad and cast doubt on the sincerity of his pledges to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement, which is blamed in Ohio for manufacturing job losses.
BROAD BASE OF SUPPORT
Her win was built with support from a broad constituency of men, women, the elderly, Hispanics, working-class Democrats and rural voters, exit polls showed.
Under Democratic rules allowing the losers in each state to win a proportional number of delegates, Clinton must win many of the remaining contests by big margins to have a shot at significantly closing the gap with Obama in the delegate race.
“No matter what happens tonight we have nearly the same delegate lead we did this morning, and we are on our way to winning this nomination,” Obama told his supporters in San Antonio, Texas.
An MSNBC count gave Obama 1,194 delegates to Clinton’s 1,037 before Tuesday’s showdowns, short of the 2,025 needed to win the nomination. The delegate apportionment from Tuesday’s contests was still unclear.
Clinton also captured Rhode Island and Obama scored an easy win in Vermont. Turnout was heavy in all four states, and the campaigns of Obama, 46, an Illinois senator, and Clinton traded accusations of voting problems in both Ohio and Texas.
In his victory speech, McCain took aim at both of his likely Democratic opponents and criticized their pledges to revisit U.S. trade treaties, punish companies that send jobs overseas and withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.
“The next president must explain how he or she intends to bring that war to the swiftest possible conclusion without exacerbating a sectarian conflict that could quickly descend into genocide, destabilizing the entire Middle East,” McCain said.
McCain has had trouble winning over conservatives unhappy with his views on immigration, his past opposition to Bush’s tax cuts in 2001 and 2003 and his criticism of some religious conservative leaders as “agents of intolerance” during his failed 2000 presidential campaign.
Huckabee said he called McCain to congratulate him and promised to actively back his candidacy and rally support among Republicans. “I will do everything possible to unite our party,” Huckabee told supporters in Irving, Texas.
