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."
