Win comforts Clinton, but is it enough?

WASHINGTON — Ridden by debt and under relentless pressure to quit, Hillary Rodham Clinton scored a resounding win Tuesday in West Virginia that supporters said cast doubt on whether Barack Obama — for all his money, delegates and momentum — is electable.

"The bottom line is this: The White House is won in the swing states, and I am winning the swing states," Clinton told a cheering crowd in Charleston, W.Va. "I am more determined than ever to carry on this campaign."

Obama — hoping to shrug off the more than 2-to-1 drubbing and what it said about his persistent weakness among white voters — was looking past Clinton. He stumped Tuesday in rural Missouri and was heading today to a blue-collar Detroit suburb, fall battlegrounds in states that held primaries two months ago.

With many pundits and party elders writing off Clinton, it wasn't clear whether her blowout in a midsized, rural, mainly white state would breathe new life or prove Pyrrhic, an asterisk to a campaign running on fumes.

"The math is controlling. This race, I believe, is over," said Roy Romer, former Colorado governor and former national Democratic chairman, as he endorsed Obama earlier Tuesday. "There is a time that we need to end it and to direct ourselves to the general election. I think that time is now."

In addition to Romer's backing, Obama picked up three other superdelegates Tuesday.

The comments from Romer, a superdelegate who co-chaired Bill Clinton's campaign 12 years ago, were the most forceful pronouncement from anyone in the Obama camp.

But as analysts noted, what candidate wants to quit when she can score such a lopsided win? Clinton clearly wasn't ready.

She cast Tuesday's win as an "overwhelming vote of confidence" and a sign the voters want the contest to continue through the final primaries in three weeks.

Still, West Virginia barely helped her dent Obama's delegate lead. Clinton won 20 of the 28 delegates at stake, while Obama collected 27 superdelegates last week alone, as his spokesman Bill Burton pointed out.

Still, a blowout is a blowout, and Clinton used hers to make a fresh plea for donations, glossing over her campaign's $20 million debt, about half of it owed to herself.

She also asked superdelegates to "think hard" on Tuesday's results when picking the party's standard-bearer and the next president, and arranged a meeting with superdelegates for today. About 250 remain publicly uncommitted.

Clinton noted that no Democrat has won the White House since 1916 without winning West Virginia, though Obama has brushed off similar losses in states such as California, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania by arguing that in the fall, he could carry them.

Obama also narrowly won Nebraska's nonbinding primary. He had won the state's caucuses earlier in the year and with them, a majority of its delegates.

Exit polling showed a divided Democratic Party, with about a third of each candidate's supporters saying they would vote for presumed Republican nominee, John McCain, if their favorite is not on the November ballot.

One out of five whites said the race of the candidates was a factor, the second highest percentage after Mississippi.

Another troubling sign for Obama: Nearly half of all primary voters said they'd vote for McCain or stay home if Obama were the nominee.

Obama has won the white vote in only seven of the 32 states where voters have been surveyed in exit polling.

In an unusual move, Obama avoided election night appearances, allowing him to avoid the embarrassment of standing before sullen supporters to explain the year's most gaping loss.

At an afternoon stop in Cape Girardeau, Mo., he predicted any division in the party would quickly dissipate, and kept his focus on the Republican.

"John McCain has served his country with honor, and I respect that service. But ... his only answer to the problems created by George Bush's policies is to give them another four years to fail," Obama said, making no mention of Clinton.

The math against Clinton is powerful. Obama led in delegates with 1,883 to Clinton's 1,717, as of Tuesday, according to an Associated Press count.

There has been speculation that Obama would declare victory next Tuesday. Clinton holds a commanding lead in Kentucky, and he's expected to win Oregon handily, and he's likely to have a majority of pledged delegates, a tipping point at which superdelegates would have to overrule rank-and-file Democrats to hand Clinton the nomination.

But he would still be shy of the 2,026 needed to seal the nomination.

The Clinton side says the real target is 2,209, the majority when Michigan and Florida are included.

Material from The Associated Press, Cox Newspapers and McClatchy Newspapers is included in this report.