Hillary Clinton, after suffering a 10th consecutive loss to rival Barack Obama in the Democratic presidential race, said "it is time to get real" about how the party can win the November general election.
The New York senator today sought to emphasize what she said are the main differences between herself and Obama as she faces a critical test for her candidacy in Texas and Ohio two weeks from now.
"We've got to be focused on what kind of choice we actually have before us," Clinton said in a speech at Hunter College in New York City. "It's time we moved from good words to good works, from sound bites to sound solutions."
Obama, 46, has swept all the primaries and caucuses since Feb. 5, from Washington state to Maine, including yesterday's contests in Wisconsin and Hawaii. That gives him a solid lead in delegates needed to win the nomination and forces Clinton to make a stand in the Texas and Ohio primaries on March 4. Both candidates are campaigning in Texas today.
Clinton, 60, congratulated Obama on his victories.
"He's had a good couple of weeks, and he's run a good race," she said. "Campaigns are not supposed to be easy; they are supposed to be hard."
Obama has at least 1,116 pledged delegates while Clinton has 992, according to an unofficial estimate by thegreenpapers.com, a nonpartisan Web site that compiles election statistics. A candidate needs 2,025 to win the Democratic nomination.
Texas and Ohio together have 334 pledged delegates available. They are awarded largely based on proportion of the popular vote; Texas also apportions some delegates based on caucuses. Obama's campaign manager David Plouffe said today that the Illinois senator has a big enough lead to make a comeback by Clinton difficult.
"They are going to have to win landslides" in Texas and Ohio to make up the difference, Plouffe said. Obama has a "wide, wide lead right now."
With about two weeks to campaign in those states—Rhode Island and Vermont hold primaries on the same day — both campaigns say they will focus on organizing and direct contact with voters.
Clinton today reiterated her theme that she offers more experience and substance than Obama.
"This campaign is not about a personality," Clinton said. "This campaign is about hundreds of millions of Americans who are yearning for leadership again."
Clinton said she is better able to tackle economic and health-care concerns and assume the role of commander-in-chief in a dangerous world.
"We agree with Senator Clinton that there is a choice in this campaign," Bill Burton, a spokesman for Obama, said in a statement. "The choice in this election is between more of the same divisive, say-or-do-anything-to-win politics of the past and real change that we can believe in."
Republican John McCain, a senator from Arizona who has largely sewn up his party's nomination, is spending today in Ohio, which will be a battleground in the general election.
He is increasingly training his sights on Obama. This morning in Columbus, Ohio, he criticized Obama for not reaffirming an earlier pledge to stay within the public financing system if he is the Democratic nominee. Burton has said the campaign's acceptance of public financing, which comes with limits on spending, is still being considered.
"That's not transparency or keeping one's word to the American people," McCain, 71, said of Obama. "I hope he will keep his pledge to the American people."
Contributing: With reporting by Nicholas Johnston in Ohio and Kristin Jensen in Washington.