Clinton Strengths Aren't Lost on The Obama Team

Obama is headed to Wyoming today, and Clinton traveled to Mississippi yesterday. Before leaving Washington, Clinton held a news conference in which she emphasized her national security know-how -- but also said this week's results were a sign that voters want the competition to continue.

"I think that this is good for the party and it has brought so many millions of people into this process and there are many states left to go," Clinton said. "I don't think the voters in the process who have yet to be heard from are ready for this race to be over."

Clinton's advisers fended off renewed demands by the Obama campaign for Clinton to release her recent tax returns. "I, for one, do not believe that imitating Ken Starr is the way to win a Democratic primary election for president. But perhaps that theory will be tested," said Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson.

Clinton also joined a conference call of her supporters to report that the campaign took in $3 million in the 24 hours that followed the Ohio and Texas primary wins. The Obama team declined to say how much his campaign took in Wednesday. The Obama campaign has recently held back fundraising totals and announced larger hauls after Clinton has revealed her numbers.

Obama did so again on Thursday in releasing his numbers from February, which Clinton had shared a week earlier. The Obama campaign said the $55 million one-month total came from more than 700,000 individual contributors. That surpassed the record-setting $44 million haul Kerry brought in after securing the Democratic nomination in March 2004 and will likely give the Obama campaign an advertising and organizing advantage in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. In all, the Obama campaign has raised $192.4 million.

Clinton raised $35 million last month and heralded the effort as a sign that her campaign had caught fire with Internet donors. But her top fundraisers said they knew they were likely to face another month in the shadow of someone who has rewritten the playbook on fundraising. In January, Obama raised $36 million while Clinton brought in $13.9 million.

"For us, it was a huge month," said Hassan Nemazee, one of Clinton's finance chairmen. "But then he blew everyone away and the whole model changed."

Staff writers Shailagh Murray and Matthew Mosk contributed to this report.