The New York senator needed a big win, not just to buttress her case that Obama is unelectable against McCain, but to replenish her coffers with a new appeal to donors that the fight goes on.

The Clinton campaign has debts of US$10 million, and she trails Obama in numbers of delegates and states won.

“She’s really in a money hole and her contributors have maxed out. The commentary is all about how Clinton is out of cash and the superdelegates are set to break for Obama,” Johnston said.

Both the candidates will be relying on “superdelegates,” the party officials who will now effectively crown the nominee, since neither is likely to reach the 2,025 pledged delegates needed to win outright.

The New York senator is pinning her hopes in part on overhauling Obama’s lead in the national popular vote, but will need the Democratic National Committee to bury the hatchet with Florida over a scheduling dispute. “Quitting is not something you associate with the Clinton family,” said Peter Brown of the Quinnipiac University Polling Institute in Connecticut.

“But her view of what is a reasonable fight might differ from other Democrats, who would like her to get out of the race to start concentrating on the fall election,” he said.

Ahead of the party’s nominating convention in August, the last Democratic primaries will take place in Montana and South Dakota on June 3. Several polls have suggested that roughly a quarter of Democratic voters could defect to McCain if their preferred candidate does not win the party’s nomination.

“At some point, Barack Obama has to land a knockout blow,” said Stephen Hess, a veteran White House staffer who analyzes presidential politics at Washington’s Brookings Institution.

“Hillary Clinton seems to be waiting for her opponent to slip on a banana peel,” he said, after a difficult six weeks for Obama featuring his “bitter” remark and the emergence of fiery sermons by his former pastor.

“So it goes on and on. But at some point, there will be an awful lot of pressure from what remains of the party power structure to say this really is too hurtful to our chances in November,” Hess said.

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