Obama targets Texas

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Barack Obama touted the millionth donor to his White House bid Wednesday, after rival Hillary Clinton failed to fell him in a testy last debate before pivotal nominating contests in Ohio and Texas.

Clinton, once the runaway Democratic front-runner, now hopes an 11th hour campaign surge will carry her to victory in the March 4 showdowns, which her husband, ex-president Bill Clinton, says she must win to keep her hopes alive.

The rivals swapped pointed jabs in the debate in Cleveland, Ohio, late Tuesday, in a showdown Clinton hoped might slow Obama’s roaring momentum.

But Obama emerged unscathed and welcomed the one millionth financial donor to his grass-roots network, which has rewritten the rules of campaign fundraising and repeatedly thwarted the Clinton election machine.

Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain meanwhile launched a fierce attack on Obama’s credentials as commander-in-chief, borrowing the title of the Illinois senator’s second book to pound him on Iraq following the debate.

“Where is the audacity of hope when it comes to backing the success of our troops all the way to victory in Iraq? What we heard last night was the timidity of despair,” Senator McCain said in a statement.

Obama, who opposed the Iraq war and says he will end it in 2009 if he is elected president, hit back hard at McCain, while campaigning in Ohio.

“John McCain may like to say that he wants to follow Osama bin Laden to the gates of hell, but so far all he’s done is follow George Bush into a misguided war in Iraq that has cost us thousands of lives and billions of dollars.”

In another significant development, the Atlanta Journal Constitution newspaper reported that Congressman John Lewis, a prominent civil rights leader, was switching his support from Clinton to Obama.

The Illinois senator, vying to become America’s first black president, has monopolized the vote of African-Americans, a key Democratic bloc in the primary race.

Lewis was the latest superdelegate — Democratic party luminaries who can vote how they like at the party convention — to choose Obama, further weakening Clinton’s hopes.

The New York senator’s frustration at Obama’s rise was palpable in the debate, as she complained her rival had enjoyed glowing media coverage.