Riding a string of overwhelming victories, Democrat Barack Obama turned his focus on the ailing US economy on Wednesday while his rival Hillary Clinton looked ahead to contests next month where she hopes to regain her edge.
Obama and Republican front-runner John McCain cruised to victories in Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia on Tuesday, with McCain moving closer to clinching his party's nomination for the November election.
Obama, who extended his hot streak to eight straight wins over Clinton in a hard-fought presidential campaign that appears to be tipping his way, focused on the economy in a speech at a General Motors plant.
"We are not standing on the brink of recession due to forces beyond our control," Obama said in remarks prepared for delivery. "It was a failure of leadership and imagination in Washington - the culmination of decades of decisions that were made or put off without regard to the realities of a global economy."
While Obama campaigned in Wisconsin, which votes next week, Clinton focused on contests in the heavily populated states of Ohio and Texas in three weeks as her best hope to stop Obama's surge. Tuesday's victories allowed Obama to expand his lead in pledged convention delegates, who will select the Democratic Party's nominee at its August convention.
The former first lady, who would be the first female president, flew to El Paso before the votes were counted on Tuesday night and was spending the day campaigning in Texas. She also launched a series of new ads aimed at Ohio and Texas.
Clinton focused part of her effort on courting Hispanics, a demographic she considers more in her camp than in Obama's. McCain's wins over his last major challenger, former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, had him looking toward a general election match-up with the Democrats despite continued qualms among conservatives about his views on immigration, tax cuts and other issues.
"We do not know for certain who will have the honour of being the Democratic Party's nominee for president. But we know where either of their candidates will lead this country, and we dare not let them," McCain, an Arizona senator, told supporters in Alexandria, Virginia.
Obama had 1,078 pledged delegates to Clinton's 969, according to a count by MSNBC - well short of the 2,025 needed to clinch the Democratic nomination. The first-term senator from Illinois who would be the first black president warned the road ahead would not be easy.
"But we also know that at this moment the cynics can no longer say our hope is false," he said. In the Republican race, McCain has built a nearly insurmountable lead in delegates to the party's nominating convention and became the likely nominee last week with the withdrawal of top rival former Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney.
McCain has won 801 of the 1,191 delegates needed for nomination while Huckabee has 240. But exit polls showed McCain still had difficulty winning over conservatives. Those who described themselves as very conservative accounted for about one-third of Virginia Republican voters, and two-thirds of those went for Huckabee.
Huckabee, a Baptist minister whose rise has been fuelled by strong support from religious conservatives, said he would keep pushing in the race. "We march on," Huckabee said on Fox News Channel.
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