“We need to dream big, but you know, dreams alone won’t make anything,” Clinton said on Wednesday while courting Hispanics at a noisy rally in this south Texas town on the Mexican border.

“We’ve got to have solutions to the problems that face us.”

The New York senator and former first lady sharpened her message against Obama before the March 4 Democratic nominating contests in Texas and Ohio, which have become critical to her presidential aspirations after losses to Obama in Wisconsin and Hawaii.

Obama’s long string of victories put Clinton in the awkward position of telling supporters, in media interviews and speeches, “Don’t give up on this!” and “This campaign goes on!” while her aides explained how she would close the gap with Obama by the time of the Puerto Rico contest in June.

Clinton and Obama crisscrossed Texas on Wednesday and will face off in a crucial debate on Thursday in Austin. 
Obama has used his string of wins to broaden his voting coalition and has taken control of the race to decide the Democratic nominee for the November election.

He has victories in 25 of the state-by-state contests while Clinton has 11, and he has begun to erode support among her core base of women.

A new Reuters/Zogby poll indicated Obama has leaped past Clinton and built a big national lead. The poll showed Obama, who would be the first black president, with a 14-point edge over Clinton, 52 per cent to 38 per cent.
In Hidalgo, Clinton also took aim at President Bush. “Don’t you think the entire world will let out a sigh of relief when he leaves office?” she asked.

‘No Romantic relationship’

John McCain denied a romantic relationship with a female telecommunications lobbyist on Thursday and said a report by The New York Times suggesting favoritism for her clients is “not true.”

“Im very disappointed in the article. It's not true,”the likely Republican presidential nominee said as his wife, Cindy, stood alongside him during a news conference called to address the matter, reports AP from Toledo, Ohio. McCain described the woman in question, lobbyist Vicki Iseman, as a friend.

The newspaper quoted anonymous aides as saying they had urged McCain and Iseman to stay away from each other prior to his failed presidential campaign in 2000. In its own follow-up story, The Washington Post quoted  aide John Weaver, who split with McCain last year, as saying he met lobbyist Iseman and urged her to steer clear of McCain.

Weaver told the Times he arranged the meeting after "a discussion among the campaign leadership" about Iseman.

But McCain said he was unaware of any such conversation. “I never discussed it with John Weaver.

As far as I know, there was no necessity for it ... I did not know anything about it,” he said.

The Arizona senator said he won't allow the report to distract him from his campaign.