And just the day before, North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley had endorsed Clinton in Raleigh, calling her a fighter "who makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy."

Both men tested the boundaries of campaign-speech propriety this week, but they were also on message: Hillary is strong.

Strength received renewed emphasis during Clinton's swing through Indiana, as rival Sen. Barack Obama was struggling to move past inflammatory comments by his former pastor.

Clinton supporters said that Obama's long delay in renouncing the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., who, among other things, accused the United States of committing terrorist acts, made Obama look weak.

"She's a real tough person, you know," said George Pabey, the mayor of East Chicago, Ind., and a former steelworker. "She just does not give up. That's what we need."

Polls ahead of Tuesday's primary here have shown the two candidates in a dead heat in the state, with Obama running stronger in northwest Indiana, which gets its TV news from his hometown of Chicago, and Clinton running better in the rural south.

Obama's recent troubles have apparently not hurt him with superdelegates, the Democratic insiders and elected officials who likely will end up deciding the nomination. His campaign announces a steady stream of superdelegate endorsements, narrowing Clinton's long-held advantage among the party elders.

The Associated Press' tally finds that Obama now trails her by just 15 superdelegates, 263-248.

Yesterday, a former chairman of the Democratic National Committee named by President Bill Clinton said he would cast his vote as an Indiana superdelegate for Obama, arguing it was time to end a potentially destructive nomination battle.

"The ship is taking on water right now," said Joe Andrew, who initially supported the New York senator. "We need to patch those holes, heal the rift, and go forward to beat John McCain."

Andrew said he was impressed with how Obama had stood up under criticism, as well as his "principled" stand against a summer gas-tax holiday proposed by Hillary Clinton and McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.

Obama also received the endorsement of Rep. Baron P. Hill, whose district is in southern Indiana, but Clinton has Sen. Evan Bayh - and his respected grassroots machine - behind her.

Clinton has been powering through Indiana in a series of 16-hour days, carrying the same scrappy populist themes that helped her win Ohio and Pennsylvania with the strong support of white blue-collar voters - a bloc she is counting on again here.

Yesterday she called herself the "Goldilocks" of the presidential campaign, saying her proposal to suspend the 18.4-cent-per-gallon federal gasoline tax for the summer was just right for the middle class, compared with Obama and McCain.

In addition, Clinton labeled as elitist Obama and other opponents of the plan. He has called it a Washington gimmick, saying that it does nothing to reduce the nation's long-term dependence on foreign oil and that it doesn't even give motorists that much of a break.

Clinton proposes replacing revenue lost to the federal highway construction fund with a new windfall-profits tax on oil companies. McCain also supports the idea of a summer holiday from the tax but says general federal revenue will make up for the loss.

"You know, Sen. Obama says we shouldn't do it and it's a gimmick. And Sen. McCain says we should do it but we shouldn't pay for it," Clinton said during a town-hall meeting in Brownsburg, Ind. "I sometimes feel like the Goldilocks of this campaign: Not too much. Not too little. Just right."

Those who criticize the proposal are out of touch with the problems facing the middle class, Clinton said.

"I find it, frankly, a little offensive that people who don't have to worry about filling up their gas tank or what they buy when they go to the supermarket think that it's somehow illegitimate to provide relief for the millions and millions of Americans who are on the brink of losing their job," Clinton said.

Joined on a small stage by her daughter, Chelsea, and mother, Dorothy Rodham, Clinton held a "family discussion" with the mostly female audience. She said she would like to enact a $3,000 tax credit to cover the bills of people caring for a sick relative at home, and also wants to expand the Family and Medical Leave Act to smaller companies and experiment with providing pay to those on leave.

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