Clinton's pledge to keep running "until there's a nominee" came as Barack Obama, his front-runner status reinforced by the results from North Carolina and Indiana, picked up endorsements from four more of the superdelegates who ultimately will decide the outcome.

There was no great surge of superdelegates to Obama yesterday, even as his campaign manager said the finish line of the race was in sight.

For all of Clinton's brave words, the future of her candidacy might hinge on her campaign's shaky finances.

Aides revealed that she recently lent the operation $6.425 million, on top of an earlier $5 million loan, which she called "a sign of my commitment to this campaign."

Last evening, she raised as much as $1 million at a women's fund-raiser in Washington, during which the 1,500 people in attendance urged her to press on.

The day began with former Sen. George McGovern, the party's 1972 presidential nominee, switching from Clinton to Obama and urging the New York senator to get out.

A few hours later, a prominent Obama backer, Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, told reporters that it would be "inappropriate," "awkward" and "disrespectful" for anyone to tell Clinton when to leave the race.

Then the candidate - who was in West Virginia, which has its primary Tuesday - made clear that she would not have listened to such advice anyway.

"I'm staying in this race until there's a nominee," Clinton said at a news conference, "and I obviously am going to work as hard as I can to become that nominee."

She did not say whether, in her view, there could be a nominee before the roll call at the party convention in Denver the last week of August.

Clinton did go on to say that "it's still early" in the process and that she didn't see any damage to the party in her continuing to run. In a speech in West Virginia, she stuck to her own ideas and made no references to Obama, critical or otherwise.

Earlier, her chief strategist, Geoff Garin, said the nominating process ought to be allowed to "play out" through the final primaries June 3 and until the remaining superdelegates announce their intentions.

Clinton also suggested that no one should get too hung up on the party rules.

"Look, if we had the rules the Republicans have, I'd already be the nominee," she said, referring to how the GOP allocates delegates. "If they had our rules, they'd still be fighting it out."

She added that her base of support in the primaries "is a stronger place to start from" than Obama's. "We should stay focused on nominating the stronger candidate against Sen. McCain," she said, "and who would be the best president."

Under the existing rules, Obama, who had no public events yesterday, needs 178.5 delegates to clinch the nomination and Clinton must get 329, according to the Associated Press.

Those numbers include the superdelegates who moved to Obama yesterday - party officials from North Carolina, California and Virginia. The Virginia delegate had been backing Clinton.

Clinton also picked up one superdelegate from North Carolina and another from Texas.

In a conference call with reporters, Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, said that the next key day in the ongoing saga would be May 20, when Oregon and Kentucky hold their primaries.

By then, Plouffe said, Obama will have won an absolute majority of the pledged delegates from all of the primaries and caucuses. In the modern era, no candidate who has won such a majority has been denied his party's nomination.

"We can see the finish line here," Plouffe said. Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts agreed, saying that the race had been "fundamentally changed" by Tuesday's results.

Obama took North Carolina by about 223,000 votes while Clinton won Indiana by 14,000. In terms of delegates, Obama had a net gain of 11 or so, wiping out all of the progress that Clinton had made two weeks earlier in Pennsylvania.

Still to be resolved is the dispute over what do with Michigan and Florida, which had all their delegates taken away by the Democratic National Committee after scheduling primaries earlier than party rules allowed.

But it's beginning to look as though the resolution might be irrelevant to the final outcome.

Even if the dispute were resolved on Clinton's terms - she did win both primaries, which had been declared in advance to be nonevents - she would amass a net gain of 58 delegates, a campaign aide said yesterday, which is not enough to make much of a dent in Obama's lead.

The likelihood is she won't get that many when a party panel meets to try to settle the matter May 31.

Both candidates will be back on the stump today.

Obama is scheduled to meet on Capitol Hill with undeclared superdelegates, many of whom are members of Congress. Tomorrow, he'll fly to Oregon. In the next few weeks, he is expected to spend some of his time in states that loom large in the general election.

Clinton, who conferred with some of the superdelegates in Washington yesterday, is to campaign in West Virginia, South Dakota and Oregon.

There appears to be no hurry among the undeclared congressional superdelegates to take a stand.

"I believe the races must continue," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) said yesterday, explaining why she and others remain uncommitted.

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