(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-02-11 09:11

Democrats held a nominating race in Maine on Sunday but the next big voting day comes on Tuesday around the US capital. Both parties have contests in Washington, D.C., and neighboring states Virginia and Maryland.

Obama was running ahead in opinion polls and was expected to do well in the Tuesday balloting. He tried to stress the breadth of his wins as he campaigned in the area.

Obama told a rally in Alexandria, Virginia, he would be better able to bring people together to make the policy changes that Democrats want.

"Keep in mind we had Bill Clinton as president when in '94 we lost the House, we lost the Senate, we lost governorships, we lost state houses and so regardless of what policies they wanted to promote, they didn't have a working majority for change," he said.

Campaigning in Manassas, Virginia, on Sunday, Clinton said she was ready to go on Day One, blamed Bush for a series of problems and linked herself with popular Democratic President Harry Truman, who served from 1945 to 1953.

"I had a historian tell me the other day that it's probably not been since Harry Truman that we had a president who inherits two wars, an economy in trouble, millions of people losing their health care, millions of families on the brink of losing their homes," she said.

Clinton and Obama are about even in pledged delegates but both are well short of the 2,025 needed to win the Democratic nomination.

McCain virtually clinched the race on Thursday with the withdrawal of former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney. But many conservative Republicans are unhappy with the prospect because of McCain's past voting record on such issues as taxes, immigration, stem cell research and campaign law reform.

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