Clinton, Obama will watch Wisconsin from afar

State officials in Wisconsin and Hawaii are predicting record turnout today as voters cast their ballots in a down-to-the-wire contest for the Democratic presidential nomination. But candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton have both moved on, taking their messages to states that vote next month.

Clinton, hoping for a comeback after a string of eight primary losses to Obama, held three rallies in Wisconsin on Monday. But today she was in Ohio, which holds a primary on March 4, conducting an economic round-table with voters.

At a diner in Parma, a Cleveland suburb, Clinton continued to insist she was the Democrat most likely to win in November. “I’ve been through the Republican attack machine,” Clinton said. “You know I can take a punch. And I come back.”

In response to a question on improving U.S. relations around the world, Clinton said she would send her husband, former President Bill Clinton, abroad to rebuild goodwill. “Bill is so highly admired across the world,” she said. “I would just ask him to take that message of understanding.”

Obama, under attack by the Clinton campaign for being a candidate of “speeches” instead of “solutions,” is in Texas, which also holds its primary March 4, conducting his own round-table discussion today on the mortgage crisis. The Illinois senator also plans a rally in San Antonio later today.

In an interview on NBC’s “Today Show” that aired today, Obama defended his ability to attract new voters with his oratorical gifts.

“We want to strike a balance where we explain to people that it’s important for us to get people engaged and motivated and involved, but not just for abstract feel-good stuff,” he said, citing priorities to deliver health care, college affordability and good jobs. “And so hopefully, the longer I stay in this campaign, the better I get at it.”

Asked if he is ready for the negative attacks likely to come in a fall campaign, Obama said that he was getting used to it because of “the Clinton machine, and it’s not as if they’re playing tiddlywinks, right? I mean, every day they’ve got a press conference accusing me of this or that or the other. So we’ve been battle-tested during the course of this primary.”

Obama said he did not think Republicans would front a racial attack on him. “I actually think that there are people in the Republican Party who would be offended by that,” he said, adding, “I don’t think the American people would tolerate that.”

Instead, he predicted that Republicans would exaggerate his positions on the issues to make him look like “some wild-eyed liberal,” adding that Republicans would likely “do the exact same thing to Hillary Clinton.”

On the Republican side, meanwhile, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) spoke to a get out the vote rally in Milwaukee before heading to Ohio to watch the returns. Speaking in front of a crowd of young voters, McCain went after the Democrats for their position on the war in Iraq, repeating his assertion that “Islamic extremism” is the “transcendental challenge of the 21st century.”

Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who on Monday stumped in Ohio hoping to foil McCain’s efforts to wrap up the GOP race, was back in Little Rock today.

johanna.neuman@latimes.com

nicholas.riccardi@latimes.com