clipped from: www.washingtonpost.com   
[Obama strategists figured they could compensate for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's strength in large, traditionally Democratic states by focusing their efforts on smaller states, many of which almost always vote Republican in the general election.]
The Illinois Democrat's strength in a Republican state that has not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964 is the latest example of an ingenious strategy that neatly addresses the advantage Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) enjoys in Democratic strongholds where she and her husband have long-standing ties.
Obama's losses Tuesday in Texas and Ohio -- coupled with his Feb. 5 defeats in California, New York and New Jersey -- have not only shown the strategy's downside. They have also given supporters of Clinton an opening for an argument that winning over affluent, educated white voters in small Democratic enclaves, such as Boise, Idaho, and Salt Lake City, and running up the score with African Americans in the Republican South exaggerate his strengths in states that will not vote Democratic in the fall.
"If you can't win in the Southwest, if you don't win Ohio, if you don't win Pennsylvania, you've got problems in November," said Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.),