Hillary Clinton delivered an impassioned defense of her continued candidacy in Eugene, Oregon — telling a young Obama supporter who asked whether she really wanted to help the Democratic party or was merely being “self serving” that the race “is not a coronation. It is a contest.”

“Election are about choices. You’re supposed to present your case and you’re supposed to critique the other case. That’s what you do in an election,” she said. “This country is worth fighting for, and I’m going to fight for it.” The crowd erupted in a standing ovation.

Addressing what her interlocutor said were negative statements by her campaign about Sen Obama, Clinton replied “there have been some things, believe it or not, that have even been said about me by his campaign. I don’t take it any of it personally and I don’t take most of it seriously.”

“If you can’t stand the heat, don’t run for president, because it’s a really hot kitchen in the White House.”

She seemed to dismiss Obama’s message of hope and unity as pie-in-the-sky idealism. “I wish I could believe that we could get to universal health care, that we could turn the economy around, that we could end the home foreclosure crisis merely by asking people to do it. By bringing them together. By pointing to a higher cause and expecting them to shelve their commercial, ideological, personal and partisan advantages,” she said. “That is not the way the world has ever worked.”

“I wouldn’t be getting up at 5am and going to bed at 2am if I didn’t believe I would be the better candidate to beat John McCain, stand toe to toe, go at him on national security, go at him on the economy. that’s why I’m here.”

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Florida Senator and Hillary Clinton supporter Bill Nelson, who has led the fight to get his state’s delegates seated at the party’s national convention, thinks he’s found a solution — a state-wide re-vote by mail.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Nelson calls the solution “a practical and affordable way to conduct another election that would be fair to all involved” — arguing that the process “would be cheaper, less cumbersome and more inclusive” than a new primary election, which the FL Senator estimates would cost $18 million.

Nelson already tried to convince the DNC to underwrite the cost of another primary; now, he hopes the state party will foot the much smaller bill for his new proposal — which he estimates at about $6 million. He’d need an answer fairly quickly; overseas ballots, he says, would have to go out by the third week of April, with a return deadline of early June.

Read the full op-ed after the jump.

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Hillary Clinton told reporters she’s still committed to seating the delegations from Florida and Michigan at the Democratic convention in August — but that she’s “watching with great interest to see what the leadership in both states puts forth.”

“I’m going to let the leadership of both states see what they think is the best approach. I think that it would be a grave disservice to the voters of Florida and Michigan to adopt any process that would disenfranchise anyone,” she said.

FL sen Bill Nelson has asked the DNC to pony up $18million to fund a new primary election, in part because the national committee was too harsh on the state for what was essentially the GOP-controlled state government’s decision to move the primary to Jan 29. Sen Clinton agrees with that assessment. “If you look at what happened in Florida, the Republican governor, the Republican legislature called the shots, set the time. The Democrats really had no choice. And I don’t think they should be punished because of that.”

Clinton addressed the Florida issue in a cabinet meeting-style sitdown with 12 military officials and senior foreign policy types to talk about Afghanistan — laying out her plan to add more international troops through NATO. Much like those cabinet meetings, she addressed the press at the top then kicked us out to continue the session in private.

Before that happened, however, reporters asked whether she agreed with her communications director Howard Wolfson’s comparison of the Obama to Clinton investgator Ken Starr — after his campaign threatened to start raising past Clinton controversies. “I’m not going to respond to that,” she said dimissively, asking the next reporter “what’s your question?”

Just after 8:30pm on a balmy Friday night outside of San Antonio, Texas, Obama looked out at a see of some 8,000 spectators. He was midway through his stump speech and then decided to sock it to Hillary Clinton for running a new campaign ad entitled “Children” - or as it’s being referred to in media and political circles, the “Red Phone” ad because of its similarity to a 1984 ad with the same name run by Walter Mondale in 1984.

“I want to take a moment to respond to an ad that Senator Clinton put up today,” Obama stated as the crowd began to jeer.  “We’ve seen these ads before. They’re usually the kind that play on people’s fears and try to scare up votes. But it won’t work. Because the question is not about who’s picking up the phone – the question is what kind of judgment will the person who answers the phone have?”

Senator Obama has made his consistent anti-war voice an example of his judgment in the realm of all things foreign policy - and once again, his weapon of choice to attack Senator Clinton’s foreign policy experience is her vote for the Iraq War Resolution in 2002.

“Senator Clinton may not be aware, but we already had a red phone moment. It was the decision to invade Iraq. And Senator Clinton picked up the phone and gave the wrong answer. And John McCain picked up the phone and gave the wrong answer. And George Bush picked up the
phone and gave the wrong answer,” he said, not so subtly linking her decisions with those made by Republicans McCain and Bush.

“I stood up and I said this war in Iraq would cost us billions of dollars and thousands of lives. I said it would distract us from the real threat we faced. That’s the judgment I made on the most important foreign policy decision of a generation and that’s the kind of judgment I’ll show when I pick up the phone at 3am in the morning!” he exclaimed to rousing applause.

He then wacked President Bush for good measure - always a crowd favorite at Democratic rallies. He promised he would use his judgment to provide, equip, and train troops and to “use them wisely and not deploy them because of some ideological bent that you were on, but because it is absolutely necessary to protect the United States of America – that’s the answer that I’ll give when somebody calls me on the phone at 3am in the morning!”

Obama ended his rant by saying he won’t scare up votes using the threat of terrorism. “I intend to make sure that we rally the country together, against our common enemies – that we’re distracted by politics when it comes to our national security. That’s the judgment that I intend provide when I’m president of the United States of America.”

Today Barack Obama made an unscheduled stop at the U.S.-Mexico border along the Rio Grande River in Brownsville, Texas, and dropped by a community carnival called the Sombrero Festival - two events that were not on the senator’s schedule. Soon after, Obama made another unscheduled stop to the back of his campaign plane. The candidate ambled back to informally chat with reporters – topics ranged from the Hispanic vote to faith outreach to the senator’s foreign language skills (he speaks 15 words in Spanish and some Indonesian).

When asked about the state of the race, he called the fight for the Democratic nomination “tight” and said the Clintons were very formidable. When Senator Clinton’s “Red Phone” ad came up, Obama said he hadn’t seen it – that he’d only read the script. When asked what he thought, he repeated with a smile, “I read the script.”

He then retreated to the safety of the candidate section of the cabin – but not before one reporter yelled out to ask him about the torta he consumed at the Sombrero Festival, and noted the taco was better. Obama raised his eyebrows. “You tried both?” The reporter joked, “(Communications Director Robert) Gibbs tried everything. Including a margarita.” Gibbs stood in the background, unaware of the joke.

The candidate did not hold a media availability today.

Watch some of his chat here:

At the beginning of his rally in Corpus Christi, Texas, Senator Barack Obama recognized the Dallas police officer who died in the line of duty while providing escort service for Senator Hillary Clinton’s motorcade this morning.

Obama explained to the crowd that he, Clinton, and Senator John McCain all get help from local law enforcement to set up motorcades and ease traffic while campaigning. “One of the members of Senator Clinton’s detail got into an accident and passed away. He actually helped me when we were in Dallas,” Obama said, referring to a rally he held in Dallas just two days ago, where he relied on the Dallas Police Department for help getting to and from the airport.

“His name was Victor Lozada-Tirado. And so if everybody will just observe a brief moment of silence for him and his family, let ‘em know that our thoughts and prayers are with them,” he said. The thousands gathered in the Corpus Christi arena were still for about 10 seconds.

“It’s a reminder of the outstanding work that law enforcement does for us each and every day and so I hope that everybody can give a big round of applause for our law enforcement officers,” Obama said, before he began his stump speech.

Here’s the statement from the Dallas PD on the officer who died in Sen Clinton’s motorcade this morning… Victor Lozada-Tirado was a twenty year veteran with four children.

Motorcycle Officer Dies in Line of Duty

At approximately 9:15 am Dallas Police Senior Corporal Victor Lozada-Tirado, #5761, was involved in a fatal motorcycle accident while escorting Presidential Candidate Mrs. Hillary Clinton. It appears the officer was traveling South bound on the Houston St. viaduct when he struck a curb, lost control of the motorcycle, and went down. Senior Corporal Lozada-Tirado was transported to Methodist Central Hospital where he was pronounced deceased. There were no other vehicles involved in the accident, including motorcade vehicles. It appears the officer was near the rear of the escort at the time of the accident. The motorcade was able to continue to the site without further incident. Traffic investigators will conduct a forensic mapping of the accident scene in an attempt to determine the specific cause. The southbound side of the viaduct is expected to be closed for a couple of hours.

Senior Corporal Lozada- Tirado has been a Dallas Police officer since December of 1988. He worked at Central Patrol Division for the majority of his career. Senior Corporal Lozada-Tirado has been assigned to the Traffic division since 2003.

Senior Corporal Lozada was married with four children, two boys and two girls.

Sen Clinton told a Wisconsin audience over the weekend that she’d been on hunting trips in years past… but when asked about it by reporters would only reveal that she’d once bagged a duck in Arkansas.

In Wausau, WI today, Clinton gave the dirty details of her duck hunting days — revealing that she surprised all her male companions when she shot that banded mallard out of the sky.

Her prowess with a gun led one Wausau resident to ask “As long as you know how to use a gun, would you be willing to show vice president Cheney how to use his?”

She joked that the world should worry about the Vice President once he’s gone. “Once he his out of office the secret service is not around to protect people from him. We better be careful about where he goes hunting. Safety protocol would be useful, don’t you think?”

Check out Hillary’s hunting tale below.

Obama Campaign Manager, David Plouffe estimates his candidate has a 136 pledged delegate lead after yesterday’s Potomac Primary wins. The Obama campaign has now won 21 contests (including 12 primaries) and, according to the campaign, has a 700,000 vote lead in terms of popular votes cast. “We couldn’t be in a stronger position right now, and the last really five days, we believe, will be looked at back at as a very decisive period in the nomination contest,” he declared. “We think it really put us on the path to the nomination.”

On a conference call with reporters, Plouffe said his candidate has the advantage. “We believe it’s next to impossible for Senator Clinton to close that pledged delegate count. The only way she could do it is winning most of the rest of the contests by 25 - 30 points. And we see not a single contest on the calendar left where we’d expect her to win by those kind of margins.” He later explained that they expect to benefit from a more relaxed primary schedule because “we believe anytime Senator Obama is able to spend time with voters in states, we have profited from that.”

The only way Senator Clinton could overcome this gap, Plouffe said, is if she wins both Texas and Ohio by “blowout” proportions - meaning a 20 point margin or greater as to win a large proportion of the delegates at stake. But Team Obama doesn’t expect that to happen - in fact, they plan on amassing more delegates themselves in both states. “At this point, even the most creative math, really does not get her ever back even in terms of pledged delegates,” Plouffe said, saying it would be “highly unlikely” that their pledged delegate lead will be eroded.

So does this mean victory or will superdelegates decide the Party’s nominee? “We believed all along that the pledged delegate leader will be the Democratic nominee of the party,” Plouffe stated. “I think there’s a growing chorus of concern out there that people do not think that superdelegates should overturn the result of the contests, so we have closed the gap with superdelegates, we’re continuing to try and attract support and we’ll continue to do that. But I think at the end of the day, if we head into June and we’ve won more states, more importantly we have a pledged delegate lead, you know at the end of the day, I think it’s much more likely than not that the superdelegates ratify that outcome,” Plouffe said.

People bet on everything these days - including American politics. According to one online trading company, it’s a safe bet that Senator Barack Obama will win the Democratic nomination. The Irish company has given the once underdog a 69.8% chance of winning the nomination versus Senator Hillary Clinton’s  30% chance.

An Iowa-based trading company shows similar odds here.  What’s more interesting is this graph showing the candidates’ odds from March of 2007 through today.