Obama's fundraising leaves Clinton's in the dust

Barack Obama raked in $40 million in March, leaving Hillary Clinton and her $20 million in the fundraising dust and stuffing his campaign treasury so he can outspend her in the crucial Pennsylvania primary.

His haul in new donations also buttressed his argument to Democratic superdelegates that he has built a vast network of donors and volunteers that they wouldn't want to lose by denying him the nomination.

Obama has attracted nearly 1.3 million donors, largely through the Internet.

He has raised $131 million in the first three months of the year to $70 million for Clinton.

Republican John McCain's campaign has not revealed his March fundraising, but he has been far behind the Democrats.

Clinton, speaking to reporters in Burbank, Calif., in the midst of her own fundraising sweep through the state, said: "We're both raising huge amounts of money, and I am thrilled at how effective Democrats have been in raising money the last 15 or so months."

McCain yesterday was in Jacksonville, Fla., where his family lived during the Vietnam War and the 5 1/2 years he spent as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. He was continuing a tour designed to introduce himself to a general-election audience.

"We had met a power that wanted to obliterate our identities, and the cause to which we rallied was our response:

"We are free men, bound inseparably together, and by the grace of God and not your sufferance we will have our freedom restored to us," he said.

"I have never felt more powerfully free, more my own man, than when I was a small part of an organized resistance to the power that imprisoned us," the former Navy pilot said. *