Clinton and Obama face last big primaries

Dawn will barely have broken this morning in Indiana and North Carolina when Democrats in both states head in probably record numbers to polling stations to make their choice for the party's presidential nominee. And the candidates – Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama – will barely have slept.

The struggle for their party's nod reached a new intensity last night as Mrs Clinton dashed between events across Indiana, where polls show her potentially poised to deny Mr Obama a victory he sorely needs. Her task in North Carolina looked tougher but perhaps not impossible.

Mr Obama – with help from Stevie Wonder - received a rapturous reception form an estimated 21,000 supporters crammed into American Legion Field in Indianapolis after nightfall. He gave a speech that offered familiar inspirational rhetoric. He sought also to separate himself clearly from his opponent.

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"I am proud that this campaign has been positive from the start," he said to whoops of appreciation. "I am not running to win an election. I am running to change this country."

Mrs Clinton continued to promote her plan to suspend the federal petrol tax for 90 days and took her message a step further suggesting that as president she would attempt to break up OPEC. "They can no longer be a cartel," she said in Merrillville, Indiana. "That's not a market. That's a monopoly."

But she was taken to task by Mr Obama. At his rally, he wondered out loud why she had never mentioned OPEC until the night before a crucial vote and repeated his charge that her petrol tax proposal amounts to vote-getting gimmickry. More than 200 economists, 2007 Nobel Prize winner Roger Myerson, yesterday signed a joint letter calling the plan a bad idea.

Looking more energised than he has in weeks, a shirt-sleeved Mr Obama appealed to the crowd not to be "hoodwinked" by "politicians saying something just to get through the next election. We have had enough of that." He asked: "Are we going to be the party that tells the truth?" And added that Americans "wanted honesty and truthfulness from their leaders. They are tired of spin and PR."

The rally opened with a live performance by Mr Wonder, who led the whole park in singing the name Obama in rising chords. After it was all over at almost 11 pm, Mr Obama headed to a manufacturing plant on the east side of Indianapolis, in a final bid to beef up support in among working class voters.

While a double-victory today would provide a huge psychological boost for Mr Obama, the results tonight may be even more crucial for Mrs Clinton, whose path to the nomination remains extremely narrow. If she can pip Mr Obama in Indiana and come close behind in North Carolina she will have fresh ammunition to make the case to party elders that she is the candidate better able to beat John McCain.

While Mr Obama's delegate lead over his rival still looks insurmountable, he still can take nothing for granted, especially with the furore over the Reverend Jeremiah Wright still haunting his campaign. "We're working as hard as we can and I desperately want every single vote here, in North Carolina and Indiana," he pleaded during a visit to a North Carolina construction site.

It's why Damont Glenn, 28, a funeral parlour worker, took the day off yesterday and hurried to his local motor vehicle office on the South Side of Indianapolis to renew his state identification card which expired in January. Thanks to a Republican-sponsored law – upheld last week by the US Supreme Court – only residents with valid government-issued ID cards will be allowed into the polling booths today.

Normally closed on Mondays, motor vehicle bureaux opened exceptionally all across Indiana to issue the free ID cards after Democrats complained that the new law would depress turnout particularly among African Americans, which in turn threatened to damage the Obama campaign disproportionately.

"I am only one person and I only have one vote but that vote might decide who the next president will be," reasoned Mr Glenn, whose father is the pastor of a black church in the city. His mission today: to put Mr Obama over the top. "I like the aura of the man and I like him because he has not really attacked Hillary Clinton like she has attacked him. I respect him for that. She had been all about dirty tricks."

Just ahead of him in line was Kevin Hall, 39, and his "life partner", Phyllis Hall, 52. They too held expired cards and wanted to vote today. Their hearts were also with the Illinois Senator. "He talks about things that matter to me," said Mr Hall who is unemployed. "He says he is going to change things for the poor. Everyone else talks about the middle class and we get pushed out of the picture."

Not that Mr Hall is counting on Mr Obama for too much. "He could just be talking too, you know, telling us what we want to know before getting into office. People will say anything to get votes."

That is precisely the charge levelled by Mr Obama at Mrs Clinton over her gasoline proposal a move, she claims, could be financed by a windfall tax on oil companies. .

The petrol squabble took centre-stage in Indianapolis on Sunday night when both candidates addressed a ballroom of 2,300 party activists at the city convention centre. In a speech that drew noticeably greater applause than Mrs Clinton's, Senator Obama said her plan was nothing more than a "shell game" that would not help anyone.

Her tone growing more populist by the day, Mrs Clinton emphasised her commitment to fight on whatever the odds. "There's one thing you know about me," she declared. "I am no shrinking violet. I may get knocked down. But I will always get right back up, and I will never quit until the job is finished."

Few in the room – or in the wider Democratic Party – ever doubted it.