EYEWITNESS: THE CROWD was chanting "Hillary, Hillary" and waving signs in Spanish and English but with the Texas primary only 10 days away, Bill Clinton had no time for such displays of fervour.
"Come on," he hushed them. "This is serious here." The former president was standing on the back of a truck in a corner of Lion's Park, a vast field next to a strip mall in Corpus Christi on the southern Texas coast. This part of the state is predominantly Hispanic and Catholic, with restaurants offering Lenten Specials and Spanish heard more often than English.
If Hillary Clinton is to win Texas, she must win heavily here to compensate for Barack Obama's advantage in big cities like Dallas and Houston and the liberal state capital of Austin.
"Once again, the pundits are dancing on her grave," Clinton told the crowd of mostly elderly and mostly female supporters.
"Texas is going to decide this. If she wins in Texas and Ohio, she'll win in Pennsylvania and she'll go on to win the nomination and become the president of the United States".
For much of the past two months, Clinton has promoted his wife's candidacy in lengthy, sometimes rambling speeches that focused more on his own achievements in office than on her qualifications for it. Now that Obama is within reach of seizing the Democratic nomination, however, the former president's message is more urgent, a plea to voters to choose experience over the promise of change.
"I personally would prefer to have someone who had a few battle scars, someone who had even made a few mistakes," he said.
"You have to decide if that is more important than having a feeling of change and beginning all over again".
For Elisabeth Hernandez, who came to the 8am Clinton rally with her daughter, the choice is a no-brainer.
"I don't like Obama. He makes no sense to me the way he speaks. And I don't got no sympathy for Muslims," she said.
When I told her that Obama is a devout Christian and had never been a Muslim, her eyes narrowed.
"Yes, he is," she said.
"And I know also he don't can swear on the flag and on the Bible. No sir, I'm sorry. You know, anybody can believe what he want to believe and I believe what I know."
A safe distance apart from the Clinton rally, Sylvia Samaniego led a small group of Obama supporters who smiled and waved at the Clinton supporters.
Obama was in Corpus Christi the previous day, addressing 6,500 people at the America Bank Centre, many of whom had waited in line for more than 12 hours. It is the passionate devotion Obama inspires in his supporters that the Clinton campaign finds most maddening and difficult to puncture and the rapture was on full display in Corpus Christi.
"Believe in something bigger than yourself," urged Gilbert Morales, the 20-year-old history student who introduced Obama.
"Believe and listen to someone who is larger than life, someone who is the essence of change." Obama's success has as much to do with meticulous organisation and hard work, however, as it does with the heightened feelings he inspires. Before he started campaigning in Texas, he had 150,000 volunteers in the state, a resource that could make a decisive difference in the delegate count on March 4th.
Texas chooses 65 per cent of its delegates in a primary but the rest are selected at caucuses held in thousands of polling stations 15 minutes after the polls close. Obama is counting on this curiosity, which he calls "the Texas two-step" to give him the edge next week.
"I think that Hillary will probably win the popular vote but he will win the delegates because the heavy delegates are centred in the urban areas and he is doing extremely well," Samaniego said.
"I'm a Hispanic and most of my family are supporting Hillary . . . Then again, there's the new type of Latina - or Obamatinas, as I like to call myself - and I think we're ready for change and a new direction for our country."
Clinton attracted as big a crowd as Obama when she came to Corpus Christi earlier this month but her campaign has been less aggressive than Obama's in securing commitments from supporters to campaign actively ahead of March 4th.
"The Obama event was all about voters," Samaniego said.
"We had our volunteers lined up with clipboards making sure we got their signatures . . . we're going to get them to the polls, that kind of organisation. It takes the extra effort and right now, Hillary hasn't got that.
It's just masses. But what are you going to do with that? You've got to direct them."
Samaniego acknowledges that there is little to choose between the candidates on policy and that Obama is, if anything, more conservative than Clinton on some domestic issues. She believes, however, that voters are moving towards Obama as the candidate who best embodies the kind of change the country is yearning for after seven years of George W Bush.
"And there's charisma," she says. "You can't not address it. He's got charisma."
