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Hillary Clinton, who is vowing "to carry on this campaign" despite pressure to drop out, is spending this afternoon meeting with her top donors and supporters at her home in Washington DC. This morning, she sent out a fundraising email pointing to the pressure now upon her to leave the Democratic race and asking for donations to get through the "homestretch" of the nomination battle.

"There are some people out there who want to declare this race over now, before all the ballots have been counted or even cast," Clinton writes in the email. "There are some who say they don't know why I'm in this race. So let me tell you why I'm still running."

After writing that she is remaining in the race "for everyone who needs a champion," including hardworking families and "the more than 16 million people like you who have supported me," she adds: "With your help I'm going to keep fighting until every last American has a chance to be heard, and as we learned last night in West Virginia, I know we can win."

Clinton also writes she is staying in the race "because I have the best chance of beating John McCain in November and putting America on the right track."

Last night, just after her big win in West Virginia, Clinton sent out a different fundraising appeal.

"I'm going to carry the energy of tonight's victory into the next contests in Kentucky and Oregon," Clinton wrote, adding: "We've proved conventional wisdom wrong time and again in this race. We did it again tonight in West Virginia. Let's keep going."

Barack Obama's campaign has been trying hard to limit the damage from the Democratic frontrunner's big loss in West Virginia, conceding the race in advance and suggesting it should be considered a good showing if Obama secured just 20 percent or more of the vote in the state. (He did – but still lost by 41 percentage points.)

Now comes the day after strategy: The campaign is offering up evidence that no matter what happened on Tuesday, the superdelegates and endorsements are still flowing Obama's way.

The morning the campaign announced the two most recent superdelegates to commit to Obama: Rep. Peter Visclosky of Indiana and Democrats Abroad chair Christine Schon Marques, who counts as half a superdelegate.

The Wall Street Journal also notes that Obama has secured the endorsements of three former chairmen of the Securities and Exchange Commission, one of whom served under President Bush. They join Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, who endorsed Obama earlier this year.

It’s telling that on the night Hillary Clinton took one more bow in the spotlight of a big win in the West Virginia primary, Barack Obama was winging his way to the state of Michigan to begin smoothing over bruised feelings in preparation for the general election. Speaking even louder was the fact that he wasn’t coming off a campaign day in the primary state but from Missouri - another fall battleground state.

Such is the state of the Democratic primary contest as it approaches the final five contests on the calendar. Clinton continues an increasingly quixotic effort to somehow gain a nomination all but beyond her grasp while Obama runs a parallel campaign aimed a reinforcing the inevitability of his nomination and uniting the party while at the same time gearing up for the campaign to come.

While Clinton’s decisive West Virginia win doesn’t wipe out that dynamic or change the overall direction of a race that is lurching toward an end, it won’t help Obama with that second part of his task. And there are continuing signs which, if not a threat to his ability to win the nomination, can’t be comforting for him or his party.

The split within the Democratic Party reached new highs Tuesday. According to CBS News exit polls, 74 percent of Clinton voters said they would be dissatisfied with Obama as the nominee. While that number has grown in recent contests, it represents the highest yet. In Indiana a week ago where Clinton won a tight contest, 62 percent of her voters said they would not be satisfied with Obama.

More troubling for Democrats in the general election, 59 percent of Clinton’s voters in West Virginia said they would either vote for John McCain in November or sit out the election altogether. And 61 percent said she would have the best chance to defeat McCain. The state, and its five Electoral Votes, has gone with the winner in the last four presidential elections.

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The polls close at 7:30pm ET in West Virginia but we have our first peek at some of the exit polling results. Most voters made up their minds at some time before last week – a period which has been dominated by talk of Hillary Clinton’s ability to continue in the race. Seventy eight percent of voters in the early CBS News exit polls said they had decided who they would be supporting before the past week.

As it has been throughout the primary season, the economy was once again the top issue on the minds of voters, with 64 percent saying so. Eighty eight percent said they had been directly affected by the economic slowdown and 63 percent said they were in favor of proposals to temporarily suspend the gas tax.

Change was the quality voters were looking for most in a candidate, with 48 percent saying so compared to 23 percent who said experience was. Just eight percent said the ability to win in November was the most important quality for them.

There are more signs of a split within the Democratic Party. Just 23 percent of Hillary Clinton voters in West Virginia said they would be satisfied if Barack Obama was the Democratic nominee while 75 percent said they would be dissatisfied – the highest number recorded in exit polls yet. In Indiana, 62 percent of Clinton voters said they would be dissatisfied with Obama as the nominee. Sixty one percent of Obama voters said they would be dissatisfied with Clinton as the nominee while 33 percent said they would be satisfied.

Looking ahead to the general election, 59 percent of Clinton voters say they would either vote for Republican John McCain or not vote at all if Obama is the Democratic nominee. Thirty six percent of Clinton voters said they would vote for Obama while 35 percent said they would vote for McCain and 24 percent said they would sit the election out. Fifty one percent of Obama’s voters said they would support Clinton in the general election while 31 percent said they would support McCain and 14 percent would not vote.

Other indicators: Over half, 51 percent, of West Virginia voters said they think Obama shares the views of his former pastor, Jeremiah Wright. Sixty two percent said that Bill Clinton’s campaigning in the state was an important factor in their vote. And 70 percent of Clinton voters said they think the race should continue.

The conventional wisdom is that today's primary in West Virginia – which Hillary Clinton is likely to easily win – will do little to help Clinton amplify her now-slim hopes of securing the Democratic presidential nomination.

The Clinton campaign, however, is understandably displeased with that perception – and has sent a memo out making the case for "Why West Virginia Matters."

The key line: "Given the attempts by our opponent and some in the media to declare this race over, any significant increase in voter turnout, coupled with a decisive Clinton victory, would send a strong message that Democrats remain excited and energized by Hillary’s candidacy."

The memo notes that "[e]very nominee has carried the state’s primary since 1976, and no Democrat has won the White House without winning West Virginia since 1916." It also says that a Clinton victory would come despite the fact "that Sen. Obama has outspent us on advertising, has more staff in the state, and more than double the number of offices."

Full memo below:

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For a candidate with a 177 delegate lead in the latest CBS News delegate estimate, Barack Obama can be forgiven for not caring so much about the mere 28 delegates up fro grabs in West Virginia today. Hillary Clinton can’t win them all, and even if she could, it wouldn’t do anything to improve her nearly nonexistent chances to win the nomination.

But for a campaign already plotting out strategy that would result in winning 270 Electoral Votes in November, ignoring the state altogether may be a small gamble. George W. Bush won West Virginia’s 5 Electoral Votes in both 2000 and 2004 but it’s a state Bill Clinton carried twice, making it something of a modern-day bellwether.

Obama finds himself in an awkward position today. Trailing big in the polls, his campaign didn’t want to engage Clinton directly and end up losing a one-on-one competition when he already has the nomination all but wrapped up. So he’ll be turning his attention to general election battleground states like Missouri and Michigan while Clinton takes her victory lap in West Virginia – and likely hangs on for at least one more week, if not through the end of the primaries in June.

Tactically, strategically and rhetorically, Obama is turning toward John McCain and the general election. But his primary realities are forcing him into doing something that runs counter to that goal in blowing off West Virginia. And, if Clinton manages to run up the vote big, it could be enough to pull him back into the primary campaign. If the Obama campaign is at all worried about that, they aren’t showing it. They can’t afford to.

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Is this the way the Democratic nomination battle will end, with a whimper rather than a roar? Now that Barack Obama holds the lead in just about every metric – pledged delegates, the popular vote and now even among superdelegate endorsements, the Hillary Clinton “drop-out” watch has begun in earnest.

For their part, the Obama forces are being very careful not to do anything that would make it look as though they are trying to bully or force Clinton out of the race – a posture likely to remain operative as long as Clinton doesn’t attack Obama. But just because they’re giving an opponent the room to wrap up the race on her own terms, it doesn’t mean their candidate won’t pay a price.

Obama may be taking the high road and turning his focus on the general election but in the meantime, he could take a beating tomorrow in West Virginia. A new poll from Suffolk University shows Clinton leading Obama by 36 points, 60 percent to 24 percent. While there aren’t enough votes or delegates remaining in the final six contests, margins like that in any of them – especially West Virginia where Democrats have been successful in some general elections – aren’t going to help put to rest the arguments of some Clinton backers that she’s more electable in November.

While Obama should be taking a victory lap, he could end up the primary season having lost five out of the final ten contests starting with Pennsylvania if Clinton remains in the race through the end in June. While not fatal, or perhaps not even damaging, it can’t be helpful. Think about what would have happened, for instance, if Mike Huckabee had upset John McCain in Virginia while McCain was cruising toward the nomination? He didn’t, of course, but such a turn would have resurrected serious concerns about his candidacy.

It’s hard for even the strongest Obama partisans to argue that Clinton hasn’t earned the right to finish the campaign on her own terms. But if she thrashes the prohibitive favorite at the ballot box along the way, it certainly won’t be the ending most Democrats would have written.

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In the wake of this week's primaries in Indiana and North Carolina, the results of which spurred a clear shift towards the notion that Barack Obama will be the Democratic presidential nominee, a number of questions began to swirl around Hillary Clinton. Among them: Can she still win? If she drops out, when will it be? And if she stays in, how critical will she be of her rival?

A new ad from the Clinton campaign, scheduled to run in West Virginia, provides some hints, if no clear answers. On the most basic level, the fact that the campaign is airing the ad at all is a signal that Clinton won't be leaving the race anytime soon. But perhaps more notable is the content of the ad, or, rather, what it lacks: Any casting of Obama in a critical light. The ads from both Democratic campaigns that appeared before Tuesday's primaries, by contrast, often featured direct shots at the opposition.

"She's fighting for America's middle class," an announcer says in the spot. Clinton then says she's looking to "level the playing field" against special interests. The announcer continues: "She'll end $55 billion dollars in giveaways to corporate special interests and invest it in middle class tax cuts and creating new jobs. She’ll get tough on unfair trade deals and end tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas."

"Standing up for people who weren't getting a fair shake, that's been the
purpose of my life," Clinton concludes. "And it will be the purpose of my presidency."

Watch it:

Following last night's split decision – which many saw as a victory for frontrunner Barack Obama – a number of pundits are suggesting that the Democratic race may effectively be over. But Wednesday morning, Hillary Clinton sent a signal that she plans to fight on, scheduling a noon rally in West Virginia, the next state on the primary calendar.

She'll be joined at the "Solutions for the American Economy'' event at Shepherd University by her daughter Chelsea. She also plans to hold other events in the state over the next two days, and her husband Bill is scheduled to campaign there on Thursday.

Not all the signals from the Clinton campaign were so positive: Clinton cancelled her morning show appearances today, and an aide revealed that the New York senator lent her presidential campaign $6.4 million in the past month.

UPDATE: On a conference call with reporters this morning, Clinton Communications Director Howard Wolfson said that while "many pundits have counted Senator Clinton out many times during this contest... the punditocracy does not control this nominating process – voters do."