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COLUMBUS, Ohio - Sen. Hillary Clinton celebrated her victories in Tuesday's Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island presidential primaries as she jetted back to Washington.

Clinton and her campaign aides basked in their triumph of halting Sen. Barack Obama's primary-caucus winning streak at 12 victories and slowing his momentum toward capturing the Democratic presidential nomination.

"For everyone here in Ohio and across America who's ever been counted out but refused to be knocked out, for everyone who has stumbled but stood right back up, for everyone who works hard and never gives up, this one is for you," Clinton told an enthusiastic crowd of supporters in Columbus.

"We're going on. We're going strong. We're going all the way," she said. "Ohio has written a new chapter in the history of this campaign, and we're just getting started."

Clinton's path to the nomination remains bumpy despite her victories, however, because Obama still leads the New York Democratic senator in pledged delegates to the Democratic National Convention.

Former President Bill Clinton predicted before Tuesday that his wife needed to win both Ohio and Texas to keep her chances alive and to justify, in the minds of many Democratic Party officials, fighting on at least until Pennsylvania's primary on April 22, and perhaps all the way to the convention.

Even with victories in both Texas and Philadelphia, Clinton might have to fight to seat disqualified delegates from Michigan and Florida at the convention. The two states were stripped of their delegates because they violated Democratic National Committee rules by moving up the dates of their primaries. Clinton won both states in uncontested voting.

Her campaign also would have to persuade a majority of super-delegates - unpledged Democratic Party elders - to choose her over Obama at the convention. She argued Tuesday that she's defeated Obama in most of the big states that Democrats need to carry in November, including California, New York, New Jersey, Ohio and Florida.