Her campaign on the ropes, Hillary Clinton is rushing to corral supporters and build her field operation in Texas ahead of the state's must-win primary March 4. And on Thursday, she gets the chance to fulfill her frequent calls to debate rival Barack Obama.

The two square off at The University of Texas in Austin as the one-time Democratic front-runner attempts to rebound from 11 consecutive defeats to Obama since Feb. 5.

Trailing in delegates and fundraising, she's banking on big comebacks in Texas and Ohio, which are voting along with Rhode Island and Vermont in 12 days. She's trying to undercut Obama's momentum by accusing him of floating empty rhetoric and lacking solutions outside his generic calls for "hope" and "change."

"I am only here because millions of people have voted for me and hundreds of thousands have contributed and supported me through tough times and easy times," Clinton said in Laredo, Texas, urging supporters to participate in early voting, which began Wednesday. She asked them to think about who they want in the White House "when some crisis breaks out somewhere around the world."

She is spending a lot of time in areas heavy with Latino voters, a group that has been clutch for her in recent elections. With 193 delegates up for grabs in the hybrid primary-then-caucus process, Texas is the biggest and most crucial prize on March 4.

"I want you (to) think who is best able to stand on stage with Senator John McCain and make the case to elect a Democrat in the fall," Clinton said Thursday, repeating an argument that she's better suited to go up against the likely GOP nominee.

A new FOX News poll, though, shows Obama has the edge over Clinton in a hypothetical general election match-up against McCain. The national poll of 900 registered voters from Feb. 19-20 has Obama beating McCain by 4 points, and McCain beating Clinton by 3 points.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll showed the Democratic candidates in a dead heat in Texas, with Clinton leading Obama by 1 point, 48 to 47 percent.

The two have debated at least 18 times this season, and Obama initially resisted calls from the Clinton camp to commit to further debates after Feb. 5, arguing it was more important to have face time with voters.

He then agreed to meet her in Texas, and later in Ohio, before March 4 -- but Clinton still taunted him in TV ads last week for not debating her in Wisconsin.

The Austin debate will give Clinton her chance to trip up Obama, as he steadily picks up endorsements and wins. He scored twin victories in Wisconsin and Hawaii Tuesday and the backing of the Teamsters union the next day. He also won the endorsement Thursday of the Change to Win labor federation, an AFL-CIO breakaway group that claims 6 million members.

The campaign has claimed a "wide, wide lead," arguing that Clinton basically needs to blow Obama out of the water in the upcoming elections to regain her footing.

Bill Clinton, campaigning across Texas for his wife, confirmed in Beaumont Wednesday that March 4 is do-or-die.

"If she wins Texas and Ohio I think she will be the nominee. If you don't deliver for her then I don't think she can be. It's all on you," he said.

Garry Mauro, head of Clinton's Texas campaign, said the former president was probably right.

"But the other side is Obama has to win Ohio and Texas and Pennsylvania as well. He has yet to win a big state," he added.

Mauro candidly told FOX News that Clinton's national campaign made a mistake by deciding not to prepare to fight for votes or delegates in any of the primaries or caucuses between Super Tuesday and the March 4 primaries. Super Tuesday Feb. 5 ended in a de facto draw, pushing the race well into the ensuing contests.

"There was a basic problem with the game plan at the national headquarters," Mauro said. "They believed after we won all the big states it would be obvious that we were gonna be the presidential nominee and we didn't need to prepare for those 10 states. They were wrong."

Mauro is the first top official affiliated with the campaign to criticize publicly Clinton's national campaign strategy. His candor, however, reflects what has been painfully obvious to Clinton loyalists since Super Tuesday -- that the campaign misread the duration of the campaign and made no effort to build get-out-the-vote operations in any of the states where primaries and caucuses have been held since Super Tuesday.

While internal debates rage at Clinton headquarters over Clinton's message, Democratic operatives sympathetic to Clinton told FOX News the bigger problem is more basic -- that the campaign has done nothing to woo voters on a systematic basis since Super Tuesday and is now rushing resources into Texas and Ohio to build field operations that were non-existent anywhere else after Feb. 5.

Mauro said Clinton is organizing aggressively in Texas and said top operatives from Clinton's operations in New Hampshire and California -- both states she won -- are directing field operations here.

But he conceded Obama arrives in Texas with "more momentum and money" than Clinton and that the New York senator will have to play catch-up.

Federal Election Commission reports filed Wednesday show how she's struggling to keep up with Obama financially.

Clinton raised nearly $14 million in January, including about $1 million for the general.

But Obama's whopping income last month makes him the top fundraiser ever in a contested primary. He raised $36 million in January, $4 million more than his campaign had initially stated. Of that, about $900,000 could be used only in a general election.

Obama's delegate total, which includes new superdelegate endorsements, increased to 1,358.5 Thursday. Clinton was at 1,264. Democrats Abroad, expatriates who vote in the primary, send 14 delegates to the convention, each assigned with a 1/2-delegate vote. Obama was pronounced the winner of that contest Thursday.

It will take 2,025 delegates to claim the nomination at this summer's convention.

FOX News' Major Garrett, Aaron Bruns and Shushannah Walshe and The Associated Press contributed to this report.