By Greg Giroux, CQ Staff

Illinois Sen. Barack Obama easily defeated New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton in the three Democratic presidential voting events held in three states Saturday — giving him the first bragging rights after the near-draw between the candidates among the 22 states that participated in last week’s “Super Tuesday” spree of Democratic primaries and caucuses.

Obama clinched victories in caucuses in Washington state and Nebraska and added a win in the Louisiana primary, winning convincingly in each case. With most of the vote counted, Obama had more than two-thirds of the vote in Washington and Nebraska and a clear majority in Louisiana.

His strong performance came on the same day that Republican Mike Huckabee grappled to brake front-running Arizona Sen. John McCain ’s momentum in the GOP presidential campaign, with the former governor of Arkansas easily winning caucuses in Kansas and scoring a narrow victory in the Louisiana primary. McCain scored a narrow victory in caucuses held in Washington, according to Republican officials in that state.

Yet Obama — addressing supporters Saturday night in the Virginia capital of Richmond in advance of that state’s primary coming up on Tuesday — went after McCain as though he is the presumptive Republican nominee. Obama, emphasizing the theme of “change” as he has throughout his campaign, linked McCain to what Obama called the “disastrous policies” of the Bush administration.

Obama also said he would be a stronger opponent than Clinton in a general election campaign against McCain. Some recent national public opinion polls have shown Obama doing better against McCain than Clinton in hypothetical “horse race” matchups.

Clinton’s campaign shrugged off Saturday’s results, stating that Obama was expected to win all three contests and had expended more resources in them than Clinton.

The charismatic Obama has the stronger activist constituency, the kind of voters who often have a powerful impact on the outcomes of caucuses, which generally have much lower turnouts than primaries. Obama’s wins Saturday in Washington and Nebraska gave him nine clear victories among the 11 caucus states that have voted so far. And the one place that held a primary on Saturday, Louisiana, is a Deep South state in which African-Americans are roughly a third of the population — friendly turf for Obama, who has dominated among black voters in his bid to become the nation’s first black president.

The Clinton team is relying on the expectations game in hopes of playing down what appears likely to be a continued Obama roll over the next few days. Maine, another Democratic caucus state, went for Obama on Sunday. And the three contests that make up Tuesday’s regional “Chesapeake Primary” — in Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia — all have large black constituencies that boost Obama’s chances of prevailing.

So the Clinton camp is pointing beyond these contests to the big and likely more competitive primaries looming March 4 in Texas and Ohio and April 22 in Pennsylvania, three of the nation’s most populous states.

“Although the next several states that hold nominating contests this month are more favorable to the Obama campaign, we will continue to compete in them and hope to secure as many delegates as we can before the race turns to Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania,” Clinton’s campaign said in a statement.

Even if expected, Obama’s victories on Saturday were hefty. In Nebraska, he defeated Clinton in each of the state’s three congressional districts. He rolled up more than three-fourths of the vote in Nebraska’s 2nd District, which includes Omaha, the state’s biggest city.

In Washington, Obama was leading Clinton by more than a 2-to-1 ratio with nearly all of the vote counted. He had the backing of Gov. Christine Gregoire , who endorsed Obama on Friday, while Clinton was supported by Sens. Patty Murray and Maria Cantwell .

Obama led Clinton in Louisiana by 57 percent to 36 percent, with all precincts reporting. Exit polls showed Obama winning about 90 percent of the African-American vote, which was about half of the Democratic electorate, offsetting Clinton’s strong 60 percent showing about the state’s white Democratic voters.

Obama had a huge lead in Orleans Parish, which is coterminous with most of the city of New Orleans. He also led Clinton handily in Caddo Parish, which includes Shreveport in the Louisiana’s northwestern corner, and in East Baton Rouge Parish, which includes the state capital of Baton Rouge and which cast more votes in the Louisiana Democratic primary than any other parish. (Parishes are Louisiana’s equivalent of counties).

Clinton did well in some predominantly white parishes in southwestern and north-central Louisiana and also narrowly defeated Obama in St. Tammany Parish near New Orleans.

Continuing a pattern seen in most of the parties’ presidential contests so far this year, turnout was substantially higher on the Democratic side in Louisiana than on the Republican side. In the complete but unofficial returns, 384,348 Democrats and 161,319 Republicans had voted in the Louisiana primary. Obama’s 220,588 easily exceeded all the votes for the Republican candidates combined.