Barack Obama will go through the courtship rituals of staging a public display of affection with Hillary Clinton this week which, some of her leading supporters complain, is motivated only by a desire to get his hands on the money she can raise for him.

After losing a bruising 18-month fight for the Democratic nomination, Mrs Clinton has pledged to give Mr Obama whatever support he needs to win the White House. He, in turn, has been at pains to pay generous tributes to her in recent speeches.

They will appear alongside each other on Thursday and Friday. The first event is being billed as a private meeting in Washington to introduce Mr Obama to Mrs Clinton’s big donors; the second will be out on the campaign trail – probably in one of the battleground states for the November general election.

Before then Mrs Clinton is expected to be back in the Senate for the first time since her defeat this month. Sources say that she is now reconciled to resuming her career on Capitol Hill, having all but given up on the idea of Mr Obama picking her as his running-mate or pursuing other options such as a Supreme Court seat and contesting the governorship of New York.

There is still resentment over Mr Obama’s apparent reluctance to give her a bigger role in bringing working-class and women voters – who supported her in huge numbers – over to his side. “All he wants is her donors,” a close confidant said. “He does not seem interested in anything else.”

New figures show that Mr Obama raised $21.9 million (£11 million) last month, but his income has declined steadily since he smashed all records with $55 million in February. For the first time, John McCain almost matched him last month by receiving $21.8 million, reflecting an increase each month since wrapping up the Republican nomination in March. The two candidates now have almost exactly the same amount of money to spend before their nominating conventions. Mr Obama has $33.3 million, while Mr McCain has $31.6 million.

Mr Obama has risked accusations of breaking his promises by announcing last week that he would forgo $84 million of public funding – and the strict spending caps that go with it – for the election. His campaign, having raised $296 million during the primaries, believes that it can rake in two – or even three – times the amount that will be available to Mr McCain under the taxpayer-supported system.

Mrs Clinton is in a position to turn such plans into reality. She raised more than $200 million from hundreds of thousands of donors, far more than Mr McCain’s $122 million. She also finished May with debts of $22.5 million, more than half of which were loans from her family fortune.

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