Sen. Barack Obama's response to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright's incendiary appearance on Monday at the National Press Club is not just a day late and a dollar short: It's a month and a half late and a few million dollars short.

Wright's self-promoting and racially divisive remarks have set back a half-century of progress on race relations in the United States. Obama's long-delayed denunciation of his former minister seems to have come too late to save the senator's political self-immolation.

Obama's first self-destructive act was his secretly recorded remarks before wealthy San Francisco donors describing working-class white voters as "bitter" and "clinging" to guns and religion. That remark cost him dearly in the Pennsylvania primary among Roman Catholics and working-class whites.

Obama's second act of self-immolation was his delay in denouncing a man who blames whites for creating the AIDS virus to wipe out people of color and calls America a terrorist nation. Obama's denunciation of Wright yesterday and the time it took him to sever ties to Wright may well end up costing Obama large portions of the rest of the white voting demographic.

We may soon start to see the defection from his campaign of superdelegate support. The New York Times reports, "Eileen Macoll, a Democratic county chairman from Washington State who has not chosen a candidate, said she was stunned at the extent of national attention the episode [Wright's remarks] has drawn, and she said she believed it would give superdelegates pause. 'I'm a little surprised at how much traction it is getting, and I do believe it is beginning to reflect negatively on Senator Obama's campaign,' Ms. Macoll said. 'I think he's handling it very well, but I think it's almost impossible to make people feel comfortable about this.' "

HuffingtonPost.com quotes a SurveyUSA North Carolina poll showing Sen. Hillary Clinton closing in fast on Obama there. This poll was released the same day that North Carolina's governor, a superdelegate, endorsed Clinton and the same day that Obama finally denounced Wright. In other words, the full impact of both these events was not yet felt when this poll was taken:

April 29: A SurveyUSA North Carolina poll shows a considerably closer race than the other polling firms. SurveyUSA also gave a smaller initial lead that anyone else in the race, but the tightening is now showing across the board:

Barack Obama: 49%

Hillary Clinton: 44%"

As soon as polls start to show the extent of alienation Obama has produced among white Democratic voters, superdelegates won't be far behind. If Obama does not carry North Carolina next week by double digits, he will be in serious trouble. Look for calls by party leaders for him to drop out if his victory in North Carolina is not convincing.

In case you needed one, here from washingtonpost.com is a refresher on what Wright said on Monday:

From the moment he entered the room, Wright seemed to be looking to stir controversy; he was escorted by Jamil Muhammad, a leader of the Nation of Islam, which contributed to the minister's prominent security detail. Speaking before an audience that included Marion Barry, Cornel West, the New Black Panther Party's Malik Zulu Shabazz and Nation of Islam protocol director Claudette Muhammad, Wright praised Louis Farrakhan, defended the view that Zionism is racism, accused the United States of terrorism, repeated his belief that the government created AIDS to extinguish racial minorities, and stood by his suggestion that "God damn America."

And remember what Obama said about this man six weeks ago:

"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community."

By Bonnie Erbe, U.S. News & World Report, April 30, 2008

When Barack Obama made his official announcement that he was running for President over 14 months ago in Springfield, Illinois, the Senator made sure that his pastor Jeremiah Wright had no speaking role and was kept away from the ceremony. Obama campaign manager David Axelrod has admitted that there were concerns back then about what Wright might say.

"I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely -- just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed."

But now, the Senator has really had enough of Reverend Wright. In a press conference Tuesday, Obama condemned Wright, and claimed that Wright had offended him with his latest tirade on Monday at the National Press Club.

Many Americans did not have to wait for Wright's talk to the National Press Club to have taken offense. In fact, there is nothing the Reverend said Monday or with Bill Moyers on PBS, or at the NAACP dinner in Detroit (to thunderous ovations) that was in any substantive way different from what he has been saying over and over again for decades (to thunderous applause among the thousands packing Trinity Church). We had already heard about the US government bringing AIDS into the black community, and how Louis Farrakhan was a great American.

So why did this particular performance by Wright finally create the need for Obama to speak up more forcefully? That answer is simple: falling poll numbers in Indiana, North Carolina and nationally, and to that, we can safely conclude, Barack Obama takes great offense.

One of the charter members of the Obama media worship team, Chris Matthews, has already compared Obama's "courageous" actions in denouncing Wright to those of King Henry II telling Thomas Becket where to get off 8 centuries ago. That comparison will likely not resonate with many voters. Tom Shales, Hendrik Hertzberg, Andrew Sullivan, and other members of this flack troupe are sure to chime in with their vigorous applause, and with pleas for the media to get back to the real story of George Bush's crimes against humanity.

Barack Obama has been showing up at Wright's church for close to 20 years and was exposed to his brand of crackpot racist anti-American lunacy on more than one occasion during this long period. So it is really way too generous, I think, to applaud the Senator for his dramatic "Sister Souljah moment" with his late-to-the party denunciation of Wright. A real Sister Souljah moment would have required leaving Trinity Church before Wright became politically inconvenient for Obama, and not when Wright is beginning to threaten Obama's bid for the Democratic nomination.

Will Obama's pivot work politically? If he earns a split on May 6th, winning North Carolina, and losing Indiana, he will have avoided a political freefall. North Carolina is a state with a 21% African American population, and black voters make up about a third of Democratic Party primary voters. Given that Obama has been winning 90% of the vote among blacks, he would need but 30% of the white vote to win a narrow victory in North Carolina.

It is likely that Obama's team saw a sharp drop-off in white support in North Carolina with the latest Wright feeding frenzy the last few days. While most pundits have been focusing on the perceived tight race in Indiana, and assumed North Carolina was a lock for Obama, the Clinton team has been spending more money on media in North Carolina the last week than in Indiana, and sent Bill Clinton down to work the white rural areas, the same kinds of places where he helped deliver huge margins for Hillary in Pennsylvania.

Then came word that popular Governor Michael Easley was backing Clinton. So suddenly the Clintons are smelling the possibility of a sweep, including an upset in North Carolina, or at the least a very close finish there. These results would put more doubts in the minds of the nearly 300 super delegates who remain uncommitted that the Obama campaign is a train wreck waiting to happen in the general election.

One part of this story that I have not seen discussed is that while the Obama distancing from Wright is aimed at shoring up support among white voters, his campaign seems to take for granted that he will suffer no losses among black voters for his sharp statements Tuesday. In other words, they are counting on black voters winking and nodding their approval of Obama's words, as if Wright were out there on his own, when in fact he is not, and many ministers and black talk radio hosts speak just as Wright does, and have been doing so for years.

In fact, we have been told repeatedly these last few weeks, that whites just do not understand the black church vernacular, and we live in separate societies on Sundays. This may be true, but Obama is now saying he is not part of that angry chorus on Sundays, and his church's minister is out of line. Not to play the cynic, but I find this sudden split a bit inauthentic. Senator Obama has told us about Reverend Wright many times before: he was his pastor, his mentor, his moral compass, his sounding board, his teacher. But now Wright has said these horrible things at the National Press Club. And so, he must be sacrificed, at least for the benefit of lower middle income rural white voters in North Carolina and Indiana.

Barack Obama has been able to get away with projecting a different image to different groups as he has risen up the political ladder in Chicago. As long as he was a state senator or even a United States Senator, he could get away with fealty to Reverend Wright, dinner parties at Bill Ayers' house, all the while assuring white middle class and working class voters that he was a man interested in bipartisanship good government. But as many a politician before him has learned, a presidential race is an entirely different political beast.

By Richard Baehr, Real Clear Politics, April 30, 2008

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Hillary Clinton appeared Wednesday to be gaining on Barack Obama in two key primary states, after her Democratic foe tried to quell another damaging uproar sparked by his fiery former pastor.

The White House rivals fought another day of fierce turf battles in midwestern Indiana and North Carolina on the east coast, which hold Democratic primaries on Tuesday in a crucial phase of the end-game in their gripping race.

Though Obama leads in nominating contests, elected delegates and the all-important fundraising stakes, Clinton's message seems to be hitting home after her campaign-saving victory in Pennsylvania last week.

But she needs to capitalize on Obama's recent struggles, as she tries to convince "superdelegates" -- the professional Democratic politicians who effectively hold the nomination in their hands -- that Obama is unelectable.

A Howey-Gauge poll in Indiana released Tuesday had Obama up by just 47 to 45 percentage points, well within the margin of error, with eight percent of likely primary voters undecided.

Clinton had trailed by 15 points in the same poll in February.

A Public Policy poll had Clinton up eight points, weighting the average of recent polls in the state by RealClearPolitics.com in her favor, showing her up two points.

Indiana is a true battleground between the rivals, as it is packed with blue-collar white voters feeling the economic pinch who normally favor Clinton, but much of it is blanketed by the media market in Obama's hometown of Chicago.

In North Carolina, a state where Obama hopes a large African-American population will help carry him to victory, he leads the RealClearPolitics average by 10 points, but a Survey USA poll Tuesday had him up by only five.

Clinton got a boost on Tuesday with the endorsement of North Carolina Governor Mike Easley who declared that she made Rocky Balboa, the fictional boxer played by Sylvester Stallone, look like a "pansy."

Both Clinton and Obama were campaigning in Indiana on Wednesday, as their campaign teams blitzed North Carolina with ads and cranked up the political ground game.

US media commentators on Wednesday began to assess how deeply Pastor Jeremiah Wright's latest fiery comments had damaged the Obama campaign, after the Illinois Senator sharply rejected his friend of 20 years on Tuesday.

"I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened over the spectacle that we saw yesterday," Obama said, portraying Wright, who made a weekend media tour, as antithetical to his calls for unity.

"I have known Reverend Wright for almost 20 years," he said of the man who conducted his marriage and baptized his two daughters, as he spoke to reporters in Winston Salem, North Carolina.

"The person I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago," Obama said.

"His comments were not only divisive and destructive but I believe they end up giving comfort to those that prey on hate. I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black Church.

"They certainly don't portray accurately my values and beliefs. If Reverend Wright thinks that is political posturing, as he put it, then he doesn't know me very well."

Wright had previously said that AIDS was a racist plot created by the US government and said after the September 11 attacks in 2001 that black citizens should not sing "God Bless America" but "God Damn America" to protest their historic treatment by whites.

Neither Clinton nor Obama can now reach the 2,025 pledged delegates doled out in primary and caucus contests to claim the Democratic nomination outright.

So the fate of the party's presidential pick to take on Republican Senator John McCain lies in the hands of the nearly 800 superdelegates who can vote how they like at the party's convention in Denver, Colorado, in August.

AFP, April 30, 2008

South Bend, Ind.--As Hillary Clinton continues virtually non-stop campaigning between North Carolina and Indiana, the candidate and her team are showing signs of increased confidence.

After spending weeks blasting Barack Obama at any potential opening, Clinton aides have spent the past couple of days privately rather gleeful about Obama's plight with his former pastor, though they've said little publicly. Asked at a press conference on Monday about the matter, the candidate quickly sidestepped Obama's relationship with Jeremiah Wright to blast Arizona Senator John McCain, saying his condemnation of an ad being run by the North Carolina Republican Party that mentions Wright was not forceful enough.

"It's the gift that keeps on giving," noted one Clinton aide of Wright.

In recent days, Clinton's jabs at Obama have been gentle and often unnamed, far from her "meet me in Ohio" and "shame on you, Barack Obama" blasts on the eve of the vote in Ohio. She spent the weekend challenging him to debates, but even dropped that this week to criticize Obama for not supporting a temporary suspension of the federal gas tax.

Clinton aides think that even if the measure is a limited way to reduce gas prices, it allows the candidate to bash oil companies and cast her opponent against an idea that has political appeal.

Clinton continues to cast herself as the candidate of "solutions" rather than "speeches" in an implied criticism of Obama, but in a more mocking way than a sharp-edged tone.

"If all you had to do was show up in Washington and say 'let's change' I think Evan and I would have figured that out," she said in one stop in Indiana as she traveled there over the weekend with Sen. Evan Bayh.

Her operatives speak confidently about winning in Indiana. They are publicly playing down their chances of victory in North Carolina, but her schedule suggests otherwise. Clinton is almost spending as much time in the Tar Heel state as the must-win state of Indiana--as is her husband, who is campaigning extensively in rural towns in both states. Her aides think finishing only a few points behind Obama in North Carolina and winning in Indiana and other states in May could push her to a lead in the overall popular vote, even without counting votes in Michigan and Florida.

Ace Smith, Clinton's North Carolina state director, is repeating the campaign's mantra that a win in the Tar Heel State would be "the upset of the century." Clinton operatives in both Indiana and North Carolina are targeting independent voters in both states, believing a demographic that heavily favored Obama in early primaries is now shifting to the New York Senator. And the endorsement of Gov. Mike Easley of North Carolina added to the Clinton camp's sense of momentum there.

"He's a very popular governor," Smith said.

Clinton herself seems to be speaking more easily about two controversial parts of her presidential run: her personality and her husband.

"Now, I know there are some people who say, 'Oh my goodness, she is tough,'" Clinton told a crowd in Salisbury, North Carolina on Monday. "Well, if you'd had my life you'd be tough, too."

Asked at a press conference that day about her husband's role in the campaign, she said,
"I'm very proud of the role my husband is playing in the campaign. I think it's very helpful to have the only successful two-term Democratic president since Franklin Roosevelt campaign for me."

And in a more cosmetic change, Clinton's staff upgraded its travel from a 717 to MD-80 airplane. The former, smaller plane had a restroom only in the rear, forcing the Former First Lady to walk by the press corps every time she headed to the lavatory. The latter is more expensive to fly, suggesting the cash-strapped campaign may be in a slightly better financial situation.

Of course, many challenges remain for Clinton. Obama has an almost insurmountable lead among pledged delegates and in the popular vote and is gaining on Clinton's lead among superdelegates. Increasingly, the Democratic primary seems "demographically polarized" in the words of one of Clinton's staffers. White working class voters, older women and Latinos are sticking with Clinton, while the young, blacks and voters with college degrees side with Obama, a development that favors Obama in the long run, as he is already ahead and his base seems guaranteed not to abandon him.

And Clinton, who packed three fundraisers around four events on Monday in North Carolina, is still being vastly outspent in both of these key states by Obama, who almost never holds events to raise money because he is so effective online. The $300,000 Clinton raised in the Tar Heel State pales in comparison to what Obama raises many days without any effort.

And her negative ratings have spiked through the nomination process, making it harder to make her electability case to Democratic superdelegates.

But the New York Senator seems almost to be basking in the midst of an increasingly long campaign that has at times exhausted her opponent and her own staffers, who are constantly rotating on and off the road.

Comparing the campaign to a hiring decision, as she often does, Clinton told a crowd in Concord, North Carolina on Monday, "we've had the longest interview for any job."

But she quickly added, "I'm available and I would love to serve."

Barack Obama is scrambling to put his presidential bid back on track after denouncing his former pastor.

Obama's move comes as he and Hillary Clinton push onward in a nomination struggle that is dividing the Democratic Party.

With key primaries in Indiana and North Carolina looming next week, their fight has given Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain weeks to unite his party and define his candidacy with few major challenges from the opposition.

At a news conference, Obama denounced Rev Jeremiah Wright whose comments and highly publicised appearances have threatened to sink his historic bid for the White House.

While he holds an apparently unassailable lead in elected delegates, the Wright controversy had created a heavy drag on Obama's momentum.

His refusal to sever ties to the theologian was seen as part of the reason Clinton turned in a nearly 10-point victory in Pennsylvania last week.

She has used her performance there to argue that the party's key superdelegates should back her as the most electable Democrat in the November general election.

There are about 800 Democratic superdelegates, officeholders and party officials who can vote for either candidate regardless of the results of state primary and caucus contests. Clinton has a narrow 21 superdelegate lead while Obama has outdistanced Clinton 1,729.5 to 1,595.5 overall.

With only nine state and territorial contests remaining, Clinton cannot achieve the 2,025 delegate count needed for the nomination without capturing most of the superdelegates who remain uncommitted.

That would put the party hierarchy at odds with Democratic voters and could further deepen the Democratic split.

DURHAM, North Carolina (Reuters) - Racially charged rhetoric by his former pastor has pushed U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama to a place he didn't want to be -- trying to ease white voters' worries about where he stands on race issues, while retaining black support.

The issue has disrupted Obama's campaign, in which he portrays himself as a uniter after years of American political and racial polarization. It threatens to jeopardize his edge over Hillary Clinton in the state-by-state race to be nominated the Democratic candidate for the November election.

The Illinois senator has been put on the defensive before critical votes in Indiana and North Carolina next week, forced to denounce comments by Rev. Jeremiah White that could foster a view among white voters that Obama is a black radical.

Wright repeated assertions this week that the United States deserved some blame for the September 11 attacks and said Washington played some role in spreading AIDS to blacks, who are disproportionately affected by the HIV virus.

Extracts from some of Wright's sermons surfaced in the media last month, prompting a widely praised speech by Obama on race issues. At the time, Obama distanced himself from the views of the man who recently retired as pastor of the Chicago church which Obama has attended since 1992 and who presided over Obama's marriage and baptized his two daughters.

But on Tuesday, with Wright's appearances dominating the media, Obama roundly denounced them as "outrageous" and "appalling." "I want to be very clear that moving forward, Rev. Wright does not speak for me. He does not speak for our campaign," Obama said.

Obama said he did not know the impact of Wright's views on voters. But African Americans interviewed in Durham, North Carolina, said they feared Wright's sudden prominence would give white voters a reason to abandon Obama's campaign.

"RINGING A BELL"

"He (Wright) keeps ringing a bell that doesn't need to be rung and I am saying 'why would he do that?'" said Wilma Dillard, owner of Dillard's Barbeque, a popular restaurant in a largely black suburb of Durham.

"For the educated whites, they may dismiss Wright but for the non-educated they will be intimidated and see it as a threat from the black man they have always feared," Dillard said in a view echoed by other African Americans.

Durham city councilor Michael Page, who is also a Baptist minister, said Wright's views should be seen in the context of his long fight against inequality but he also said blacks he knew were "livid" with the timing of Wright's remarks.

Black voters have helped give Obama an edge in his contest with Clinton and they will likely play a major role in North Carolina, where they constitute around 40 percent of the Democratic electorate, said politics professor Andrew Taylor at North Carolina State University.

In Indiana, where the race has been neck-and-neck, blacks represent a much smaller slice of the electorate and the state has a big population of less affluent whites, who helped Clinton win in Pennsylvania last week.

In one indication of the damage Wright could cause among white voters, people in a restaurant in Shelbyville, in southeast Indiana, said the pastor made them doubt whether Obama was trustworthy.

"I definitely don't like Obama because of the mess with him and his pastor. I don't think he's been honest about it," said Candace Demmin, 37, as she had lunch with her mother.

"How can you go to a church for 20 years and not hear your minister say something off-color? Either he's heard it and is lying about it, or he's lying about going to church as much as he does," said Demmin. She said she had yet to decide who to support in Tuesday's primary.

"SIT DOWN, SHUT UP"

African Americans make up around 13 percent of the U.S. population and some express anger at what they say is continued discrimination in a country in which a history of slavery and other forms of racial oppression contradict national values.

Other Americans argue that the United States, while not perfect, has done much to overcome racial injustice and say blacks should let go of any bitterness and work harder to resolve problems they face.

Obama has made his ability to bridge America's divides a central part of his campaign and roots his capacity to heal a racial divide in part on the fact that he was born to a Kenyan father and white American mother.

But if Wright remains in the public eye he could serve to render Obama less neutral in terms of race, said Charmaine McKissock-Melton, a professor of English at North Carolina Central University who supports Obama.

"It (Wright's controversial appearances) makes Barack seem black and prior to this time he was just Barack Obama .... If you really want to help your candidate why don't you sit down and shut up," she said.

By Matthew Bigg, Reuters, April 30, 2008

While Hillary Clinton aides don't acknowledge it directly, her momentum from a win in Pennsylvania may be blunted on Tuesday by one of the persistent problems of her candidacy: her struggles with black voters.

While polls show her effectively tied with Barack Obama in Indiana, she would gain more among both delegates and in the popular vote if she won the other state voting on May 6, North Carolina. But experts expect that more than a third of the voters in the Tar Heel state will be black, and according to National Election Pool exit polling, Obama has won by double-digits in all of the states where more than 30 percent of Democratic voters were black: South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, Louisiana, Maryland and Virginia.

Out of 32 states where exit polls were conducted, nine states had primary electorates where more than a quarter of the electorate was black, and of those, Clinton won only Tennessee, which she carried by 13 points on the strength of her 41-point margin among white voters.

Of course, other demographics suggest Tuesday's outcome is still up for grabs and largely dependent on turnout. In South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Louisiana, Obama won overwhelmingly in part because of his fervent support among blacks, who comprised more than 40 percent of the electorate. In Maryland and Virginia, where around a third of the voters were black, and in Georgia, he was helped by high-percentages of college graduates, another Obama strength, and by better-than-average performances among all white voters.

In North Carolina, about four in 10 likely voters have college degrees, according to a Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, compared to nearly six in 10 in Maryland and Virginia and more than half in Georgia. In some ways the Tar Heel State is closer to Tennessee, where 35 percent of Democratic primary voters were college graduates.

In short, a very strong finish for Clinton among white voters without college degrees could put her in position to win the state if she can also peel off a small amount of the black vote. Obama could blow her out if black turnout is over 40 percent or he performs as strongly among white working class voters as he did in a state like North Carolina's neighbor, Virginia.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton this morning won the backing of North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley, and she's just announced another big superdelegate.

Rep. Ike Skelton, a well-respected Democrat from Missouri who is chairman of the House Armed Services committee, endorsed the former first lady.

Sen. Barack Obama narrowly won Missouri on Super Tuesday, but Clinton won 61 percent of the vote in Skelton's district, in western Missouri and comprising much of the Kansas City suburbs.

Skelton's endorsement comes a month after another powerful one from Pennsylvania Rep. Jack Murtha, Defense Appropriations Subcommittee chairman.

Here's Skelton's release:

Harrisonville, MO - Today, U.S. Representative Ike Skelton released the following statement regarding the Democratic Presidential contest:

"It is my intention as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention to vote for Senator Hillary Clinton because of her support in rural America, her commitment to National Security, and her dedication to our men and women in uniform."

By Christina Bellantoni, April 29, 2008, The Washington Times

Hillary Clinton left North Carolina Tuesday with a big endorsement in her pocket while Barack Obama hopes he has left behind the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. as both played full-court-press Wednesday in Indiana, a state that will determine if Clinton gets to play on in the Democratic race.

Voting there is set for less than a week a way on May 6, the same day the two will battle for votes in North Carolina. The RealClearPolitics.com average of recent polls shows Clinton ahead of Obama by 2.2 percentage points., whereas in North Carolina, Obama leads Clinton in the same average by 10.2 percentage points.

Jobs and the economy were the name of the game Wednesday. Coming off more news that gas prices were reaching record levels and a stagnant national economic report, Clinton started her day with a campaign supporter in South Bend, Ind., heading to a gas station for a fill-up.

Although she was expected to do the pumping herself during what was billed as a "normal" commute for Deluxe Sheet Metal worker Jason Whilfing, Whilfing actually held the pump. But Clinton, as expected, picked up the tab: At $3.759 a gallon for about a half tank, the tab - on Whilfing's boss's truck, to accommodate security - came to $63.67.

Clinton and Obama have been trading barbs over a proposed gas tax holiday as oil prices near $120 a barrel. Obama, who has alternately called the plan a "scheme" and a "gimmick," is staunchly opposed to the idea of lifting the federal tax over the summer months, while Clinton says it will give a needed boost to the economy when it needs it most.

But jobs and work also were on the agenda for both candidates as the cross-crossed - Indy-style - across the state. Each was holding several events Wednesday related to the state's work force.

After the morning commute with Hilfing, Clinton was then going to visit with his co-workers at Deluxe. Then she planned on holding two events titled "Standing up for Jobs," first in Portage, then in Lafayette and a late event in Kokomo.

Obama - coming off a troublesome few days after dealing with blistering comments by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. - also plans to focus on his economic message Wednesday. After a noon stop in Indianapolis, Obama and his wife, Michelle, will hold stay in town to hold "a discussion with working families." After two more Indianapolis events, he heads to Bloomington, home of the Indiana University.

But before he even hit the trail Wednesday, Obama's message started with a swipe at Clinton over a new ad hitting the airwaves there, attacking Obama on his plans for the economy.

Obama's campaign released a statement dismissing the ad, saying, "It puts political point-scoring ahead of progress."

Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama don't go long at campaign stops before uttering an applause-inducing, four-letter word: Jobs. Each has detailed plans to create millions of them.

But in historical context, the labor market isn't that bad - particularly in North Carolina. Nationally, the jobless rate is 5.1 percent. Here, it's 5.2 percent.

Back in 1982, the national rate rose as high as 10.8 percent. As recently as January 2002, the state rate was 7 percent.

Yes, the U.S. lost almost a quarter million jobs - 232,000 - in the first three months of the year. In 2001, though, it shed 325,000 in October alone.

There's no doubt the economy has slowed and recession might already have taken hold. But talk with voters in the Triangle and you'll find them most interested in the quality of jobs.

People are struggling to make ends meet. At least 219,000 people in the state work multiple jobs just to keep up.

For six months last year, Kim Hoover worked two. Then she tried to make it with just one.

"I couldn't afford to eat all the time," said Hoover who earned just over $20,000 all of last year.

So she went back to working two. She puts in 50 hours a week at Harmony Farms Natural Foods in Raleigh and as a bartender at downtown's Berkeley Cafe.

"You have to have money to survive, and there are too many people who aren't making it," said Hoover, 23, of Raleigh. "Something needs to happen."

That's the message on the campaign trail, too, where candidates have focused on oil, trade and other pocketbook concerns to appeal to middle-class voters.

"For the wealthiest of Americans higher gas prices may just be a nuisance," Clinton said at an appearance on Monday. "But for a lot of hard-working Americans, it is becoming a crisis."

Bert Morrison of Capital Sales in Raleigh, has not seen an influx of customers ailing from job cuts. He has seen people seeking quick cash to buy groceries or buy fuel to get to work.

"It's the worst I've ever seen it," who manages the decade-old store that buys used goods from people and resells them at a profit. "Their paychecks are spent. Now gas is $40, $50" to fill up.

"It's just a killer," he added.

Statewide, the average price of regular, unleaded gasoline rose 10 percent in the past month to $3.59 per gallon. The price is up 23 percent in the past year, according to data from AAA.

In the South, a gallon of milk is 18 percent more than a year ago. Eggs are 46 percent more per dozen. And potatoes cost 5 percent more per pound.

Wages have not kept pace with those kinds of increases. On average, private-sector wages in North Carolina increased 3 percent between September 2006 and September 2007, the most recent data available from the N.C. Employment Security Commission. The pace likely has slowed since.

"This goes with the territory of a recession," said Mike Walden, an economist at N.C. State University. "We tend to see wages and incomes not rise as much, and in some ways trail the overall cost of living."

North Carolina leaders in recent years have worked to improve the types of jobs in the state and insulate it from broader economic swings. Time was, manufacturing was the gateway to the state's middle class. In the past 10 years, 260,000 of those jobs have disappeared, largely due to international competition.

Today, state officials talk about jobs in healthcare and "green" industries as the path to a higher standard of living. North Carolina has set up a statewide workforce training network for biotechnology jobs and last year created the Biofuels Center to exploit demand for alternative energy.

Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has not yet outlined specific job strategies.

Morrison wonders if the ideas matter. Customers say, "`It's going to get better when somebody else is in,'" he said. "How is it going to get better? How do they have the magic ball?"

For her part, Hoover is undecided on a candidate. She hasn't had time to make up her mind.

Some days, she's at Harmony Farms by 11:30 a.m. and there until 7:30 p.m. She then heads to the Berkeley for an 8:30 p.m. shift that might go until 3 a.m.

"It gets very hectic for me," Hoover said. "I'm just getting burned out."

Recently, she put in her two-week notice at Harmony Farms. More shifts opened up at the Berkeley and, with tips, she can earn as much as she did with two jobs.

But with utilities, food and most other bills going up, she expects to continue with a familiar pastime.

"I'm still going to be looking for another part time job," she said.

By JONATHAN B. COX, McClatchy Newspapers, April 29, 2008

Torren Mayr is only 8 months old, but he's already been mentioned in a speech by a major presidential candidate.

When Hillary Clinton stepped to the stage at the Historic Salisbury Station Monday afternoon, she scanned the crowd.

Then she announced, "I see a 'Babies for Hillary' sign back there. That's a very smart baby."

Chuckles rippled through the crowd.

The "Babies for Hillary" sign was prepared by Torren's grandmother, Pattie Templeton. She babysits Torren on weekdays and took the child to see Clinton, driving from her home in Huntersville.

The sign was attached to Torren's stroller, though Templeton removed it and held it aloft as Hillary stepped to the stage.

"I just wanted to come see Hillary and I thought this was the best venue," Templeton said, noting that should Clinton eventually win the Democratic nomination and race for president, her grandson would forever be able to say he'd seen a president in person.

Even if he couldn't remember having done so.

Clinton's stop in Salisbury was part of a statewide stump that precedes next Tuesday's primary. She spoke in Graham before traveling to Salisbury, then made stops in Concord and Charlotte before the day was through.

Several hundred people gathered at the Salisbury depot, congregating under the metal roof outside the main building.

Bleachers were erected on either side of the stage where Clinton stood and a large American flag lined a wall. On the nearby railroad tracks, police officers cruised back and forth on Segways.

Other officers held the leashes of police dogs.

When a slow-moving freight train rumbled past while Clinton spoke, she paused and waved to the engineer. He responded by giving her a thumbs-up sign.

Johnsie Hege came to Salisbury Monday with her father, John Stewart, to have lunch at DJ's. They traveled from Winston-Salem.

Hege said they learned while in town that Clinton would be speaking, so they decided to have a look, though neither she nor her father have made up their minds who they'll be voting for.

"We accidentally came across this," Hege said of learning of Clinton's visit.

A number of those in attendance said they haven't decided the candidate they'll be supporting.

"I'm just curious," admitted Salisbury's George Taylor when asked his reason for coming to see Clinton.

John Thompson said he wasn't as much a Hillary supporter as he was a Bill Clinton supporter.

Then he noted, "If we get Hillary, we get Bill, too. They come as a pair."

Melissa Conrad brought her two children, Lindsey, 4, and Taylor, 6, to Monday's gathering.

Taylor is a kindergartner at St. John's Lutheran and said students in her class held a mock election recently.

Taylor said that while she voted for Clinton, the majority of her classmates did otherwise. She said Barack Obama was the leading vote-getter.

Melissa, Taylor's mother, said her children have taken an interest in this year's race.

"They've seen her in the newspapers and on TV," Melissa said of Clinton. "They wanted to be here today."

Jack Thomson, executive director of Historic Salisbury Foundation, found himself basking again in the glow of a big name visiting the depot.

In the past month, the facility has been visited by George Clooney and Renee Zellweger, plus both Bill and Hillary Clinton.

Thomson noted that security for Hillary's visit was much more strict than it was for her husband's visit earlier this month. Officers with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security scrutinized every pocketbook that was carried into the depot Monday. Visitors also had to pass through metal detectors.

Genoal Russell, chairman of the Rowan County Democratic Party, said she felt attendance for Hillary's speech was curtailed by inclement weather.

Rain fell off and on throughout the day and a tornado watch was in effect for counties closer to Charlotte.

A bit more sunshine might have boosted attendance from the hundreds to the thousands, Russell said.

"But we have enthusiasm here," she said, laughing.

While the hierarchy of the local Democratic party isn't backing either Clinton or Obama, Donna Monroe, one of the party's members, isn't so bashful.

She said she's a full-fledged Clinton supporter.

"I think Hillary has the best chance to get our country back on its feet," Monroe said. "Things are in such a mess right now with the economy and all."

Then she paused before stating some of the reasons she feels Clinton is the best choice for president.

"A woman can multi-task," Monroe said, laughing. "And she can take a punch, too."

Clinton said much the same when she took the stage, alluding to past well-publicized marital problems that she and her husband have weathered.

"I know some say, 'She's tough,' " Clinton said. "If you'd had my life, you'd be tough, too."

After speaking in Salisbury, Clinton left for Concord, where she spoke to more than 500 people at Troutman's Bar-B-Que.

They stood beneath golf umbrellas and ponchos as a rain storm rolled through Cabarrus County. Blue skies and a warm sun arrived just as Clinton's vehicle entered the parking lot.

From a platform, Clinton spoke of her goals to address the economy, energy, health care and education. As in Salisbury, she asked the crowd to "hire" her as president.

"Look at my resume," Clinton said. "I want a chance to show you what I can do for you."

Inside Troutman's, supporters shared their thoughts about Clinton.

"I just think she'll make a great president," said Don Barnhardt of Concord. "She's the only pick we've got."

Cabarrus resident Regina Parham said Clinton "has the best record of all the candidates."

Teenagers and young adults shared their own assessment of Clinton.

"She's just awesome," said Alex Almeter, an 11th-grade student at Jay M. Robinson High School. "Super awesome."

Anita Honeycutt, an education major at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, talked with Clinton then declared herself "at a loss for words.

"She is sweet and seems down to earth," Honeycutt managed. "I hope she gets elected."

By Steve Huffman, Salisbury Post, April 30, 2008

DO VOTERS worry more about climate change, America's dependence on foreign oil or the cost of filling their petrol tanks? The last may well be the most pressing. This week the president of OPEC, Chakib Khelil, raised the spectre of the price of a barrel of oil hitting an eye-popping $200. Even at nearly $120 a barrel, the current price, motorists are squealing. A poll released on Tuesday April 29th suggests that the price of petrol is the single greatest concern among voters today.

No wonder that the three candidates for president are tapping into these issues. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, the Democratic rivals, both say they will do something about climate change and energy security. So does the Republican candidate-designate John McCain, and unusually forcefully for a member of his party. The politicians have been spurred along by a variety of forces, from Al Gore pointing to evidence of man's part in causing climate change, to pressure from religious environmentalists who see a God-given duty to act as stewards of the planet. Foreign-policy types, too, worry about America's reliance on oil from the Middle East.

The immediate concern, however, is the cost of petrol. Combined with higher food prices and a crashing housing market, energy costs are making middle-class and poorer Americans feel vulnerable. Thus the politicians promise swift action. Mrs Clinton produced the biggest basket of ideas in a speech on Monday. Following an earlier proposal by Mr McCain, she wants to suspend the federal petrol tax of 18.4 cents for the summer driving season. This would be paid for with a windfall-tax on oil companies. Exxon, for example, is sure to announce bumper profits on Thursday. She wants to ban gasoline-price "gouging" and says she would go after "speculators" whom she says are driving up prices. And she talks of hauling OPEC to the World Trade Organisation and even to American courts for anti-competitive behaviour.

Not much of this would make a difference. Her suggestion that no more oil should now be added to America's nearly-full Strategic Petroleum Reserve would have only a marginal impact. Hitting oil companies with windfall taxes may generate revenue, which Mrs Clinton wants to put into research for green technologies (and hopefully generating what she calls "green-collar" jobs in hard-hit rust-belt states). But higher taxes could also discourage exploration and investment, curtailing supply and driving up oil prices again.

Energy economists dispute whether speculators are really responsible for much of oil's current high price, and thus whether attacking them would do much good. In any case, spotting speculators might be tricky: oil traders, including arms of big firms such as Exxon and Chevron, help to keep the market liquid and thus generally to keep prices lower than they might otherwise be. Clamping down on them might have the opposite effect. As for "gouging", it is not clear how much of that, versus reasonable price increases, is really going on. Isolated cases are already being prosecuted and the more could follow, for example on anti-competition grounds. Talk of hauling OPEC countries to court, essentially to force them to stop acting like OPEC, may play well among voters but seems most unlikely to convince producers to turn on the taps.

The most obvious thing that the government could do to lower oil prices would be to cut taxes, as Mr McCain and Mrs Clinton suggest. But this, of course, would encourage driving and would send more profits to the oil companies and to the exporting countries. Mr Obama has opposed suspending the tax (although he joins Mrs Clinton in wanting a windfall tax on oil companies) saying it would save consumers less than $30 over the summer, and would take much-needed money out of the fund that maintains American roads and bridges. Mrs Clinton, for her part, says that her windfall tax would prevent any raid on the highway trust fund.

Voters have good reason to worry about energy, security and their environment. But they may have to get used to more pricey petrol. Historically cheap gasoline, partly as a result of low taxes, has enabled what even George Bush has called an American addiction to oil. More pricey oil might be one factor that reduces carbon emissions. And the candidates to be president will not, in any case, have the power to pull the oil price down again, whatever they may promise now.

The Economist, April 30, 2008

"It is my intention as a delegate to the Democratic National Convention to vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton because of her support in rural America, her commitment to National Security, and her dedication to our men and women in uniform," Skelton said.

Two other names to watch for from that meeting, whose districts Clinton also won: Rep Jason Altmire, from western Pennsylvania, and Rep. Dan Boren, whose eastern Oklahoma nearly touches Skelton's. Boren's father, former Oklahoma Gov. and Sen. David Boren, has endorsed Obama.

By Michael McAuliff, New York Daily News, April 29, 2008

George, the president of the Pennsylvania AFL-CIO, had been one of six remaining undeclared Pennsylvania superdelegates.

The remaining five are all Democratic members of Congress -- U.S. Reps. Tim Holden, Chris Carney, Jason Altmire, Mike Doyle and Bob Brady.

On Tuesday, Clinton picked up the support of another superdelegate, Mike Easley, the governor of North Carolina, which holds its primary on Tuesday,

With George's support, Clinton extends her lead over fellow Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama to 16-5 among Pennsylvania superdelegates.

Superdelegates are the roughly 800 Democratic party leaders and elected officials who will vote along with elected delegates for a nominee. Unlike the elected delegates who run pledged for a specific candidate, superdelegates are free to vote for any candidate.

With neither Clinton nor Obama able to win enough delegate votes in the remaining nine primary and caucus contests to clinch the nomination, coveted superdelegates hold the key to deciding the nomination.

By BRETT LIEBERMAN, The Patriot-News, April 30, 2008

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright married Barack Obama 15 years ago, and today Obama tried to divorce him. In his strongest remarks to date, Obama said he was outraged and appalled by his former pastor's recent TV tour. "The person that I saw yesterday was not the person that I met 20 years ago," Obama said. "His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church."

By putting down his foot, hard, Obama certainly reassured his allies and supporters who hoped he would react to Wright's newest flamboyance with passion rather than the cool jazz aspect that Obama has used for so much else in the campaign. He didn't pound the podium—that would have been out of character. But the denunciation could only have been more thorough if Obama had asked Wright to quit talking by appealing to his sense of Christian charity. Wright's three-day speaking tour has distracted and infuriated the Obama campaign, and the candidate let that show.

It's too early to tell if Obama's remarks will dispel the fallout from his former pastor turned wrecking ball, but they were the right first step. Before Obama can put Wright behind him, he had to put himself back at the center of his own campaign. That's what today was about—taking control of his destiny. And that's how his campaign aides and allies talked about Obama's break with Wright. "This was a human reaction from a man who woke up this morning and saw what Reverend Wright had done was put his personal vanity ahead of changing this country and who thought enough is enough," said one Obama aide.

When campaigns get knocked off balance they can overreact. The Obama team did this during the waning days of the Pennsylvania primary by taking on Hillary about her Bosnia exaggerations (after the candidate suggested he wouldn't). Or by trotting out new slogans every week as Hillary Clinton often has. Now Obama is trying to find his way back to his core message of change, which is why he denounced Wright's remarks not only on their own terms but because they were antithetical to his entire worldview. "My reaction has more to do with what I want this campaign to be about," said Obama. "In some ways, what Reverend Wright said yesterday directly contradicts everything that I've done during my life. It contradicts how I was raised and the setting in which I was raised; it contradicts my decision to pursue a career of public service. It contradicts the issues that I've worked on politically."

Perhaps just as important for Obama's attempt to regain control of his campaign was the fight he picked Tuesday with Clinton and John McCain over lifting the gas tax for the summer driving season. The other candidates have backed this crowd pleaser, but Obama labeled it as a phony Washington solution that wouldn't do much to help real people. "This isn't an idea designed to get you through the summer, it's designed to get them through an election," he said at a town hall meeting Tuesday in Winston Salem, N.C.

Substantively, he's got lots of economists and policy experts on his side. By presenting himself as a speaker of hard truth, Obama sought to return to his presentation as the politician who will tell people what they need to hear (that solutions to gas prices are not easy) rather than what they want to hear (that they're getting a big government giveback).

The fight also allows him to tie Clinton to McCain, a useful if small advantage in this endless primary season. A scrape with Hillary over any policy differences is a relief from the swirl of distractions that have been plaguing the Democratic race. Clinton responded Tuesday with a new ad on the gas-tax relief plan, saying it showed that Obama failed to act. Hey, a real issue to mine.

Of course, there are still a number of factors out of Obama's control, including the reaction of voters to Wright, the appetite and attitudes of the press, and the extent to which Clinton allies can keep the story alive. Perhaps the most unpredictable variable is Wright himself, who, as Obama ruefully pointed out, is hardly coordinating with the campaign. Extricating himself from the relationship may be more complicated for Obama than the simple: I want a divorce.

By John Dickerson, The Slate, April 29, 2008

WINSTON-SALEM, N.C. - Senator Barack Obama broke forcefully on Tuesday with his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., in an effort to curtail a drama of race, values, patriotism and betrayal that has enveloped his presidential candidacy at a critical juncture.

In tones sharply different from those Mr. Obama used on Monday, when he blamed the news media and his rivals for focusing on Mr. Wright, and far harsher than those he used in his speech on race in Philadelphia last month, Mr. Obama tried to cut all his ties to - and to discredit - Mr. Wright, the man who presided at Mr. Obama's wedding and baptized his two daughters.

"His comments were not only divisive and destructive, but I believe that they end up giving comfort to those who prey on hate, and I believe that they do not portray accurately the perspective of the black church," Mr. Obama said, his voice welling with anger. "They certainly don't portray accurately my values and beliefs."

One week before Democratic primaries in Indiana and North Carolina, contests that party officials are watching as they try to gauge whether Mr. Obama or Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton would be the stronger nominee, the controversy surrounding Mr. Wright again erupted into a threat to Mr. Obama's ability to show that he could unify the Democratic Party and bring the nominating contest to a quick and clean end. With Mrs. Clinton having shown particular strength among working-class white voters in recent big-state primaries, the racial overtones of Mr. Obama's links with Mr. Wright have been especially troublesome for the Obama campaign.

Asked how the controversy would affect voters, Mr. Obama said: "We'll find out."

At a minimum, the spectacle of Mr. Wright's multiday media tour and Mr. Obama's rolling response grabbed the attention of the most important constituency in politics now: the uncommitted superdelegates - party officials and elected Democrats - who hold the balance of power in the nominating battle.

Eileen Macoll, a Democratic county chairman from Washington State who has not chosen a candidate, said she was stunned at the extent of national attention the episode has drawn, and she said she believed it would give superdelegates pause.

"I'm a little surprised at how much traction it is getting, and I do believe it is beginning to reflect negatively on Senator Obama's campaign," Ms. Macoll said. "I think he's handling it very well, but I think it's almost impossible to make people feel comfortable about this."

It was the second straight day that Mr. Obama had responded to Mr. Wright, a former pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago whose derisive comments about the United States government have become a fixture of cable television. Saying that he had not seen or read Mr. Wright's remarks when he responded to them on Monday, Mr. Obama said he was "shocked and surprised" when he later read the transcripts and watched the broadcasts, and he felt compelled to respond more forcefully.

"I'm outraged by the comments that were made and saddened over the spectacle that we saw yesterday," Mr. Obama said. He added: "I find these comments appalling. It contradicts everything that I'm about and who I am."

The press conference came in what may well be the toughest stretch of Mr. Obama's campaign as he grapples with questions about Mr. Wright as well as the fallout from his defeat last week in Pennsylvania. He set out this week to reintroduce himself but instead found himself competing for airtime with Mr. Wright and trying to bat away suggestions that he shared or tolerated Mr. Wright's views.

As he answered question after question here, Mr. Obama appeared downcast and subdued as he tried to explain why he had decided to categorically denounce his minister of 20 years. His decision to address reporters not only stretched the Wright story into another day but also marked at least the third time he has sought to deal with the issue, including his well-received speech on race last month in Philadelphia.

"The fact that Reverend Wright would think that somehow it was appropriate to command the stage for three or four consecutive days in the midst of this major debate is something that not only makes me angry, but also saddens me," Mr. Obama said.

The first real evidence of whether the controversy has extracted a political price could come on Tuesday. Superdelegates suggested that they would watch closely to see how voters respond in the Indiana and North Carolina primaries and beyond.

Bob Mulholland, a superdelegate from California, said the difficulties Mr. Obama had experienced put a premium on results in the remaining contests.

"We've got nine elections to go through June 9," Mr. Mulholland said in an interview. "I've never been involved in a successful presidential race where the candidate had no trouble in the primary. It's challenging to him. He is a young man, and this is the first time he's run for president. I see this as a learning experience."

Asked how he thought Mr. Obama was doing, Mr. Mulholland paused before responding. "Getting better," he finally said.

The appearances by Mr. Wright, which began Friday and concluded Monday, were anticipated by the Obama campaign, but aides said they were taken aback by the tenor of the remarks. His first interview, with Bill Moyers on PBS, offered few hints of what he intended when he arrived at the National Press Club on Monday.

"At a certain point, if what somebody says contradicts what you believe so fundamentally, and then he questions whether or not you believe it in front of the National Press Club, then that's enough," Mr. Obama said. "That's a show of disrespect to me. It's also, I think, an insult to what we've been trying to do in this campaign."

Mr. Obama became a Christian after hearing a 1988 sermon of Mr. Wright's called "The Audacity to Hope." Joining Mr. Wright's church helped Mr. Obama, with his disparate racial and geographic background, embrace not only the African-American community but also Africa, his friends and family say.

Mr. Obama had barely known his Kenyan father; Mr. Wright made pilgrimages to Africa and incorporated its rituals into worship. Mr. Obama toted recordings of Mr. Wright's sermons to law school. Mr. Obama titled his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention "The Audacity of Hope," and gave his next book the same name.

As Mr. Wright's more incendiary statements began circulating widely, Mr. Obama routinely condemned them but did not disassociate himself from Mr. Wright. In his speech in Philadelphia, Mr. Obama tried to explain his pastor through the bitter history of American race relations.

Five weeks later, the men seem finished with each other.

"Whatever relationship I had with Reverend Wright has changed as a consequence of this," Mr. Obama said Tuesday. "I don't think that he showed much concern for me. More importantly, I don't think he showed much concern for what we're trying to do in this campaign and what we're trying to do for the American people."

SHELBYVILLE, Ind. - Barack Obama can talk about his childhood years in Kansas and upbringing by his white Midwestern grandparents, but if voters at one small-town Indiana cafe are any indication, he has a long way to go to convince them he represents heartland America.

"Obama has great ideas but his background scares me," said Chris Leighton, 60, a secretary having lunch at the Chaperral Cafe in Shelbyville, in southeast Indiana. "Everyone talks about him being a Muslim and having ties to terrorism, but how do people really find out?"

The incorrect belief that the Illinois senator is a Muslim was shared by half a dozen others in the restaurant - a sign that dirty campaign tactics and Internet innuendo has taken root among some voters in Indiana, the next state to vote.

Construction worker Ron Debaun, 61, said he hadn't yet decided whether he would support Obama or Hillary Clinton in Indiana's May 6 primary, noting they both "have good ideas." But he's leaning toward Clinton.

What doesn't he like about Obama?

"His Muslim ties," said Debaun.

Why does he think Obama is a Muslim?

"Let's just say that he admits it himself," he said.

Retired locksmith Leslie Hedman, 61, said he doesn't like any of the three candidates - Clinton, Obama, or Republican John McCain - because none are committed Christians.

"Obama is a Muslim," he said. Where did he hear that?

"He said he was but then he said he's not," said Hedman.

Ironically enough, many of the lunchtime crowd said they were also turned off by Obama's ties to Rev. Jeremiah Wright - the former pastor of Obama's Christian church in Chicago, Trinity United Church of Christ.

"I definitely don't like Obama because of the mess with him and his pastor. I don't think he's been honest about it," said Candace Demmin, 37, as she had lunch with her mom.

"How can you go to a church for 20 years and not heard your minister say something off-color? Either he's heard it and is lying about it, or he's lying about going to church as much as he does," said Demmin. "In which case he's not the Christian he says he is."

Obama strongly denounced his former pastor on Tuesday and called his racially charged comments "appalling."

And if Obama's Muslim ties and Christian pastor aren't bad enough, his atheism is the last straw.

"A person who doesn't believe in anything? I don't want anything to do with him," said cafe owner and Clinton supporter Shirley Bailey, 70. "He says he won't take an oath on the Bible, he won't salute the American flag. That doesn't sit well with me."

Obama was sworn in at the U.S. Senate with his hand on a Bible. He stopped wearing an American flag lapel pin - standard issue for U.S. politicians - saying that a pin on the chest matters less than what's in the heart.

By Tom De Luca, The Baltimore Sun, April 30, 2008

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Sen. Hillary Clinton is reminding economically hard-hit voters how much better they had it in the 1990s, but bringing up the past also risks taking them back to the scandals and partisan divides associated with former President Bill Clinton -- memories Sen. Barack Obama has tried to exploit.

The criticism points to an enduring problem within the Clinton campaign. For more than a year, Clinton aides have grappled with how to emphasize the positive aspects of the Clinton presidency while allowing Sen. Clinton to forge her own identity and avoid being a reminder of what people didn't like about the 1990s.

The former first lady recently began citing more statistics about the decade. Her stump speech now paints a detailed portrait of a time when the World Trade Center towers were still standing, more than 22 million jobs were created, the budget was balanced and the average American family's income increased by $7,000.

"Sometimes during this campaign I hear criticism of the 1990s. That's fair. It's an election and we've got to expect to be criticized," Sen. Clinton told an audience last week in Fayetteville, N.C. She continued with a line she has repeated often: "But I always wonder what part of the 1990s they didn't like: the peace or the prosperity?"

The predicament this creates for her campaign was on display during a "Solutions for a Strong Military" event last week in Asheville, N.C. Standing on the stage with retired generals, Sen. Clinton spoke proudly of the relative peace during her husband's administration. "Compared to what we saw during the 1990s, we have fallen backward," she said.

Just then, an Obama supporter in the audience yelled, "Yeah, but your husband also got impeached for infidelity," referring to the Monica Lewinsky scandal.

At a forum in Kokomo, Ind., last week, Sen. Obama blamed Sen. Clinton's failure to achieve health-care reform in the early years of her husband's first term on the secrecy and divisiveness of his administration. "All these folks talk about how much experience they've got. Why is it that they haven't been able to get it done?" he said.

Sen. Clinton's efforts to balance the good times of the 1990s while dodging the bad have intensified as the race has moved into Indiana and North Carolina, which hold their contests next week, and West Virginia and Kentucky, which vote on May 13 and May 20, respectively.

These states have low-income, rural demographics -- similar to those found in Mr. Clinton's native Arkansas -- whose members particularly prospered during the 1990s, Clinton aides say. Sen. Clinton "is associated with a decade synonymous with job growth and economic stability," says Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh, a Clinton backer.

Phyllis Pate, a 67-year-old retired government worker and Clinton supporter in Lumberton, N.C., says fond memories of the 1990s helped her decide to vote for Sen. Clinton. "Bill [Clinton] got us out of the deficit. She can get us out of the deficit, too," Ms. Pate says.

Sen. Obama, meanwhile, has ratcheted up his criticism that Sen. Clinton represents the divisive politics of the past and has characterized the 1990s as a time when Washington was defined by special-interest influence and partisan bickering.

Sen. Clinton fought back Monday. "Frankly, I wear that as a badge of courage," she told reporters at a press conference in Graham, N.C., when asked if the divisiveness of the 1990s should be a concern to voters.

The number of employees on nonagricultural payrolls grew from 109.7 million in January 1993, when Mr. Clinton took office, to 132.5 million in January 2001, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The number of people living in poverty decreased from 38 million in 1992 to 31 million in 2000, according to the Census Bureau.

"Bill Clinton is remindful, despite what his detractors say, of an economy that worked in the heartland," says Hank Sheinkopf, a Democratic consultant who has worked for Mr. Clinton. "That imagery is important."

But even as she plays up the 1990s, Sen. Clinton has had to distance herself from some of the unpopular policies of her husband's administration, namely the North American Free Trade Agreement, which she has said she opposed.

In an election about the future, just talking about the past can turn some voters off. "The '90s, they were a much better time economically," says Bettie Neal, a 60-year-old real-estate broker from North Carolina's Outer Banks. "But we can't keep looking back. There's so much to do ahead, and we can't afford to get stuck looking in the rear-view mirror."

A week before the North Carolina primary, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton picked up the endorsement Tuesday of that state's governor, Michael Easley, a man highly popular among the blue-collar white voters who have been a pillar of her support.

Easley, a Democratic superdelegate who formerly supported John Edwards, made the announcement - a source of some frustration for Senator Barack Obama's campaign - alongside Clinton in Raleigh.

"There's been lots of 'Yes we can, yes we should,' " Easley said, referring to an Obama slogan. "Hillary Clinton is ready to deliver." Obama was also in North Carolina, where he connected with another of the state's most popular symbols, playing basketball with the sky-blue-uniformed members of the University of North Carolina team.

But the candidates were connecting with issues as well as symbols, especially health care and gasoline prices.

Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, laid out a new health care proposal centering on a plan to offer tax credits to individuals and their families so that more people will buy health insurance on their own, instead of through their employers.

Unlike his Democratic rivals' approaches, McCain's plan would not require insurers to provide health coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions. Instead, McCain proposed creating a system of insurers of last resort and giving federal assistance to insurers who cover people unable to afford insurance or who have been turned down by other companies.

Clinton favors a program that would require all Americans to get health insurance, subsidized by employers and the government. Obama would require that all children have health insurance, while aiming for universal coverage.

The issue of high fuel prices has also flared on the campaign trail - President George W. Bush discussed it Tuesday in a news conference - and it sharply divides the two Democrats.

Clinton has lined up with McCain in endorsing a plan to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for the summer travel season. But Obama spoke out firmly against the proposal, saying it would save consumers little and do nothing to curtail oil consumption and imports.

Obama argued Tuesday that his rivals' call for a suspension in the gas tax is "designed to get them through an election."

"The easiest thing in the world for a politician to do is tell you exactly what you want to hear," he said. The money that would be lost, he said, is badly needed to fix roads and bridges.

While Obama's view is shared by environmentalists and many independent energy analysts, his position allowed Clinton to draw a contrast with her opponent in appealing to the hard-hit middle-class families and older Americans who have proved to be the bedrock of her support.

Clinton said at a rally Monday in Graham, North Carolina, that she would introduce legislation to impose a windfall-profits tax on oil companies and use the revenue to suspend the gasoline tax temporarily.

"At the heart of my approach is a simple belief," Clinton said. "Middle-class families are paying too much and oil companies aren't paying their fair share."

Clinton and Obama are competing intensely in primaries in Indiana and North Carolina, where voters go to the polls Tuesday. Opinion surveys have shown that the faltering economy and high gas prices are the top concerns of voters, edging out the war in Iraq.

Clinton said the tax on the oil companies, which have been reporting record profits, would cover all of the lost revenue from the federal tax on gasoline and diesel fuel.

In 2000, Obama supported a bill in the Illinois legislature to suspend most of the state's 6.25 percent gasoline sales tax. But he later opposed making the reduction permanent, arguing that the state needed the revenue and that the measure had saved consumers little.

Clinton, in her 2000 campaign for her New York Senate seat, spoke against repealing the federal gasoline tax.

Bush would not be drawn into the controversy on Tuesday, but his spokeswoman earlier essentially sided with Obama.

Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman, said gasoline prices were "entirely too high, but I think it would be disingenuous and unfortunate for American consumers for them to be led to believe that there is a short-term fix." In North Carolina, where Clinton trails Obama in the polls by a double-digit margin, Easley's endorsement could provide a boost.

Obama, for his part, was trying to shrug off renewed controversy over remarks by his former pastor, the Reverend Jeremiah Wright Jr.

In a speech Monday in Washington, Wright, far from denying past comments that critics said raised questions about his patriotism - and Obama's - reinforced them. He defended his view that Zionism equates to racism, said that the government might have created AIDS to control racial minorities and did not back away from his "God damn America" remark.

The initial reaction was that he had further hurt Obama's cause, perhaps seriously. But some commentators said that Wright had gone so far that some listeners might now see him as a self-promoter and loose cannon, making it easier now for Obama to separate himself cleanly.

On Monday the Illinois senator said that Wright did not speak for him, or for his campaign.

And on Tuesday he came out even more forcefully, telling reporters in North Carolina that Wright's comments did not accurately portray the perspective of the black church.

"I am outraged by the comments that were made and saddened by the spectacle that we saw yesterday," he said.

Hoping to strike a more positive image, Obama suited up Tuesday to play the Tar Heel basketball team of North Carolina. "These guys are a lot better than me," said Obama, 46, stating the obvious as he ran down the full length of the court and tried to keep up with athletes half his age. But onlookers said he performed respectably.

By Brian Knowlton, International Herald Tribune, April 29, 2008

N.C. Governor Endorses Clinton

RALEIGH, N.C. -- North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley (D) endorsed Hillary Clinton on Tuesday, giving her a boost in a state whose demographics suggest an uphill fight.

INDIANAPOLIS -- In a direct appeal to voters' pocketbooks, Hillary Clinton is up with a new ad in Indiana and North Carolina today that tries to cast Barack Obama as a foot-dragger on the economy. The ad cites his opposition to two domestic proposals Clinton has made in the primary campaign: a temporary freeze on mortgage foreclosures, and a gas tax holiday this summer.

"The economy's in trouble," the ad's announcer says. "When the housing crisis broke, Hillary Clinton called for action: a freeze on foreclosures. Barack Obama said no. Now, gas prices are skyrocketing, and she's ready to act again ... Barack Obama says no, again."

"People are hurting," the narrator concludes. "It's time for a president who's ready to take action now."

Nevermind that some independent analysts have questioned Clinton's approach on both issues, saying that her proposed moratorium on foreclosures, for example, could further damage the housing market. Or that Obama has proposed his own remedies for both the mortgage crisis and record gas prices. Clinton merely hopes voters will see her as the candidate offering tangible solutions.

UPDATE: The Obama campaign accused Clinton's of more misleading "Washington-style attack ads."

"In election after election, Hoosiers have rejected negative, attack politics," Indiana State House Majority Leader Russ Stilwell said in a statement provided by the Obama camp. "Indiana families are hurting, and they're desperate to hear the candidates' positive vision for doing something about their pain. If we don't break free from the old politics, we'll never be able to pass new solutions."

Former President Bill Clinton hit the trail in North Carolina today, continuing to use his wife Hillary Clinton's win in the Pennsylvania primary as momentum for her campaign.

"Most of what people have said in this campaign is wrong, including who's been more positive and who's been more negative," the former president told a crowd of more than 2,500 in Boone, N.C. "She's talked relentlessly about the solutions. She won in Pennsylvania after being hit with negative ad after negative ad after negative ad, and negative letters. And all she did was respond. She won being outspent three to one because the people knew she was in it for them."

While Clinton's account of the campaign in Pennsylvania put the blame for all of the negative campaigning on Sen. Barack Obama's camp, the voters of Pennsylvania largely disagreed. Many polls found that voters thought both candidates turned increasingly negative in the final weeks of campaigning.

Clinton also made a point to talk about the gas tax today, a topic he often mentions, but rarely dives into.

"In the short run, she would release some oil from our strategic petroleum reserve. It's full. The oil companies pay into it every month. You can release it, send it directly to the refineries, create more oil in the long run, more gasoline, and bring the price down through the summer months. Second, she would put an excess profits fee on the oil companies who are making record profits and give relief to the taxpayers from the gax tax in the summer months. If you did that you could lower the price of gas between 30 to 40 cents a gallon. It would make a huge difference, particularly to people who have to drive a long way to work," he said.

Clinton spoke on the campus of Appalachian State University, whose underdog football team rose to fame by beat perennial powerhouse University of Michigan last year. Clinton used that bit of history to remind the crowd that his wife is still the underdog in this race.

"Folks, I'm a sports nut, and I'm glad to be here at the home (cheering) of the greatest football upset in modern history, so I think it will have special meaning here if I begin with a line I always say today. Whenever somebody tells you you can't win, it's because they're afraid you will," Clinton told the cheering crowd.

Maybe Barack Obama skimped on his contribution when the offering plate came past at Trinity United Church of Christ. Or perhaps he nodded off during one of Rev. Jeremiah Wright's sermons. It's hard to think of another reason why the Illinois Senator's former pastor would put on the kind of performance this morning at the National Press Club that can only be described as a political disaster.

But while Wright is a theologian, a teacher and a pastor, he is ultimately a performer. In front of a cheering crowd of supporters that included a whistling Cornel West, he gave into temptation and lustily went after his critics. As soon as the questions began, Wright transformed into a defiant, derisive figure, snapping one-liners at the unfortunate moderator tasked with reading the questions and stepping back with a grin on his face after each one, clearly enjoying himself.

Could he explain the context behind the sermon he gave after September 11, 2001? "Have you heard the whole sermon? No? That nullifies that question." How does he respond to critics who charge that he is unpatriotic? "How many years did Cheney serve?" Does the fact that Obama says he never heard Wright's most controversial sermons mean he's not much of a churchgoer? "He goes to church as much as you do. What did your pastor preach on last week?"

It continued through a defense of Louis Farakkhan and Wright's insistence that the U.S. government may have introduced AIDS into the black community. Not surprisingly, the Obama campaign has strenuously refused to comment on Wright's remarks. But top strategist David Axelrod reminded MSNBC viewers this morning that Wright was "out there doing his own thing." "It's a free country," he added. "But to the extent that people impute to Senator Obama words that are not his and sentiments that are not his, it's obviously not helpful."

The combative pose that Wright chose to strike is perhaps most damaging not to Obama's candidacy - although the candidate will surely endure yet another round of scrutiny regarding his relationship to the minister and his positions on Wright's views - but to Wright's own message. Because he is right when he says that most Americans don't understand the black church and that their resulting confusion and fear contributes to a racial divide.

Many Americans who were shocked by the clips of Wright's sermons have only known a Disney-fied version of the black church. We know about the good music, but don't listen to the lyrics of pain and suffering. We praise the rousing preaching without paying attention to the words. Civil rights leaders have become aging wise men revered for their inspirational sayings, not radical activists who preached truth to power. "There is so much more going on in black churches than gospel music," says Emilie Townes, professor of African American religion at Yale Divinity School.

The poster boy of the reimagined black church is Martin Luther King Jr. "King said America suffered from a 'congenital disease' and that disease is racism," notes Eddie Glaude, Princeton professor of religion. He says that King's speech against the Vietnam War, delivered at Riverside Church in April 1967, was not a feel-good speech. "It was a passionate cry to speak to these enormous problems that were linked to America's imperialism and militarism, and what he saw as the evils of capitalism." By that point int his career, King had been banned from Lyndon Johnson's White House. The New York Times condemned his speech, running an editorial calling it "Dr. King's Error." And Barry Goldwater said King "bordered a little bit on treason."

But that King, the one who sounded a little bit like Jeremiah Wright, is not the one we remember every January. It's because the prophetic black church tradition has been filtered into an unthreatening form suitable for public consumption, so that it has been rendered, in Wright's word, "invisible." And it is because of that invisibility that Wright's sermons seemed so shocking and out of the mainstream. In reality, the two strands fit together - the unbearable optimism of "I Have a Dream" and the righteous anger of "I cannot be silent."

Wright acknowledged that fact when he ended his remarks at the Press Club by talking about the need for reconciliation. It is "where the hardest work is found for those of us in the Christian community," he said. The way in which he responded to questioning shows just how hard that work will be, both for Wright and his most famous congregant.

Helped by independents, young people and seniors, Clinton gained ground this month in a hypothetical match with Sen. McCain, the GOP nominee-in-waiting. She now leads McCain, 50 percent to 41 percent, while Obama remains virtually tied with McCain, 46 percent to 44 percent.

Both Democrats were roughly even with McCain in the previous poll about three weeks ago.

Since then, Clinton won the Pennsylvania primary, raising questions anew about whether Obama can attract broad swaths of voters needed to triumph in such big states come the fall when the Democratic nominee will go up against McCain. At the same time, Obama was thrown on the defensive by his comment that residents of small-town America were bitter. The Illinois senator also continued to deal with the controversial remarks of his longtime Chicago pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

"I don't think there's any question that over the last three weeks her stature has improved," said Harrison Hickman, a Democratic pollster unaligned in the primary. He attributed Clinton's gains to people moving from the "infatuation stage" of choosing the candidate they like the most to a "decision-making stage" where they determine who would make the best president.

Added Steve Lombardo, a GOP pollster: "This just reinforces the sentiment that a lot of Republican strategists are having right now - that Clinton might actually be the more formidable fall candidate for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that Obama can't seem to get his footing back."

The AP-Ipsos poll found Clinton and Obama about even in the race for the Democratic nomination. Underscoring deep divisions within the Democratic Party - and a potentially negative longer-term impact - 30 percent of Clinton supporters and 21 percent of Obama supporters said they would vote for McCain in November if their preferred candidate didn't win the nomination.

Obama leads Clinton in pledged delegates, but she has the advantage among superdelegates with about a third yet to make up their minds.

Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean said Monday that one of the two must drop out of the race after the primary season wraps up in June so Democrats can unite before the late-summer convention and the fall campaign.

He also urged undecided superdelegates - members of the Democratic National Committee as well as Democratic governors and members of Congress - to side with either Clinton or Obama before the August convention so the party can come together to take on McCain. The Arizona senator clinched the GOP nomination last month and has been campaigning freely since.

Also on Monday, the head of the Republicans' House campaign committee said the party would rather face Obama in November because the GOP believes Clinton would be more of a threat to McCain among moderate voters.

Said Tom Cole, a congressman from Oklahoma: Obama "is by any definition very liberal, to the left of Hillary Clinton, in a center-right country. That is very, very helpful to us."

Nearly half the people in the AP-Ipsos poll said the protracted Democratic primary will hurt their party's chances in November; more Obama supporters than Clinton backers said they had that fear.

Overall, people said they trusted Clinton and Obama about the same to handle Iraq and the economy; McCain got similar ratings on Iraq but trailed both Democrats on the economy. And while roughly the same percentage of people said they trusted both Democrats to understand their problems, fewer trusted McCain.

When pitted against McCain, Clinton now wins among independents, 50 percent to 34 percent, when just a few weeks ago she ran about even with him with this crucial group of voters. Clinton also now does better among independents than Obama does in a matchup with McCain.

Clinton has a newfound edge among seniors, too, 51 percent to 39 percent; McCain had previously had the advantage. And, Clinton has improved her margin over McCain among people under age 30; two-thirds of them now side with her. McCain leads Obama among seniors, while Obama leads McCain among those under 30 but by a smaller margin than Clinton does.

She also now leads among Catholics, always an important swing voting group in a general election, and improved her standing in the South as well as in cities and among families making under $25,000 a year. But she lost ground among families making between $50,000 and $100,000; they narrowly support McCain.

The poll, taken April 23-27, questioned 1,001 adults nationally, with a margin of error of 3.1 percentage points. Included were interviews with 457 Democratic voters and people leaning Democratic, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.6 points, and 346 Republicans or GOP-leaning voters, with a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 5.3 points.

Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton holds a slight lead over Republican John McCain in the United States, according to a poll by Gallup released by USA Today. 47 per cent of respondents would support the New York senator in the 2008 presidential ballot, while 45 per cent would vote for the Arizona senator.

In a separate contest, Illinois senator Barack Obama is virtually tied with McCain.

On Apr. 22, Rodham Clinton discussed her views on Iran, saying, "Whatever stage of development they might be in their nuclear weapons programme in the next 10 years, during which they might foolishly consider launching an attack on Israel, we would be able to totally obliterate them. That's a terrible thing to say, but those people who run Iran need to understand that, because that perhaps will deter them from doing something that would be reckless, foolish and tragic."

RALEIGH, N.C. -- North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley officially endorsed Hillary Clinton this morning, giving her another boost in a state where the demographics suggest she might struggle.
"Hillary Clinton gets it. She gets it," Easley told a crowd of several hundred at an event at North Carolina State University.

He added, talking about Clinton's toughness "this young lady makes Rocky Balboa look like a pansy."

Clinton's campaign, while playing down its chance of winning in a state where she has trailed by double digits in most polls, is running an aggressive race here.

Clinton has spent the last three days stumping in North Carolina. Even if she loses here, her campaign aides say, she will try to hold down Barack Obama's margins both in delegates and in the popular vote.

But the challenge is obvious. While the focus of the Democratic race has been on Obama's inability to win over white-working class voters, Clinton has struggled mightily among African Americans, picking up fewer than 20 percent of black votes in many of the primary states. She not yet won a state where blacks made up more than 30 percent of the voters.

"Jesus said, 'Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,''' Wright, 66, said at the National Press Club in Washington. "You can't do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you. Those are biblical principles, not Jeremiah Wright bombastic, divisive principles.''

Portions of Wright's past sermons have gotten wide circulation on television and the Internet and have been used against Obama in some Republican campaign commercials. Obama, an Illinois senator, disavowed Wright's statements in a speech last month, saying they represented a "profoundly distorted view'' of the nation.

Wright is retiring as pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, where Obama has worshipped for two decades. He presided at Obama's wedding and at the baptisms of Obama's daughters. Until five days ago, Wright largely had stayed out of public forums since the controversy broke last month.

Political Impact

Obama's ties to Wright may have hurt him in last week's Pennsylvania primary, which he lost to Democratic rival Senator Hillary Clinton of New York. Wright is putting himself back into the debate as Obama is stepping up efforts to win over more white male blue-collar voters, especially in Indiana, which holds its primary on May 6.

"I'm not sure exactly the motivation that Wright has, but the timing right before the Indiana primary makes it more difficult for the Obama campaign to try and persuade folks he actually understands the non-black community,'' said James McCann, a political science professor at Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana.

Wright said his statements have been taken out of context, and his critics are ill-informed. The attacks on him, he said, are attacks on the black church "by people who know nothing about the African-American religious tradition.''

Wright Supporters

The pastor's appearance today attracted a crowd that included Frederick Douglass IV, the great-great grandson and namesake of the 19th-century orator and abolitionist, former Washington Mayor Marion Barry and Michael Pfleger, a Catholic priest who, like Wright, preaches on Chicago's South Side.

Cornel West, an author and a professor of religion and African-American studies at Princeton University, also was in the audience.

"Jeremiah,'' he shouted as Wright began to speak. "We love you baby. Yes we do.''

One positive result of the uproar is the start of a national dialogue on race, Wright said.

"Maybe now we can begin to take steps to move the black religious tradition from the status of invisible to the status of invaluable,'' Wright said, "for all the people in this country.''

Patriotism

Wright also shot back at critics who have accused him of being unpatriotic.

"I served six years in the military. Does that make me patriotic? How many years did Cheney serve?'' Wright said, referring to Vice President Dick Cheney, who received five deferments from the draft after he became eligible.

When asked, based on his past statements, whether he thought America was damned in the eyes of God, Wright said, "God doesn't bless everything.''

"There is no excuse for the things that the government -- not the American people -- have done,'' he said. "That doesn't make me not like America or unpatriotic.''

He said America has never properly confessed and asked forgiveness for its sin of slavery, and so he feels no need to apologize for his criticism of the government.

"Britain has apologized to Africans, but this country's leaders have refused to apologize,'' Wright said.

Farrakhan's Voice

Wright also was unapologetic about his praise for Louis Farrakhan, the Chicago-based leader of the Nation of Islam. Obama has denounced Farrakhan's support of his candidacy and condemned him as an anti-Semite. Wright's church gave Farrakhan an award last year for his influence on the black community.

"When Louis Farrakhan speaks, it's like E.F. Hutton speaks, all black America listens. Whether they agree with him or not, they listen,'' Wright said, adding that he doesn't agree with all of Farrakhan's views. "He's one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century.''

Wright said he has a moral duty as a pastor to speak out, regardless of how it might affect Obama's presidential campaign.

"Whether he gets elected or not, I'm still going to have to be answerable to God Nov. 5 and Jan. 21,'' Wright said, referring to the days after the presidential election and the inauguration.

He denied having any political aspirations of his own.

As for Obama's response, Wright repeated his statement that the candidate had to say what he did because of politics.

"Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls,'' Wright said. "Preachers say what they say because they're pastors. They have a different person to whom they're accountable.''

Obama's Reaction

Obama continued to distance himself from Wright today, saying that the pastor "doesn't speak for me, and he doesn't speak for the campaign.

"None of the voters I talk to ask about it,'' he told reporters today.

When asked yesterday on "Fox News Sunday'' how he feels about Wright's recent speeches and possible further damage to his campaign, Obama said, "It's understandable that somebody after an entire career of service would want to defend themselves.''

He said he considers Wright a fair political issue and he understands that some people were "legitimately offended'' by some of the pastor's comments.

"It's also true that to run a snippet of 30-second sound bites selecting out of a 30-year career simplified and caricatured him and caricatured the church,'' Obama said. "I strongly denounce those comments that were the subject of so much attention. I wasn't in church when he made them. But I also know that I go to church not to worship a pastor but to worship God.''

Obama's Democratic rival, Senator Hillary Clinton of New York, declined to comment on Wright's statements over the past several days and whether they reflect on Obama.

Arizona Senator John McCain, who has locked up the Republican nomination, said today that he's never questioned Wright's patriotism. He also said he takes Obama "at his word'' when he says he doesn't share Wright's most extreme views.

There are 72 pledged delegates at stake in the Indiana primary, along with 13 of those officially unpledged party leaders and elected officials known as "superdelegates." Of those 72 pledged delegates, 47 are allocated among the state's nine congressional districts and will be apportioned between Clinton and Obama based on how well they do in those individual districts. The other 25 pledged delegates will be divided between Obama and Clinton based on the statewide vote.

Following up a similar projection published prior to the April 22 primary in Pennsylvania, CQ Politics below has performed an analysis of the Democratic presidential primary in Indiana that projects how many delegates the candidates will win in each of the nine congressional districts.

This analysis gives Clinton a 24 to 23 edge over Obama in the race for the 47 district-level delegates -- with the disclaimer that this is a projection and not a hard-and-fast prediction, because of the convoluted way in which the delegates will be distributed can produce some unpredictable results.

The number of delegates that are assigned to each congressional district is determined by the Democratic turnout in the 2004 elections for president, in which President Bush easily carried a state that has for years been a Republican presidential stronghold, and governor, a race in which Republican Mitch Daniels unseated Democratic incumbent Joseph E. Kernan.

There are four Democratic delegates assigned to the Republican-leaning 3rd, 4th and 5th districts and six delegates in each of five districts that are more friendly to Democrats -- the 1st, 2nd, 7th, 8th and 9th. The 6th District has five delegates.

It's notable that eight of the nine districts have an even number of delegates. Because of this, a wide range of vote percentages for the candidates will yield delegate ties of 2-2 or 3-3. In the four-delegate districts, Clinton or Obama would need 62.5 percent of the vote to garner a 3-1 delegate split; anything lower than that would yield a 2-2 tie. In a six-delegate district, the winner would need 58.3 percent of the vote to turn a 3-3 tie into a 4-2 edge.

Some predictions of district winners are easier than others. CQ Politics anticipates that Obama will win two districts: the northwestern 1st District, which is close to his hometown of Chicago, and the Indianapolis-centered 7th District, which has a substantial black population. Clinton likely will win the other seven.

What will make or break Clinton's effort to win a substantial majority of Indiana's delegates -- something she needs, as she trails Obama in the cumulative delegate race -- is whether she can run up big enough margins in the districts she wins to claim those precious extra delegates, rather than having to settle for breaking even with Obama.

It's mathematically possible, if unlikely, for one candidate to win more popular votes and the other candidate to win more district-level delegates. This could happen, for example, if Obama does well enough in the 1st and 7th to win four of six delegates there, and holds Clinton's margins down enough to salvage ties in most of the rest of the districts.

The other 25 pledged delegates at stake -- 16 "at-large" delegates and nine party leader and elected officials (PLEOs) -- will be distributed in proportion to the statewide vote. The 16 at-large delegates will split 8-8 if the winner takes less than 53.1 percent of the vote. The statewide winner is guaranteed a 5-4 victory among the nine PLEOs; it would require 61.1 percent of the statewide vote for a 6-3 edge.

So a contest in which the popular vote winner prevails by a 6 percentage-point margin -- an entirely plausible outcome -- could give him or her just one more of Indiana's pledge delegates than the loser.

Some of this involves guesswork, and we invite our readers to make their own predictions in the comments section below. For assistance, feel free to consult this chart of demographic and political information about Indiana. The Indiana Secretary of State's office has an informative page that includes congressional district maps and a breakdown of registered Indiana voters by congressional district.

This year's Indiana contest is the state's first highly competitive Democratic presidential primary since 1984, when the state narrowly favored Colorado Sen. Gary Hart over former Vice President Walter Mondale, the eventual Democratic nominee.

Sixteen years earlier, New York Sen. Robert F. Kennedy won the May Indiana Democratic primary, defeating Gov. Roger Branigin, a stand-in for President Lyndon B. Johnson (who decided in late March not to seek re-election), and Minnesota Sen. Eugene McCarthy, who was competing with Kennedy for support from voters who opposed the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war. That set the stage for the crucial early June showdown with McCarthy in California in which Kennedy scored a victory that would have established him as the leader of dissident forces challenging Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey for the nomination, but was assassinated just after speaking at a victory rally in Los Angeles.

Polls show that Indiana Democrats are pretty divided between Clinton and Obama, and so are many of the Democratic heavyweights in the state. Clinton's backers include Sen. Evan Bayh and Indiana Democratic Party Chairman Dan Parker, while Obama is backed by well-known former Reps. Tim Roemer from the northern part of the state and Lee Hamilton from southeast Indiana.

As further evidence of how much the Indiana Democratic contest is up for grabs, only one of the five House Democrats in the state's nine-member U.S. House delegation has announced an endorsement: 7th District Rep. Andre Carson, who won a special election in February, is an Obama backer. The other four -- Peter J. Vislosky of the 1st District, Joe Donnelly of the 2nd, Brad Ellsworth of the 8th and Baron P. Hill of the 9th -- all remain uncommitted.

"If you're an Indiana Democrat looking for guidance, it's decidedly mixed," said Robert Dion, a political scientist at the University of Evansville.

The Indiana district breakdown starts here:

- 1st District (Northwest -- Gary, Hammond). This district, represented by veteran Democrat Peter J. Visclosky, has the state's largest black constituency (18 percent of the total population) after the Indianapolis-based 7th. Residents in "The Region" -- as northwest Indiana is known -- are more in the orbit of Obama's hometown of Chicago than of Indianapolis (the city of East Chicago is actually in Indiana's Lake County, and sports fans here pull for Chicago's Bears and the Bulls, not the Colts and the Pacers of Indianapolis). Obama will get a big vote out of Gary, where African-Americans comprise a majority of residents, though some mayors in white-majority suburbs are backing Clinton. Obama probably will win the district comfortably, but his campaign also is shooting to exceed the 58.3 percent vote threshold needed to win four of six delegates. CQ Politics Projection: Tie, 3-3.

- 2nd District (North central -- South Bend, parts of Elkhart and Kokomo). The population center of this district is St. Joseph County, which includes South Bend and the University of Notre Dame and accounts for about 40 percent of the district's total population. College communities, with their young students and well-educated academics, have been voting strongly for Obama. There's also a sizable black population in South Bend that is pro-Obama.

Elsewhere in St. Joseph's County, there are older, blue-collar Roman Catholic Democrats on the west side of South Bend who will favor Clinton, as likely will most voters who live in small towns on the outer edge of the county. Clinton also should do quite well in the southern reaches of the district, including the 2nd's share of the industrial city of Kokomo.

These competing demographics suggest it is unlikely that either contender will exceed the 58 percent vote share needed to get a 4-2 delegate lead in the district. "If I had to say right now, I'd say that the 2nd District is going to be fairly close," said John Roos, a political scientist at Notre Dame who is supporting Obama. CQ Politics Projection: Tie, 3-3.

- 3rd District (Northeast -- Fort Wayne). This area of Indiana was once represented by Republican Dan Quayle, who would become a U.S. senator and vice president under President George H.W. Bush, and Jill Long Thompson, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for governor this year. The district, which has a strong overall Republican lean, is represented in the House by seven-term Republican Mark Souder.

Clinton probably will win among Democrats here. The district offers just four delegates, so the winner will need 62.5 percent of the vote to win three of the four. For what it's worth, the three heavily Republican northwestern Ohio counties that abut Indiana's 3rd went heavily for Clinton in that state's March 4 Democratic primary: Williams (57 percent); Defiance (56 percent); and Paulding (66 percent). CQ Politics Projection: Tie, 2-2.

- 4th District (West central -- Indianapolis suburbs, Lafayette). Another heavily Republican district, the 4th is represented by Republican Steve Buyer. The district has just four Democratic delegates, and should favor Clinton outside Tippecanoe County, which takes in Purdue University in West Lafayette. As in the 3rd District, the winner needs a 25-point win for a 3-1 delegate advantage. CQ Politics Projection: Tie, 2-2.

- 5th District (East central -- part of Indianapolis and suburbs). Compared to the rest of the state, Democrats are in short supply in the 5th, where 13-term Republican Dan Burton holds the House seat. In the 2004 presidential election, Democratic nominee John Kerry took a statewide low of 28 percent in the 5th District. Clinton should win this district; it's possible that she'll exceed 62.5 percent of the vote. CQ Politics Projection: Clinton 3, Obama 1.

- 6th District (East -- Muncie, Anderson, Richmond). Indiana's 6th, represented in Congress by Republican Mike Pence, is the only district with an odd number of district delegates (five), so either Clinton or Obama will emerge from here with a 3-2 edge. (It takes a 70 percent supermajority for a 4-1 split). The university community in and around Ball State University in Muncie in is likely to lean Obama, but Clinton should otherwise do well elsewhere in this district, which is overwhelmingly white and has levels of income and education that are lower than the state at-large -- a profile that matches many other districts in previous primary states where she has done well. Fayette County, which includes Connersville in the southeastern area of the district, has the highest unemployment rate of any of Indiana's 92 counties. CQ Politics Projection: Clinton 3, Obama 2.

- 7th District (Most of Indianapolis). Like newly elected Democratic Rep. Carson -- who succeeded his late grandmother, Julia Carson, in the House seat -- about 30 percent of residents in this Indianapolis-centered district are black, a larger percentage than in any other district in Indiana. Obama, who has received overwhelming support from black voters during the nominating campaign, surely will win this district, and it seems likely that he will exceed 58.3 percent of the vote and get a 4-2 delegate advantage. CQ Politics Projection: Obama 4, Clinton 2.

- 8th District (West -- Evansville, Terre Haute). This district's population center is Evansville, Indiana's third-largest city and the hometown of its freshman Democratic representative, Brad Ellsworth. The first-term congressman, a former county sheriff, shares the cultural conservatism and economic populist views of many of his constituents. Evansville actually is closer to a state capital outside Indiana (Nashville, Tenn.) than to its own, and the city is about as far south as Richmond, Va.

"Our Democratic Party locally tends to be pro-life on abortion, pro-gun, pro-union, pro-school prayer," said Dion, the University of Evansville political scientist. "Don't forget that it doesn't take much to get from here to Kentucky."

Anthony Long, the 8th District Democratic chairman, is backing Clinton, while Evansville Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel recently endorsed Obama.

The 8th has most of Indiana's border with Illinois, though this is not as much of an advantage for Obama as you might think. White, Gallatin and Lawrence Counties, which abut Indiana's 8th District on the other side of the Wabash River, were among the 14 Illinois counties that backed Clinton over Obama in that state's Feb. 5 presidential primary, which Obama won by nearly a 2-to-1 ratio. Clinton should win this district handily; it's possible she might win more than 58.3 percent needed for a 4-2 delegate edge. CQ Politics Projection: Tie, 3-3.

- 9th District (Southeast -- Bloomington, New Albany). Obama will easily carry Bloomington, a liberal-leaning city that includes the main campus of Indiana University. But there are more district residents to be found in the counties along the Ohio River, just across from Kentucky, in cities such as New Albany and Jeffersonville that will back Clinton. Former Rep. Hamilton, who served this southeastern Indiana constituency for 34 years in the U.S. House, is backing Obama. Clinton should win the district, though it's doubtful that the margin will be larger than the 58.3 percent needed to break another delegate tie. CQ Politics Prediction: Tie, 3-3.

Former president Bill Clinton traveled Monday to the GOP stronghold of Carmel a day after visiting other Indiana communities that rarely favor Democrats. The Obama campaign is scouring similar territory for votes.

Carmel High School students filled most of the seats in the school's gym to hear from Bill Clinton, with a few hundred members of the public joining them in the northern Indianapolis suburb.

The visit thrilled ardent Democrats from Hamilton County, which is the state's most affluent and fastest growing.

"Believe me, we're lone wolves," Clinton supporter Sue Ann Blessing said. "Maybe there'll be some closet Democrats come out the woodwork with this primary election."

Bill Clinton gave a policy-laden speech to the Carmel crowd, drawing the biggest response when he talked about efforts backed by his wife to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and end the war in Iraq. He made few references to Obama or Republican John McCain while making a pitch for Hillary Clinton votes in the May 6 primary.

"You need to vote for a president who can turn speeches into solutions," he said.

Bill Clinton has stopped in more than a dozen small Indiana communities in the past month. His visits over the weekend to Shelbyville and Martinsville - in counties that backed President Bush over John Kerry by more than 2-to-1 margins in 2004 - are typical.

Bush won 74% of the Hamilton County vote over Kerry, but the county's 26,388 votes for the Democratic candidate were the eighth-most among the state's 92 counties.

Just the size of the county's population makes it impossible for Clinton and Obama to ignore, said Joe Hogsett, the former Indiana secretary of state who is Clinton's Indiana co-chairman.

"There are probably a lot of independents or persuadables or maybe even some less partisan, softer Republicans who are interested in Senator Clinton and Senator Obama," Hogsett said. "So it makes all the sense in the world for President Clinton to come here."

The Obama campaign made its own bid for votes in Republican areas on Monday, sending former Rep. Tim Roemer to rally Obama supporters in Elkhart and Goshen. Those are the largest communities in northern Indiana's Elkhart County - which backed Bush better than 2-to-1 over Kerry.

Roemer, who represented Elkhart County in Congress through the 1990s, said he believed Obama appealed to independents and Republicans, both of whom can vote in the Democratic race in Indiana's open primary.

"We're scrapping and scraping for every vote we can get," Roemer said. "He doesn't throw red meat out there to try to divide the parties. He talks specifically about uniting the parties even in the Democratic primary."

Sandy Hudson held onto a Hillary Clinton campaign poster as she left Bill Clinton's Carmel speech on Monday, having also seen his Shelbyville stop the day before and a couple earlier Hillary Clinton events. She lives in nearby Westfield and hopes the former president's visit will spark Clinton supporters.

"I think it's smart to come to a high school," she said. "The kids can then go home and talk with their parents and friends."

As the Democratic Party looks ahead to its next Super Tuesday, this one on May 6, the battle lines are being drawn around Indiana.

The Hoosier State isn't the only primary battleground that day; North Carolina will also hold its contest. But Sen. Barack Obama has a solid lead in North Carolina's polls, so the new conventional wisdom for the next week goes: Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton must win Indiana or her campaign may be finished, again.

These days, every primary vote seems to be a cliffhanger for Senator Clinton.

A new poll by American Research Group shows Clinton with a five-point lead in Indiana. So what does the state's political landscape look like through the frame of Patchwork Nation? The final tally may be determined by turnout, particularly in counties that would seem to favor Senator Obama.

In many ways it's odd that Indiana is playing such a significant role in the Democratic primary process. The state hasn't voted for the Democratic presidential nominee in November since 1964 and probably won't break the pattern in 2008.

Democrats do have a few strongholds in the state, and if Obama is going to win next Tuesday, they will be critical to his victory.

For this analysis, Patchwork Nation has classified three of those counties in the state as "Industrial Metropolis" - Marion (home of Indianapolis), Lake (home of Gary), and St. Joseph (home of South Bend). Though Marion and Lake are respectively labeled "Minority Central" and "Emptying Nest" on the Patchwork Nation website map, they are also both high matches for the Industrial Metropolis category because of their urban cores. They have a more diverse and younger population than the state as a whole, and the outcomes are likely to be similar to those of other big cities in this primary season.

Those three counties will be key for Obama because they contain 34 percent of the state's population. In the 2004 presidential race, however, they only represented about 33 percent of the vote.* If Obama can drive up turnout in those counties, his chances for carrying the state improve.

He also will look for high turnout in Monroe County, a "Campus and Careers" locale, home to the University of Indiana, which slightly underperformed in turnout in 2004.*

Indiana's voter registration numbers have increased since the first of the year - they are up 150,000 - but no party breakdown is available for the numbers. However, that breakdown hardly matters in this case because the state has an open primary, meaning residents of any political affiliation are allowed to vote in the Democratic contest.

For Clinton, the good news is likely to come from the "Emptying Nests" counties, characterized by an older population and a higher concentration of Evangelicals. In general elections, Republicans typically carry these counties by a large margin. In the '08 Democratic primaries, they have been Clinton territory in nearly every state.

In Indiana, Emptying Nest counties account for a good chunk the state's population - 21 percent, much more than Pennsylvania's Emptying Nests population of 12.5 percent. And in 2004, they also slightly outperformed their population figures in terms of turnout.* Many of these counties had a participation rate greater than 60 percent. It remains unclear how far these Republican-leaning counties will tilt in Clinton's direction in the state's open primary.

The third biggest block of voters in Indiana, come from the state's "Monied 'Burbs" communities. These places were hotly contested in Pennsylvania and will likely be again next week. These 20 counties, many based around Indianapolis, hold about 17.5 percent of the state's population, but they also make up a larger portion of the state's voters. In November 2004, 18.4 percent of the state's vote came from these locales.*

* NOTE: This post replaces an earlier entry from this morning. That post was taken down because a data merge/computation mistake resulted in incorrect 2004 voter turnout figures. Those numbers have been corrected in this post. That entry also referenced "Tractor Country" counties, but the remerged and recalculated figures indicate " 'Monied Burbs" areas will be more crucial in Indiana.

By Dante Chinni, The Christian Science Monitor, April 28, 2008

WASHINGTON (AP) - A political advocacy group consisting of backers of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's presidential campaign was to begin spending at least $700,000 Tuesday in an Indiana advertising blitz calling on Sen. Barack Obama to address the economic plight of Americans.

The Indiana ad campaign would be the biggest single expenditure in a state for the mostly union financed group, called the American Leadership Project. The group spent more than $1 million running ads in Texas, Ohio and Pennsylvania.

"Indiana has been ground zero for economic anxiety since 2001," said Jason Kinney, an Indiana native and one of the organizers of the American Leadership Project.

The ad quotes commentators who describe Obama's economic plan as deficient. The ad campaign could come at a crucial time for Clinton. The Democratic presidential race in Indiana is a dead heat, according to public opinion polls. Obama, the better-financed candidate, has been spending more than Clinton in the state.

As of its last filing with the Federal Election Commission, the group had raised $1.5 million, almost all of it from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, a union that has endorsed Clinton.

The group is a so-called 527 organization, named after the section of the tax code that governs their activities. Such groups, unlike candidates and political action committees, can raise unlimited amounts of money from unions, individuals and corporations.

But the law prohibits them from coordinating their work with political campaigns. They also are barred from explicitly advocating the election or defeat of a candidate. But they are permitted to support or oppose issues and the stands that candidates take on those issues.

Before the Ohio and Texas primaries, the American Leadership Project ran an ad supporting Clinton's economic policies. The ad did not mention Obama, but alluded to him with an announcer saying: "If speeches could create jobs, we wouldn't be facing a recession."

The ad campaign became more pointed in Pennsylvania, claiming Obama's health care plan would leave millions uninsured.

WILMINGTON, N.C. - What will the Edwardses do?

As the Democratic presidential candidates and their surrogates traipse through North Carolina in the final days before the state's primary, some people here are wondering, why so quiet in Chapel Hill?

That is where John and Elizabeth Edwards retreated after he dropped out of the race for the Democratic nomination on Jan. 30. Neither Mr. Edwards, a former North Carolina senator, nor Mrs. Edwards, a political activist herself, has endorsed a candidate, despite the growing intensity of the race between Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama and the fact that the contest has now landed in the Edwardses' backyard.

"I don't get it," said Kathi Lewis, of Wilmington, as she and two friends waited for Mrs. Clinton to arrive at a campaign event Sunday evening. "We were just talking about it on the way over here. It's too bad he's not the candidate, but if he endorsed, it would sway people in one direction or the other."

Mrs. Clinton's supporters, in particular, are anxious for the Edwardses to speak up about whom they support. Mr. Obama has held a significant lead in the polls here for months, and Clinton supporters are hoping that an Edwards endorsement will bolster Mrs. Clinton's chances at a crucial moment.

Theories abound: They will endorse before the primary. Or after there is a nominee. Or Mr. Edwards will endorse Mr. Obama and Mrs. Edwards will endorse Mrs. Clinton. Or none of the above.

"People talk about it all the time," said Alina Szmant, a professor at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. "The rumor on the street is that he's holding out for a V.P. position."

Mary Smith of Carolina Beach predicted that the Edwardses would make a joint endorsement. "I wish they would hurry up and pick Hillary," Ms. Smith said.

The silence, particularly from Mr. Edwards, is strange. Joni Barnes of Wilmington said she believed that he was waiting for a nominee to be chosen. "I think he doesn't want to create any more division within the party," Ms. Barnes said.

Mrs. Edwards has been more visible. An opinion article she wrote appeared in The New York Times on Sunday, criticizing the news media's coverage of the primary campaigns. And Mrs. Edwards, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund, a liberal policy group in Washington, has spoken out in support of universal health care, holding a conference call with reporters Monday to raise questions about Senator John McCain's health care plan, which he is discussing this week.

Otherwise, the Edwardses have been staying out of the race. In fact, they planned to go to Walt Disney World this week, away from the campaign events grabbing headlines here.

Mr. Edwards has hinted to friends that he will not offer an endorsement before the North Carolina and Indiana primaries on May 6. One former aide, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly, said Mr. Edwards was angling for a role in a Democratic administration, and with the contest still undecided, was hesitant to commit to a candidate.

"He doesn't want to pick the loser," the aide said.

John C. Moylan, a longtime friend and adviser who directed Mr. Edwards's South Carolina campaign, was more diplomatic.

"He thinks very highly of both Senators Clinton and Obama," Mr. Moylan said, "and I do not think he is inclined to spend the next three months engaged in the small politics of who's the better bowler or beer drinker."

Many of Mr. Edwards's supporters in North Carolina have been quietly pressing him to endorse Mr. Obama, and a large group of them, led by Ed Turlington, his campaign chairman during the last presidential race, came forward publicly last week to support Mr. Obama.

On the other hand, Mrs. Edwards, her husband's closest and most trusted adviser, has made it clear that she favors Mrs. Clinton; aides said she had recently tried to persuade Mr. Edwards to do the same.

Even if he remains neutral, Mrs. Edwards's endorsement would carry weight, some voters suggested.

"I read in the Raleigh paper that Elizabeth likes Hillary's health care plan, so we know who she's for," said Judy Campbell of Wilmington.

Elizabeth Highfill of Wilmington said: "People are waiting to see what she says. In North Carolina, Elizabeth is more important. I'm not going to be surprised if she endorses Hillary and he endorses Obama."

Mr. Edwards and Mrs. Clinton hardly appear to be natural allies. They clashed throughout the campaign, particularly in televised debates. But more recently, their relationship has warmed, and they speak on the phone regularly. (Mr. Obama is also in touch with Mr. Edwards, and spoke with him as recently as last week.)

Paz Bartolome, an emeritus professor at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington, said that even though she supported Mrs. Clinton, she would prefer that Mr. Edwards remain neutral. "I hope he doesn't endorse anybody," Professor Bartolome said. "He should let people make up their minds."

Others think it is time for a sign from Chapel Hill.

"One way or the other, he needs to endorse," said Mott Blair, a family physician from Wallace. "It's time for him to make the statement. Sometimes you just need to come forward and do the right thing."

One of my fundamental disagreements during this campaign with my opponent was when he called for the repeal of the gas tax. Now, the gas tax is one of those few taxes that New York actually gets more money from Washington than we send. And we are totally reliant on it to do things like finishing I-86 in the Southern Tier, or the fast-ferry harbor works up in Rochester, as well as the work we need to do here in the city.

Senator Barack Obama has similarly taken different positions on the issue of gas taxes, albeit at the state level. In 2000, Mr. Obama supported a bill in the Illinois legislature to suspend most of the state's 6.25 per cent gasoline sales tax. But he later opposed making the reduction permanent, arguing that the state needed the revenue and the measure had saved consumers little money.

"I think it's a tremendous boost to the campaign and its a reaffirmation of the momentum that we have in the state and a reaffirmation of Sen. Clinton's message and its importance ... to the people of North Carolina," Tom Hendrickson, an adviser to Clinton in North Carolina, told the Associated Press.

Hendrickson said a formal endorsement event was tentatively scheduled for Tuesday in Raleigh.

Easley is a Democratic superdelegate who has served as the state's governor for two terms. His decision comes despite several polls showing the New York senator trailing Obama in North Carolina as they compete for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Elon University Poll Director Hunter Bacot said the endorsement may help move Clinton's numbers a few percentage points, but will only serve to solidify support among conservative Democrats such as Easley.

"I think it will help her attract the type of voters she's been attracting throughout her campaign - usually the moderate to lower-income white vote, particularly in more rural areas," Bacot said. "She's been strong in that demographic throughout."

Like almost all the state's superdelegates, Easley had initially supported former North Carolina senator John Edwards during his second bid for the White House. He becomes just the second superdelegate from North Carolina to endorse Clinton, while six of the state's 17 superdelegates have pledged to support Obama.

While he is not a superdelegate, Edwards remains the biggest prize among North Carolina Democrats, Bacot said. Since leaving the race in January, Edwards has remained silent on which of his two formal rivals he plans to support.

A former state attorney general, Easley has focused largely on education programs during his eight-year tenure. He's called on both of the presidential candidates to talk more about he issue.

"Gov. Easley understands that education and a good economy are intertwined, and he understands that more than anyone else in the country," Hendrickson said.

Two week ago, Easley wrote a note to Obama imploring the Illinois senator to take part in a debate that would have taken place Sunday in Raleigh. Obama declined, saying he wasn't sure it would fit with his schedule, and the state Democratic Party later abandoned the debate plans.

The Associated Press, April 28, 2008

WASHINGTON - As angry truckers encircled the Capitol in a horn-blaring caravan and consumers across the country agonized over $60 fill-ups, the issue of high fuel prices flared on the campaign trail on Monday, sharply dividing the two Democratic candidates.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton lined up with Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, in endorsing a plan to suspend the federal excise tax on gasoline, 18.4 cents a gallon, for the summer travel season. But Senator Barack Obama, Mrs. Clinton's Democratic rival, spoke out firmly against the proposal, saying it would save consumers little and do nothing to curtail oil consumption and imports.

While Mr. Obama's view is shared by environmentalists and many independent energy analysts, his position allowed Mrs. Clinton to draw a contrast with her opponent in appealing to the hard-hit middle-class families and older Americans who have proven to be the bedrock of her support. She has accused Mr. Obama of being out of touch with ordinary Americans who are struggling to meet their mortgages and gas up their cars and trucks.

Mrs. Clinton said at a rally on Monday morning in Graham, N.C., that she would introduce legislation to impose a windfall-profits tax on oil companies and use the revenue to suspend the gasoline tax temporarily.

"At the heart of my approach is a simple belief," Mrs. Clinton said. "Middle-class families are paying too much and oil companies aren't paying their fair share to help us solve the problems at the pump."

The split occurred as Senators Clinton and Obama were competing intensely in primaries in Indiana and North Carolina, where voters go to the polls next Tuesday. Opinion surveys have shown that the faltering economy and high gas prices are the top concerns of voters across the country, edging out the war in Iraq.

The Clinton campaign is running television advertising in Indiana contrasting her approach on gas prices with Mr. Obama’s.

Mrs. Clinton said the tax on the oil companies, which have been reporting record profits as oil prices soar, would cover all of the lost revenue from the federal tax on gasoline and diesel fuel. She also said no highway projects would suffer.

Mr. Obama derided the McCain-Clinton idea of a federal tax holiday as a "short-term, quick-fix" proposal that would do more harm than good, and said the money, which is earmarked for the federal highway trust fund, is badly needed to maintain the nation's roads and bridges.

In 2000, Mr. Obama supported a bill in the Illinois legislature to suspend most of the state's 6.25 percent gasoline sales tax. But he later opposed making the reduction permanent, arguing that the state needed the revenue and that the measure had saved consumers little.

Mrs. Clinton, of New York, has also taken varying stands on the issue of gas taxes. In her 2000 Senate campaign, she spoke against repealing the federal gasoline tax, calling it "one of those few taxes that New York actually gets more money from Washington than we send."

At a meeting with voters in North Carolina on Monday, Mr. Obama said lifting the gas tax for three months would save the average consumer no more than $30, a figure confirmed by Congressional analysts. Mr. Obama has previously dismissed Mr. McCain's proposal as a "scheme."

"Half a tank of gas," Mr. Obama told his audience. "That's his big solution."

President Bush's spokeswoman essentially sided with Mr. Obama in saying that tax holidays and new levies on oil companies would not address the long-term problems of dependence on foreign oil.

Dana Perino, the White House spokeswoman, said gasoline prices were "entirely too high, but I think it would be disingenuous and unfortunate for American consumers for them to be led to believe that there is a short-term fix."

"There is not going to be one," Ms. Perino said.

It is not clear whether Congress will act quickly on a fuel tax suspension and a new levy on oil companies, particularly given the White House opposition. While Democratic leaders are sympathetic, aides said, similar plans have failed a number of times.

The debate erupted as both candidates rounded up more superdelegate endorsements on Monday, with Mr. Obama highlighting the backing of Senator Jeff Bingaman of New Mexico, who is the chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, while Gov. Michael F. Easley of North Carolina was preparing to endorse Mrs. Clinton on Tuesday.

The split on the gas tax is a relatively rare one for Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, who agree on the broad outlines of policy in most areas. They have both called for the suspension of purchases for the national strategic petroleum stockpile, a supply of oil to protect the country against sudden supply disruptions; new taxes on oil companies; measures to curb global warming; and heavy federal spending on renewable energy sources. They have also called for a federal investigation of possible manipulation in oil markets.

Mr. McCain has also called for a halt to purchases for the petroleum reserve and expressed support of climate-change legislation, but opposes the imposition of windfall-profits taxes on oil companies.

All three candidates have endorsed tougher fuel-efficiency standards for cars and trucks and diplomatic measures to pressure oil-producing nations to lower prices.

The federal tax on motor fuels - the tax on diesel fuel is 24.4 cents a gallon - yielded $28.2 billion in 2006, the last full year for which statistics are available. The last time the federal fuel taxes were raised significantly was in 1993 as part of President Bill Clinton's budget-balancing package.

The highway trust fund that the gas tax finances provides money to states and local governments to pay for road and bridge construction, repair and maintenance. Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton propose to suspend the tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day, the peak driving season, which would lower tax receipts by roughly $9 billion and potentially cost 300,000 highway construction jobs, according to state highway officials.

Mrs. Clinton would replace that money with the new tax on oil company profits, an idea that has been kicking around Congress for several years but has not been enacted into law. Mr. McCain would divert tax revenue from other sources to make the highway trust fund whole.

The Senate blocked a $15 billion tax on oil companies last December that was part of a larger energy package.

A McCain spokesman sought to use the gas tax issue to drive a wedge between the two Democratic candidates and paint Mr. Obama as a flip-flopper given how he voted as a state lawmaker in 2000.

"It's clear Barack Obama's not strong enough to provide immediate relief at the pump, and it shows he doesn't understand our economy or have the ability to deliver for hard-working Americans," said Tucker Bounds, a McCain aide. "Senator Obama's arguments against John McCain's gas tax holiday are complete fiction, and the reality is that he used to support a gas tax holiday before he was running for president."

Hillary Rodham Clinton led John McCain by 9 points in a head-to-head presidential matchup, according to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll, bolstering her argument that she is more electable than Democratic rival Barack Obama.

Obama and Republican McCain were running about even.

The survey, released Monday, gives Clinton a fresh talking point as she works to raise campaign cash and persuade pivotal undecided superdelegates to side with her in the drawn-out Democratic primary fight.

Helped by independents, young people and senior citizens, Clinton gained ground this month in a hypothetical match with McCain, the GOP nominee-in-waiting. In the poll, she led McCain 50 percent to 41 percent, while Obama remained virtually tied with McCain, 46 percent to 44 percent. The poll had a margin of error of 3.1 percent.

Both Democrats were roughly even with McCain in the previous poll about three weeks ago.

WRAP IT UP BY JUNE, SAYS DEAN

Democratic Party chairman Howard Dean said Monday that one of the two candidates must drop out of the race after the primary season wraps up in June so Democrats can unite before the late-summer convention and the fall campaign.

He also urged undecided superdelegates to side with either Clinton or Obama before the August convention so the party can come together to take on McCain.

ASSOCIATED PRESS, April 28, 2008

Sen. Hillary Clinton's foreign-policy crisis-management skills aren't limited to fielding phone calls in the middle of the night. She's ready in the afternoon too. "When there's a crisis, when that phone rings - whether at 3 p.m. or 3 a.m. - there's no time for speeches or on the job training," Clinton said this afternoon at an appearance with retired military personnel.

"The people shouldn't have to worry about if their president is ready when the phone rings at 3am," echoed Lt. Gen. Joe Ballard in voicing his support for Clinton. A president should be "prepared to answer the phone regardless of the time."

Moving forward, Clinton has said she will continue to hammer the (winning?) message that she is more experienced to lead in the Oval Office than rival Sen. Barack Obama.

"Some may believe that experience doesn't matter," she continued, adding that experience counts most "when lives are on the line." Clinton credited her experience at both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue, as first lady and a senator, as well as visits to roughly 80 countries, including trips to Iraq and Afghanistan to pad her resume.

Yet while Clinton presses the "3 a.m." line, she has not offered examples of how she personally has dealt with a foreign crisis. Asked today to offer an example of when the phone rang late at night in the White House during husband former President Bill Clinton's administration, she deferred.

"I don't talk about the conversations I had with my husband at the White House but obviously I was there for a lot of phone calls at different times of the day and night," she explained.

The Clinton campaign curiously circulated a TV clip today that was meant to be critical of Obama, but seemed more like something the Republican National Committee would be pushing. In it, Obama foreign-policy advisor Susan Rice responds a question about who's ready to answer that late night call this way: "Clinton hasn't had to answer the phone at three o'clock in the morning and yet she attacked Barack Obama for not being ready. They're both not ready to have that 3 a.m. phone call."

Speaking of Republican attacks, the Clinton campaign also used an unexpected parallel for Obama in a memo circulated today, calling his efforts to get the Clinton's to expedite the release information regarding their personal finances as reminiscent of 1990's Clinton foe attorney Ken Starr.

"I'm not going to respond to that," Clinton said today, when asked if she agreed with her campaign's characterization.

For election officials everywhere, Tuesday's votes in Ohio and Texas were contentious and drawn-out reminders to expect the unexpected in a year of enormous enthusiasm.

Though Ohio officials stayed on their toes in handling bomb threats, ice storms and power failures, they were tripped up in the end by failing to anticipate three developments: a huge turnout, a surge in Republicans voting in the Democratic primary, and a large number of voters who preferred the security of a paper ballot to the questionable technology of touch-screen machines.

As a result, many polling places ran out of Democratic paper ballots. That led to several hundred voters in Sandusky County being turned away, claims that voters were also disenfranchised in Cleveland, and last-minute litigation to keep certain polls open late.

In Cleveland, where sleepy-eyed officials in Cuyahoga County stayed up until 5 a.m. trying to finalize tallies, the lesson was that paper ballots may be more reliable and secure than touch-screen machines, but they are a lot slower to count and transport.

Still, the state and the county fared better than they did in the 2004 general election, when voters waited more than a month for final results, or in the 2006 primary, when it took five extra days for absentee ballots to be hand counted.

"Compared to the last presidential election, this state has gone from intensive care to walking on crutches," said Ohio's top elections official, the secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner. "By November, we'll be walking normally like everyone else."

A different problem, also caused by heavy turnout, disrupted the occasionally raucous Democratic caucuses in Texas on Tuesday night. At several sites, crowds were too large for the meeting halls where the caucuses were supposed to be held, driving many potential voters away and leading to several intense confrontations.

In Lake Dallas, just north of Dallas, Donna Gibbs, a chairwoman for one of the area's voting precincts, said that caucus-goers from nine precincts were supposed to vote in a municipal building there but that almost a thousand people arrived. As a result, many precincts were forced to convene in the building's parking lot, where people waited for more than two hours in chilly weather for regular primary voting to end and the caucus to begin.

"People were polite at first," Ms. Gibbs said of the various caucuses. "But after two and a half hours of waiting, they were not." She said that in one precinct, the crowd gave an election clerk such a hard time that a police officer had to come over to calm everyone down.

Hector Nieto, a spokesman for the Texas Democratic Party, said the occasional problem was understandable given the enormous turnout.

"But these are problems we're O.K. having," he said. "These are problems the Republican Party here wishes they had."

Doug Chapin, the director of Electionline.org, a Pew Center Web site that tracks election issues, said that poll worker training would become crucial as November approaches, given that turnout will likely be far higher than in previous years. He noted that the need for training was especially acute in some states, like Ohio, that only recently switched to paper ballots from touch-screen voting machines.

"Any time you change voting technology - from electronic to paper or the other way - the move brings a whole host of new concerns, and thus workers need to be trained to handle them," Mr. Chapin said. He added that election officials should realize that in each of the primaries so far, turnout had swamped expectations. "As we go forward, election officials deciding how many ballots or machines or poll workers to have on hand may well find the safest course to be to take the most optimistic projections for voter turnout and plan for even more."

Ms. Brunner, the secretary of state, said there were no confirmed reports of voters leaving the polls in Cuyahoga County because of a lack of paper ballots, though a judge ordered several polls to stay open late. When precincts ran out, Ms. Brunner said, voters were told to stay at the polling place while new ones were delivered, which typically happened in about an hour.

The one exception, she said, was in Sandusky County, where about 300 to 400 voters were turned away because of the lack of paper ballots, and in that county, Ms. Brunner got a court order to keep polling places open an hour and a half later.

One of the surprises Tuesday in Ohio was the number of registered Republicans who crossed over to vote in the Democratic primary, which election officials said was particularly obvious in usually heavy Republican precincts. But Edward B. Foley, director of the election law project at Ohio State University, said those crossover voters might not have been handled in accordance with state law.

Poll workers, he said, are supposed to challenge any voter whose eligibility they doubt based on voting history and whether the voter was affiliated with a different party for at least two years. The law also requires voters in question to sign a statement verifying their desire "to be affiliated with" and to support "the principles of the political party whose primary ballot the person desires to vote," he said.

"In Franklin County, my impression is that there was no enforcement of this requirement," said Professor Foley, adding that he had heard reports from several other counties where the law apparently was not enforced.

Ms. Brunner said that her office had sent local election officials a reminder about the rule before voting started Tuesday.

- Obama leads in pledged primary/caucus delegates but,
- Clinton leads in the popular vote of Democratic primary voters
- Obama has won more (mostly small) states but,
- Clinton has won the lion's share of big electoral vote rich states
- Neither candidate has enough pledged delegates to win without the superdelegates but,
- Clinton will have won Florida's first primary (even if it doesn't count) and the perception is that Clinton would win a re-vote in Florida where she has always been strong and in Michigan where the economy (her sweet-spot with low income voters) is the key issue.
- and Clinton has the last burst of momentum at the time when superdelegates must decide.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. - Hillary Rodham Clinton has won the endorsement of North Carolina Gov. Mike Easley, a surprise boost to her candidacy in a state where Barack Obama is heavily favored to win the Democratic primary.

With its liberal white enclaves and large population of black voters, North Carolina has been viewed as exceptionally favorable to Obama. Public polling in the state has him leading the former first lady by 10 points or more.

But Clinton has contested the state in hopes of an upset. Short of that, her campaign aims to peel off enough pledged delegates to stay competitive with Obama.

The former first lady spent Monday campaigning across North Carolina and has run a heavy television advertising campaign in the state. She was headed Tuesday to Indiana, whose May 6 primary is viewed as much more competitive.

Clinton has benefited from the support of other governors in key primary states, including Ohio's Ted Strickland and Pennsylvania's Ed Rendell. Political observers say Easley, while relatively popular, does not sit atop a massive political operation in North Carolina.

Easley is scheduled to leave office next year after serving two terms as governor. Both Democratic candidates vying for the nomination to replace him have endorsed Obama.

Besides being a respected figure among Democrats in the state, Easley is one of the all-important superdelegates likely to choose the party's presidential nominee.

He would be the second superdelegate from the state to endorse Clinton. Six of its 17 superdelegates have endorsed Obama.

Easley had backed former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards for president before he ended his bid in January. Edwards has not yet endorsed a candidate and is not expected to do so before next week's primary.

Earlier this month, Easley wrote a note to Obama imploring the Illinois Senator to take part in a debate sponsored by the North Carolina Democratic Party and televised by CBS News. But the Clinton and Obama camps were unable to agree to a date, and the state party eventually scrapped its plans.

In recent weeks, Clinton's once-sizable lead among superdelegates has dwindled as Obama has picked up the backing of several who were previously uncommitted. Obama's campaign announced Monday that New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman, another superdelegate, was supporting the Illinois senator.

By BETH FOUHY and GARY D. ROBERTSON, Associated Press, April 28, 2008

WASHINGTON - The Rev. Jeremiah Wright is going after his critics on an incendiary tour that is doing his one-time congregant, Barack Obama, little good.

"This is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright," Wright told the Washington press corps Monday. "It has nothing to do with Senator Obama. It is an attack on the black church launched by people who know nothing about the African-American religious tradition."

Wright's tour couldn't come at a much worse time for Obama, who is campaigning for white working class voters in Indiana and North Carolina. Many of Wright's most controversial comments are angry condemnations of the United States for its treatments of blacks - thoughts that were applauded by the black church leaders in his audience Monday but risk offending white voters.

An Associated Press-Ipsos poll released Monday suggests the Wright controversy may be hurting Obama among whites. His Democratic rival Hillary Rodham Clinton is doing better than Obama among whites in head-to-head matchups with John McCain. Among white respondents, Clinton gets 43 percent to McCain's 48 percent. Obama gets 38 percent to McCain's 51 percent.

Obama said Monday, after Wright's latest comments, "None of the voters I talk to ask about it. There may be people who are troubled by it and are polite and not asking about it. It's not what I hear."

"I have said before and I will say again that some of the comments Rev. Wright has made offend me and I understand why they have offended the American people. ... Certainly what the last three days indicates is we're not coordinating with him."

Wright showed no concern for how he might be affecting the presidential race. He suggested Obama was distancing himself only because of political motivations while he, the former pastor, was trying to do what was right in the eyes of the Lord.

"If Sen. Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected. Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls," Wright said. "Preachers say what they say because they're pastors, they have a different person to whom they're accountable. Whether he gets elected or not, I'm still going to have to be answerable to God November 5th."

Although many of the clips of Wright that have been dogging Obama's campaign were from sermons that were several years old, the pastor repeated some of the same ideas for television cameras Monday.

He criticized the U.S. government as imperialist and stood by his suggestion that the United States invented the HIV virus as a means of genocide against minorities. "Based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything," he said Monday.

Asked whether he owed the American people an apology, some in the supportive crowd shouted, "No!" Wright argued that his fiery nature was appropriate since the United States has never apologized for slavery or racism.

The North Carolina Republican Party is airing an ad that shows Wright with Obama and says the candidate is "too extreme for North Carolina." All three presidential candidates are talking about that ad to criticize one another.

Obama's campaign says McCain isn't doing enough to get it off the air. McCain himself responded that he's told the state officials to take it down and there's nothing more he can do.

"I am not going to be a referee," McCain told reporters at a news conference in Miami Monday. "I have made my position very clear on this issue. And I do not believe that Sen. Obama shares Reverend Wright's extreme statements or views, whichever they be."

Clinton used the issue to make a double swipe - saying she thinks McCain could do more to stop the ads, while reminding voters that she would never have a pastor like Wright.

"I would not have stayed in that church under those circumstances, but I regret the efforts by Republicans to politicize this matter," she told reporters while campaigning in North Carolina.

As Obama has grappled with how to respond to Wright's most controversial statements, he has described him as akin to an uncle who sometimes says things you don't agree with. He seemed reluctant to disavow his longtime pastor, although Wright didn't extend the same courtesy to Obama.

"I said to Barack Obama last year, 'If you get elected, November the fifth, I'm coming after you because you'll be representing a government whose policies grind under people,'" Wright said.

I normally don't claim to speak for other members of the vast right-wing conspiracy. After all, we're each nefarious in our own, individual way. Indeed, we often disagree with one another.

But I do think I can speak for most of my fellow right-wingers when I say this: We once looked forward with unambivalent glee to the fall of the house of Clinton. Many of us still do. But we also see the liberal media failing to give Hillary Clinton the respect she deserves. So, since we conservatives believe in giving credit where credit is due, it falls to us to praise Hillary.

The fact is Hillary Clinton has turned out to be an impressive candidate. She has consistently defeated Barack Obama when her back was to the wall - first in New Hampshire, then in several big primaries on Super Tuesday, on March 4 in Ohio and Texas, and then last week in Pennsylvania, where she was outspent by almost 3 to 1, yet won handily.

She is, of course, still behind in the race, and Obama will most likely be the nominee. His team has run the better campaign. In particular, it realized how important the caucus states could be: Obama's delegate lead depends on his caucus victories.

But Hillary may well be the better candidate. After all, for all the talk of Obama's extraordinary ability to draw voters to the polls, Clinton has defeated him in the big states, including California, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Obama won his home state of Illinois, but she won Florida, where both were on the ballot but didn't campaign.

Furthermore, if you add up the votes in all the primaries and caucuses - excluding Michigan (where only Hillary was on the ballot), and imputing the likely actual totals in the four caucus states, where only percentages were reported - Clinton now trails in overall votes by only about 300,000, or about 1 percent of the total. By the end of the nominating contest, she may well be ahead on this benchmark - one not entirely to be scorned in a democracy.

Hillary has achieved this despite much disparagement of her candidacy by liberal commentators, and in the face of the media's crush on Obama. Even those who started out being well disposed to Clinton have moved toward Obama, if only out of concern that the prolonged race is damaging Democratic prospects in the fall.

Obama understands his advantage with the media, as he perhaps inadvertently demonstrated over the weekend on "Fox News Sunday." In the course of dismissing much pundit commentary for typically overreacting to events, good or bad, Obama explained, "Well, look, after you lose, then everybody writes these anguished columns about, why did you lose?"

Obama chose a nice word: "anguished." You're only anguished by an Obama defeat if you're rooting for an Obama victory. Obama was tacitly acknowledging that much of the liberal media has been hoping he'd win. Now, they're rooting for him to close the deal.

That's fine. If I were on the left I might be rooting for that too. But this focus on Obama has resulted in a refusal to give Hillary her due. It's startling how much of the commentary on the Pennsylvania results has had to do with Obama's flaws and mistakes - rather than Hillary's strengths and successes. Maybe in Pennsylvania, they were voting for Clinton, not simply against Obama.

Which leads to this question: Will the media this week give Obama a pass on refusing to debate Clinton before the Indiana and North Carolina primaries on May 6? Will he be chastised for his lame excuse? "We've had 21, and so what we've said is with two weeks, two big states, we want to make sure we're talking to as many folks as possible on the ground, taking questions from voters," Obama said on "Fox News Sunday."

Will it be left to conservatives like the estimable blogger "Allahpundit" (at hotair.com) to (sarcastically) state the obvious? "What's the most efficient way to communicate with voters? Surely not at a massively promoted, televised, highly watched debate. Much better to hold a few town halls and meet and greets."

We have had four one-on-one debates so far - and each has been revealing. A debate without a moderator, as Clinton has suggested, could be particularly interesting. But debates would give Clinton equal time in the spotlight, and would make Obama's advantage in paid media in Indiana and North Carolina far less significant.

On Friday in Indiana, Obama talked tough in response to a question: "I get pretty fed up with people questioning my patriotism." And, he continued, "I am happy to have that debate with them any place, anytime." He's happy to have fantasy debates with unnamed people who are allegedly challenging his patriotism. But he's not willing to have a real debate with the real person he's competing against for the nomination.

Will Obama pay no price for ducking? Should paid advertisements determine the Democratic victor, not the performance of the two candidates debating at length in an unscripted setting?

Over to you, anguished liberals.

FORT WAYNE, Ind. - All politicians talk about jobs, but these days Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton does it with tactile, almost sensuous detail. She began a rally here on Saturday morning with memories of her father's fabric-printing business, feeling aloud the cloth, the silk screen and the squeegee he used to create patterns that would decorate strangers' drapes.

"I'm trying to paint a word picture, and when I think about helping my dad at his print plant, it's very physical, the memories," she recalled in an interview after the crowds had dispersed.

Mrs. Clinton has spent her whole life climbing the ladders of education, wealth and power. Now, as part of her effort to hold off Senator Barack Obama and claim the Democratic presidential nomination, she is climbing back down them, sounding less like a Wellesley alumna than Roseanne Barr's old sitcom character, the den mother of her factory floor.

Mrs. Clinton's campaign has hung on in part by asserting that Mr. Obama cannot win the crucial category of white working-class Democrats. Those men and women won her the Ohio and Pennsylvania primaries, and for the logic of her campaign to hold, they must again side with her in Indiana, where polls suggest the race could be tight.

So every speech she gave in Indiana on Friday and Saturday had the same topic sentence. "My campaign is about jobs, jobs, jobs and jobs," she said, always to thunderous applause.

In Bloomington, she promised to bring nothing less than economic revolution to the decaying Rust Belt. "You've heard of white-collar jobs and blue-collar jobs," she told her Fort Wayne audience, setting up a line about how efforts to address global warming and other environmental problems could spawn new industries. "We're going to create green-collar jobs."

At a union hall in garbage-strewn Gary, Mrs. Clinton began her early-evening speech looking wan. But as she began talking about magnets and wheel bases, her eyes grew rounder and her small hands danced with expressive energy. She sounded as if, once she is done with the presidency business, she might like to try the steel one, joining those in the audience wearing "Women of Steel" T-shirts.

Since the race started, Mrs. Clinton has cycled through several political personas: the battle-tested White House veteran, the fighter, the girl - her word - tougher than any boy. Now she is the Dream Boss: the one who will give you a job and provide health insurance, but also understand just how hard you work and the mundane details of what you do. Mrs. Clinton has a reputation as an effective listener, and she is finally putting that skill to full use in her appearances, showing her audiences how closely she tracks their concerns.

"Most people get a lot of meaning in their life from the work that they do," she said in the interview. "People want to be seen, they want to be appreciated, they want to be acknowledged."

At the union hall in Gary, she grew so animated in describing the plight of old-line industrial workers that she described them in language from the oft-repeated poem, attributed to the German pastor Martin Niemoller, about the victims of Nazism. "First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Socialist," goes the version inscribed on a wall at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. After coming for the trade unionists, it continues, "they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out, because I was not a Jew."

In Mrs. Clinton's version, she intoned: "They came for the steel companies and nobody said anything. They came for the auto companies and nobody said anything. They came for the office companies, people who did white-collar service jobs, and no one said anything. And they came for the professional jobs that could be outsourced, and nobody said anything."

"So this is not just about steel," she finished.

Next, she shared the alarming news that American radiologists are losing jobs because X-rays are being sent electronically to India. But according to Frank Levy, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, there is only one firm in India that reads American images. The overseas radiologists who read American images are generally United States citizens themselves, Mr. Levy said, because doctors who have not passed American boards cannot be insured against malpractice.

In these speeches, Mrs. Clinton moves smoothly from her audience's job concerns to her own.

"Think about other important personnel decisions you have made," Mrs. Clinton urges, like choosing a surgeon to operate on a loved one or a negotiator for a new union contract.

She never mentions just who the Democrats should be having second thoughts about. Instead she talks about her husband's years in office, playing on the prosperity that most voters enjoyed during the 1990s.

"Each time a Bush became president, I was laid off," said Bill Campbell, 42, a machine operator who came to hear Mrs. Clinton speak in Bloomington. "When Bill was president, I did well."

Mr. Campbell was far from the only man in the crowd, but in Bloomington and elsewhere, the men were significantly outnumbered. In particular, nurses and teachers flooded Mrs. Clinton's events. "I'm a schoolteacher and she does her homework," said Nancy White, 69, in Bloomington.

Nearly all the crowds were large - several seemed to cross the thousand-person mark - and noisily appreciative.

After the event in Fort Wayne, Mrs. Clinton greeted supporter after ardent supporter waiting in the chilly wind, her quilted black Chanel-style coat and subtly highlighted hairdo contrasting with the many untended dye jobs and chapped, makeup-less faces.

"I was going to go to Wellesley, but I was going to have to pay back so much," a young woman told her.

Another locked eyes with the candidate and mouthed a message: You're going to win, she said silently.

The God Gap may be turning against Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries.

Buried within the exit polls from Pennsylvania are some signs that Obama's appeal may be worsening with culturally conservative regular churchgoers.

That may not be too surprising given the controversies Obama encountered in the six-week run-up to the primary. Despite Obama's later explanations, his comments at a San Francisco fundraiser that "bitter" small-town Americans "cling to" guns and religion are hardly likely to have endeared him to small-town churchgoers.

That followed circulation of a well-publicized video highlights reel of his former pastor's incendiary sermons, including one in which the Rev. Jeremiah Wright declares blacks should sing "God Damn America" instead of "God Bless America." Not only Wright's comments but the African-style garb that the pastor is shown wearing every time the video clip is rerun no doubt feeds a suspicion that Obama's outlook on life is far removed from the moral certitudes of religious traditionalists.

But it is easy to forget that at the beginning of his presidential campaign Obama was celebrated as a political figure who could reach out to the faithful. His candidacy held out the possibility of at least blunting among political moderates the enormous advantage the Republican party has amassed over Democrats among religiously observant voters.

Shortly after his election to the U.S. Senate, he delivered a well-received address arguing faith should have a greater role in public discourse. He has courted high-profile moderate evangelical leaders, including the Rev. Rick Warren, author of "The Purpose Driven Life." Warren hosted Obama at a well-publicized appearance at his Saddleback Church in Orange County, California, shortly before Obama announced his presidential bid.

The memoir that essentially launched Obama's presidential campaign took its title, "The Audacity of Hope" from a sermon, albeit one delivered by the now-infamous Wright. And the book featured an account of his conversion from a secular life to Christian faith.

On the trail, Obama often weaves the language of faith into speeches and his campaign has devoted considerable effort to an outreach program directed at religious voters.

Early in the campaign, that appeared to pay dividends.

Back in the nation's first primary, in virtually all-white New Hampshire, Obama actually was the leading candidate among the most religious voters. Hillary Clinton may have won the New Hampshire primary, but Obama picked up the most votes from people who attend church once a week, winning 37 percent of them against 32 percent for Clinton and 21 percent for Edwards, according to exit polls.

By contrast in Pennsylvania, which Obama lost last week by 9 percentage points, his margin of defeat was doubled among regular churchgoers, who voted 59 percent for Clinton against 41 percent for Obama, according to exit polls. And that is in a primary which included a sizable number of African-Americans, who as a group are much more likely to be regular churchgoers. Blacks overwhelmingly support Obama.

As recently as seven weeks ago, in neighboring Ohio, a state with many similarities and a Democratic electorate with only slightly more African-Americans, regular churchgoers did not contribute disproportionately to Clinton's 10-percentage point win. Her margin was actually tighter among them, though not significantly so: weekly churchgoers voted 51percent for Clinton against 47 percent for Obama.

Of course, Catholic voters have always been more disposed toward Clinton than Obama, and there are lots of Catholic voters in Pennsylvania.

But back in the nation's first primary, even though New Hampshire Catholics as a group favored Clinton, religious devotion worked against Clinton among Catholics and did not work against Obama.

In New Hampshire, Clinton did best with Catholics who do not attend church regularly, winning them 47 percent against 26 percent for Obama and 22 percent for Edwards. Among Catholics who attend Mass weekly, Clinton was supported by a much-lower 36 percent against 28 percent for Obama and 29 percent for Edwards.

Well, suggested one Obama campaign aide, New Hampshire Catholics are culturally different in significant ways from the white ethnic Catholics of lower New England and the Mid-Atlantic states.

In other Northeastern and Mid-Atlantic states with large white ethnic Catholic populations that previously have held primaries--Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland-- Catholic voters all did favor Clinton. However, church attendance did not make them more likely to do so.

In each case, exit polls found regular Mass-goers registering within a few percentage points of Catholics who do not attend church regularly. In most of the primaries, Mass-goers were slightly more likely to vote for Obama--though not by a statistically significant margin. The same was true in the March primary in Ohio, a neighboring industrial Midwestern state that is much like Western Pennsylvania.

But that was not the case in Pennsylvania last week. Catholics who attend church weekly turned against Obama in much greater numbers than less observant Catholics. Catholics who attend church weekly voted 74 percent for Clinton and 26 percent for Obama; Catholic who do not attend church weekly voted 65 percent for Clinton and 35 percent for Obama. That's a 48-point margin for Clinton among observant Catholics versus a 30-point margin among Cahtolics who are not regular churchgoers.

And that despite the anti-abortion, socially conservative Catholic Sen. Bob Casey Jr (D-Pa.) at Obama's side throughout most of the Pennsylvania campaign.

Church-going among whites--and in Pennsylvania Catholics are mostly white--can be can be a marker for other traits. Older whites go to church more often than do younger whites. And whites without college degrees go to church in greater numbers than those with degrees. Both those groups are more supportive of Clinton.

Still, there is some reason to suspect that may not be the full explanation. Exit polls suggest Obama improved his showing with elderly voters in Pennsylvania compared to March. His performance among non-college graduates was about the same as in the Ohio primary in March.

It's always possible that the Pennsylvania primary was simply an anomaly. And it's also possible that the specific controversies leading up to the primary had a uniquely intense effect there, since voters facing an imminent election tend to be more engaged in a campaign and are exposed to much greater media coverage of the presidential contest.

Frank Newport, editor-in-chief of the Gallup Poll, said that nationally divisions over the Democratic candidates among churchgoers have been pretty well set at least since mid-February and he has not detected a significant shift since then.

Newport looks at the views of non-Latino white Democrats, in order to avoid the impact of the heavy support for Obama among African-Americans and the heavy support for Clinton among Latinos, both groups that attend church in disproportionately large number.

Among non-Latino white churchgoers, Clinton has been consistently the favored candidate since at least Feb. 15, which is when Gallup first added a question on how often voters attend religious services to its daily presidential tracking poll, Newport said. That is well after most of the Mid-Atlantic and lower New England states voted in the Feb. 5 "Super Tuesday" primary.

Nationally, at least, the "God Gap" between the Democratic candidates has been both durable and sizable.

Among weekly non-Latino white Democrat weekly churchgoers, 55 percent favored Clinton against 32 percent for Obama in responses Feb. 15 through Feb. 29; 56 percent favored Clinton against 32 percent for Obama in March; and 53 percent favored Clinton against 36 percent Obama April 1 through April 20.

But, for Obama, the Pennsylvania primary results may be a warning of more trouble ahead in the church pews.

By Mike Dorning, The Baltimore Sun, April 27, 2008

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Barack Obama's fiery former minister thrust his way back into the US presidential campaign Monday, saying recent criticisms of his controversial comments in the pulpit are an attack on the black church.

Reverend Jeremiah Wright also said he hoped the controversy sparked this year by some of his incendiary comments could ultimately have a healing effect by triggering a discussion on US race relations.

"Maybe now an honest dialogue about race in this country will begin -- a dialogue which was commendably called by Senator Obama," Wright told some 200 people gathered at the National Press Club.

He also said he hoped America's black churches, with a centuries-old history in the United States, could finally emerge from the status of "invisible to invaluable."

But the pastor was quick to lump the weeks of criticism about his comments as attacks on the black church.

"This is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright. It has nothing to do with Senator Obama. It is an attack on the black church by people who know nothing about the African American experience," he said.

Obama has repeatedly distanced himself from harsh remarks his former paster made over the years at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, including broadsides against US and Israeli "terrorism" and allegation that AIDS was spread by the US government.

But Wright insisted that Obama, who is locked in a battle for the Democratic presidential nomination with Hillary Clinton, was effectively forced to denounce controversial Wright comments because he could not be elected president if he didn't.

AFP, April 28, 2008

A new AP/Ipsos survey shows Hillary Clinton defeating John McCain by a wider margin than Barack Obama.

HRC leads McCain, 50% to 41%, while Obama remains virtually tied with McCain, 46% to 44%.

The Hotline, April 28, 2008

(CNN) - Hillary Clinton's Pennsylvania last Tuesday has clearly given the New York senator a boost in the national polls, the latest daily tracking survey from Gallup suggests.

Clinton and Obama are now dead even at 47 percent among likely Democrats, according the newly released numbers. That number remains unchanged from a tracking poll released Saturday and represents a 5-point gain for Clinton since her Pennsylvania win.

In a similar tracking poll released the day of the primary, Obama led Clinton by eight points, 50-42 percent. The Illinois senator's lead over Clinton reached a high of 11 points on April 14.

Meanwhile, a Newsweek poll released Saturday also shows gains for Clinton, but finds the New York senator continuing to trail Obama. In that poll, Obama holds a 7 point lead over Clinton. That margin is more than half of the 19 point lead Obama held in a similar Newsweek poll taken shorlty before the Pennsylvania primary.

Recent polls also show the two candidates locked in a dead heat in the crucial state of Indiana, which votes May 6. In a CNN "poll of polls" released Friday, Clinton and Obama both register 45 percent support from likely Democrats in the Hoosier state.

Since Obama is favored to win North Carolina - the other major prize May 6 - some Clinton advisers have said the New York senator must score a victory in Indiana remain a viable candidate.

By Alexander Mooney, CNN, April 28, 2008

On the Thursday before the Pennsylvania primary, Bill Clinton spoke to a crowd of college students at a gymnasium in Lock Haven. The event was typical of the stops - forty-seven of them - that the former President had made in the state during the seven weeks leading up to the vote. Lock Haven is a small town (pop. 9,000), hours away from Pittsburgh or Philadelphia, and the crowd was modest (half the gym's floor space was empty). Within the campaign, Clinton's enthusiasm for rustling votes in these remote corners was a source of amusement. When I asked what he was doing on Election Day, a Clinton campaign adviser said, "I think he's leading a caravan of Wal-Mart greeters to the polls."

On the stump, the former President dispensed idiosyncratic political analysis. "One of the reasons that she won Ohio that nobody wrote about," he said, without explanation, "is that Ohio has a plant that produces the largest number of solar reflectors in America." He offered commentary about his wife's earlier limitations as a candidate: "I think Hillary's become a much better speaker." But, most of all, Bill Clinton talked about Bill Clinton:

But, as Clinton campaigned in Pennsylvania, he was rarely the cartoon politician portrayed in the press. He still connects better with voters than his wife or Obama. "Hillary is in this race today because of people like you," he told one white working-class audience. "She's in it for you and she's in it because of you. People like you have voted for her in every single state in the country." People like you. The phrase hung in the air and the room quieted. Clinton didn't say what the people who voted for Obama were like, but the suggestion was that they were somehow different.

Clinton is angry that this side of him has been nearly absent from the coverage. "You don't ever read about this stuff! This is never part of the political debate!" he said at one event. "But this is what matters." Adjusting to the modern, gaffe-centric media environment has been wrenching. At most of his Pennsylvania stops, the national press was represented mainly by a pair of young TV-network "embeds," whom Clinton regards not as reporters but as media jackals who record his every utterance yet broadcast only his outbursts, a phenomenon that has helped transform him into a YouTube curiosity and diminished him - perhaps permanently. "It's like he's been plucked out of time and thrown into the middle of this entirely new kind of campaign," the adviser told me. Jay Carson, a senior Clinton campaign official and Bill's former spokesman, said, "Because of the way he is covered, the only thing anyone ever sees is fifteen seconds that is deemed by the pundits to be off message."

The focus on Clintonian error has obscured a serious debate that Obama and the former President tried to have. Obama has been arguing that the country's economic troubles are as much Clinton's fault as Bush's - he blames Clinton-era deregulation of the telecommunications and banking industries - and he implicitly accuses Bill Clinton of surrendering to special interests. "The problems we face go beyond any single Administration," Obama told one labor audience. "For far too long, through both Democratic and Republican Administrations, the system has been rigged against everyday Americans by the lobbyists that Wall Street uses to get its way." In much quoted remarks to a private group in San Francisco, Obama said that some Pennsylvanians were "bitter" and would "cling" to guns and religion, because jobs "fell through the Clinton Administration and the Bush Administration."

That is what offended Bill Clinton. "Hillary's opponent, in his entire campaign, every two or three weeks has said for months and months and months, beginning in Nevada, that really there wasn't much difference in how America did when I was President and how America's done under President Bush," he said in Lock Haven. "Now, if you believe that, you should probably vote for him, but you get a very bad grade in history." In the closing days of the campaign, Obama gave at least three speeches criticizing the former President, who, ever vigilant of his legacy, defended himself at every stop. Few paid attention; Barack and Bill were like two boxers trying to have a fight but both getting pelted by a mysterious third force - the saturation gaffe coverage.

The day before the primary, Bill Clinton lost his temper with a radio host who asked about the Jesse Jackson comments. Clinton went on a three-minute rant in which he posited the mysterious theory that Obama had played the race card against him. Then, not realizing that he was still on the air, he could be heard saying, "I don't think I should take any shit from anybody on that, do you?" The clip was an Internet sensation. You can hear the whole thing in the Bill Clinton archive at YouTube. It's already been listened to about three hundred thousand times.

Back in 1976, Ronald Reagan decided that his policy differences with President Gerald Ford were so great that he needed to challenge him for the Republican presidential nomination.

Reagan's supply side economics is probably the first radically different policy idea that comes to mind when you recall that race, yet their disagreement over how to deal with the Soviet Union was just as sharp. Reagan opposed the Helsinki Accords and the general view that "detente'' with the Soviets would work. He sneered the word "detente'' with such contempt and effectiveness that Ford stopped using it.

That year, the struggle between Reagan and Ford lasted right through to the convention. Republicans were torn between two candidates with clearly different visions of the future of their party and the country. The aftershocks of that struggle probably contributed to Ford's ultimate defeat at the hands of Democrat Jimmy Carter, as well as to the overhaul of the Republican Party that Reagan then achieved.

Thirty-two years after the Reagan-Ford struggle, our country is again witnessing a titanic battle for the heart of a party. Democrat Hillary Clinton's big victory in Pennsylvania over Senator Barack Obama virtually ensures the struggle will once again stretch through to the convention.

This is a remarkable time. But the most remarkable aspect of this race is that it is remarkable at all. While the fight itself is reminiscent of the 1970s, it is impossible to say precisely what the fuss is about. It is as if a husband and wife were arguing over the location of the trash can in the kitchen. "By the sink!'' "No, by the door!''

Intense Campaign

This year's campaign has had everything one expects in an increasingly tight race: a furor over campaign advertisements, angry accusations by the candidates themselves, and increasing polarization of the candidates' supporters.

How bad has it gotten? A party knows it is in trouble when pollsters start asking its members if they would vote for the other party's candidate in the general election if their favorite candidate loses the nomination. Support for Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, from both Obama and Clinton supporters has been remarkably high.

But step back and look at the substantive differences for a moment. On most key issues, Obama and Clinton are as close as can be.

Take a look at their economic proposals. Both advocate repealing President George W. Bush's tax cuts for high-income Americans and expanding the earned-income tax credit and child- and dependent-care tax credit. Both want to crack down on corporate tax loopholes.

On Same Page

Both want to renegotiate the Nafta treaty and require stricter environmental and labor standards in trade agreements. Both want to help Americans pay for college with a refundable tax credit. The list of similarities goes on and on.

In fact, the only real area of disagreement seems to be over the fine print of their universal health-care plans. Clinton wants a universal mandate. Obama only wants to require coverage for kids. However, according to the Urban Institute's Eugene Steurle, "the practical differences between what Clinton and Obama would implement may be more apparent than real.'' Even the candidates themselves admit their plans are largely the same.

And while the two talk a different game on Iraq, it's hard to see exactly how the future would be different if one versus the other were president.

The fact that the substance of the two candidates is so close may be either a plus or a minus for the eventual nominee come the November election.

All About Personality

On the one hand, there is no struggle under way for the heart and soul of the Democratic Party. It was a lift worthy of the Incredible Hulk to reunite Ford and Reagan Republicans. This reconciliation should be relatively easy, since Clinton and Obama could presumably swap platforms without even their own supporters noticing. Under this view, defections would be much less of a problem than the polls might imply.

On the other hand, Obama has chosen from the beginning to make this a campaign about personality, and that might be coming back to haunt him. His political approach has been clever. "Change we can believe in'' always had the subtext: "You can trust me to deliver change, but you can't trust the Clintons.''

This approach echoes that of Carter in 1976, who understood that, in the wake of Watergate, Americans cared only that a straight-shooter take the White House. Character trumped ideas.

Withering Scrutiny

Carter's presidency was a failure, and Obama's rose isn't quite as fresh as it was last fall. Both are attributable to a simple fact. We are all human. No personality can withstand 24/7 scrutiny for six months and stay attractive. A strong personality can only get you so far. In the end, Americans want to know what you intend to do.

In this regard, Obama, if nominated, might have a much bigger problem reuniting his party than Ford did. After all, a Reagan Republican might easily have reasoned that Ford was closer to his positions than the Democrats were, and then voted with his party.

This time around, a long primary campaign focused on personalities might well have taught voters which personalities they like, and which they don't. In that case, voters who have soured on Obama might well be lost to him forever.

"It's more or less pick 'em, if you were a handicapper," said Andrew Kohut, whose independent Pew Research Center has polled nationally and in battleground states. "You'd say you can't make the case for either one."

National opinion surveys illustrate his point. In the Gallup Poll's latest election match-ups, Clinton and Obama are both locked in statistical ties with McCain ("That's much closer than you'd expect for a Republican candidate, given all the Democratic advantages" this election year, Kohut pointed out).

At the moment, concluding which candidate is more electable appears more of an art (that is, educated guesswork) than science.

A highly unscientific sample of those interviewed for this article came down on the side of Obama's superior electability, but the view wasn't unanimous. Some saw him as only marginally stronger, and no one said that Clinton's argument was unreasonable.

"It's not crazy. It's not an absurd case. It's a debatable question," said Stuart Rothenberg, who publishes an independent election newsletter. "There are clearly some Democrats in some key states who aren't going to vote for Obama: older voters, blue-collar voters, the old Reagan Democrats."

Clinton's strategy is to keep the race going as long as possible, in hopes that doubts about Obama will grow. Already, his position "has been eroded" by losing big industrial state primaries, said Rothenberg. It "reminds people who weren't paying attention that he has trouble with a key Democratic voter constituency" - working-class voters.

Just 'unknowable'

Larry J Sabato, professor of politics at the University of Virginia, takes a close look at Hillary Clinton's arguments that she deserves the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.

Give Hillary Clinton credit. She has shown toughness, stamina, and persistence in one of the longest presidential campaigns in American history.

She has fought hard and come back time and again in the 2008 primary season, defying the pundits who insisted on writing her political obituary prematurely. She has held the charismatic phenomenon named Barack Obama almost to a draw in the fight for votes and delegates in the Democratic party's nominating battle.

As some of Obama's weaknesses become more apparent, her arguments are drawing new attention, and at least a few Democratic leaders are considering them.

This may not sound like many in a convention that will host more than 4,000 delegates, but party rules it difficult to gain a sizeable number of delegates quickly. (Incredibly, you can win a big state and net a mere handful of delegates. The Democrats have developed a system so fair it is unfair.)

Changing the maths

Here's the basic dilemma for Hillary Clinton: How can she convince senior Democrats to turn their backs on the most loyal party constituency, African-Americans, who regularly give 90% of their votes to party candidates?

For the first time, one of their own has a real chance to become the presidential nominee and the occupant of the White House. The anger in the black community would be palpable and long-lasting if Obama is sent packing.

Democratic women appear unlikely to respond in the same fashion if the first serious woman candidate is turned aside.

Worry among super-delegates about Obama's viability in the fall is not enough. The only conceivable scenarios that might change the present nominating math are:

• A campaign-ending scandal or gaffe by Obama
• a highly improbable series of victories by Hillary Clinton in primaries she is expected to lose (such as North Carolina and Oregon)
• A raft of polls showing Clinton defeating McCain handily while Obama is losing to McCain decisively (most current polls show relatively little difference in the Obama-McCain and Clinton-McCain national match-ups, though the prospective contests in individual states vary considerably)

How can it be that Clinton is so unlikely to prevail, especially close on the heels of her solid, impressive 9.2% victory in Pennsylvania on 22 April?

Why wouldn't that victory generate significant momentum for Clinton, just at the moment when the remaining super-delegates prepare to make their decisive choice? Didn't her 214,000-vote plurality in the Keystone State vault her into the popular-vote lead nationally, as she claimed?

The size and breadth of Clinton's triumph in Pennsylvania certainly demonstrated the emerging limitations of Obama's appeal, not least the disaffection of many whites, blue-collar workers, and low-income Democrats.

But it almost certainly will be Obama, not Clinton, who is on the November ballot under the Democratic label.

Michigan and Florida

Take Clinton's claim about the popular vote. On the morning after Pennsylvania, she insisted that she had taken a narrow popular-vote lead, about 15.12 million to nearly 15 million for Obama. But this is classic "new math", where the numerical answer obtained is often less important than the agile mental gymnastics used to get there.

Clinton's total relies on two very dubious assumptions. First, one must incorporate the primary results from Florida and Michigan, two January contests excluded by the Democratic National Committee for violating the scheduling rules set by the party. This is no minor sum of votes - 2,344,318, to be exact.

But no even-handed person would contend that Michigan, whose primary occurred on 15 January, should be part of the equation. Barack Obama's name was not even on the ballot.

The vote total cited by Clinton conveniently excludes three caucus states won by Obama, in Iowa, Maine, and Washington. (Nevada, won by Clinton, is also left out of the tally.) No-one knows the exact number of votes cast for each candidate in these four states since the state parties, by tradition, refuse to release the data.

Eliminating Michigan, the Obama-Clinton match-up shows an Obama edge of a couple hundred thousand votes. Striking Florida brings it to about a half-million-vote Obama plurality. And the unknown caucus results would add at least 100,000 to his lead.

Comparing like with unlike

This discussion of caucus states raises another interesting subject. How can one compare primary and caucus states at all? By their very nature, primaries attract a large electorate in most states. A caucus is a very different political animal, requiring hours of commitment from each participating individual.

The caucus also is inflexible, beginning at a set, mandatory time. There are no absentee ballots and no excuses for troops abroad, medical personnel who must attend to the sick, or elderly individuals who cannot brave a lengthy, stressful outing. Caucus participation is usually just a fraction of the turnout that would have occurred had the state held a primary.

Therefore, the national vote total is heavily skewed to the states holding primaries, and this total mixes primary apples and caucus oranges in an unenlightening way.

The concept of the national popular vote is borrowed from the general election, when it makes more sense. However, in the nominating season the idea is dubious, and it is not a particularly useful measure for the undecided super-delegates. Nevertheless, it has been bandied about so much by the campaigns and news media that it has now become an inescapable yardstick of electoral validity for Clinton and Obama.

Key states

Other questions about the vote mathematics are also compelling. Should the voting results in November's likely competitive states-the ones we often call purple - a mixture of Republican red and Democratic blue - be given special weight in the popular-vote formula? After all, the purpose of the nominating contest is to pick a candidate who can win the general election.

Hillary Clinton has pushed this interpretation, but only up to a point. She wants her wins in competitive, significant states such as Ohio and Pennsylvania to be determinants for the super-delegates, yet she ignores Barack Obama's victories in medium-sized toss-up states such as Colorado and Virginia.

With apologies to George Orwell, all states are equal, but some are more equal than others.

Overall, though, this game is pointless since both Clinton and Obama have won states critically important to a Democratic electoral college majority in November.

Different voters

The flaw in the state-based argument is also fundamental. Party primary electorates do not resemble the November electorates in the vast majority of states, so primary results tell us surprisingly little in most states about how a party presidential nominee will fare in the general election.

Think of it this way - perhaps 35 million Americans will have voted in all the Democratic primaries and caucuses by June, but the November voter turnout could reach 135 million people-and those extra 100 million voters are different, both in ideological and partisan terms, than the 35 million early-birds.

US territories

An ancillary issue is whether the U.S. territories, none of which has electoral college votes in November, should even be included in the party nominating system.

In an extremely close race, their delegates could decide the outcome of a presidential nomination, and potentially the Presidency itself. Should Puerto Rico, voting on 1 June, have more delegates than half the American states, as the Democrats have assigned?

Neither Clinton nor Obama will raise this concern, of course, but unbiased observers ought to do so. In most conventions, the territorial votes are a harmless matter, but every now and then, the unintended consequences of their inclusion could become enormous.

The long and short of the debate over the popular vote is this - no-one is likely to agree on exactly what it is, or how it should be counted.

There are considerable flaws inherent in the concept. The popular-vote notion ought to be shelved - but naturally, in this endlessly contentious campaign season, it will not be.

By Larry J. Sabato, BBC News, April 28, 2008

ANDERSON, Ind. - Senator Barack Obama is making subtle changes to his campaign style and message in an effort to strengthen his appeal to blue-collar voters and to avoid a defeat in Indiana that aides fear could give Democratic Party leaders further pause about his viability in a general election.

On Sunday, Mr. Obama went to a Methodist church in Indianapolis, the kind of event rarely on his public schedule. He suited up for a game of basketball on Friday night before television cameras. And the big, energy-filled stadium rallies that were the bread and butter for most of his campaign have once again given way to smaller town-hall-style meetings, where he is seen talking with people and not at them.

Mr. Obama is seeking to absorb the lessons of his defeat in Pennsylvania. The changes reflect concern that he is being portrayed by Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton as distant and culturally out of touch with many working-class Democrats, a worry underlined by her lopsided victory among many of those voters in that state on Tuesday and last month in Ohio.

Mr. Obama, in an appearance with Chris Wallace broadcast over the weekend on "Fox News Sunday," played down his problems among blue-collar voters, saying that Mrs. Clinton had done better in part because "they are less familiar with me than they are with her, and so we probably have to work harder."

"I've got to be more present," he said. "I've got to be knocking on more doors. I've got to be hitting more events. We've got to work harder because although it's flipped a little bit, we've always been the underdog in this race."

In interviews with several associates and aides, Mr. Obama was described as bored with the campaign against Mrs. Clinton and eager to move into the general election against Senator John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican nominee.

So the Obama campaign is undertaking modifications in his approach intended to inject an air of freshness into his style.

In strategy sessions last week, advisers concluded that Mr. Obama, of Illinois, needed to do a better job reminding voters of his biography, including his modest upbringing by a single mother and one of his first jobs as a community organizer helping displaced steel mill workers. He also has to sharpen his economic message, they said, to improve his appeal and connection with voters in hope of capitalizing on the sensibilities that served him well in Midwestern states.

Mr. Obama's advisers are also debating whether he should give another major speech intended to lay out themes of his candidacy - particularly the change he would bring to Washington - that they fear have been muddled in one of the toughest months of his campaign.

But Mr. Obama swatted aside a call by Mrs. Clinton, of New York, for a debate before the primaries on May 6 in Indiana and North Carolina. His performance in the last debate, before the Pennsylvania primary, was widely viewed as flat and uninspired, and his decision not to risk a rematch suggested a desire to try to keep his message more fully under his control.

Mr. Obama closed his Pennsylvania primary campaign by delivering a sharp scolding of Mrs. Clinton's record. His tone has since taken a noticeable shift toward the positive, reflecting the view of some of his supporters that the attacks on Mrs. Clinton may have been a mistake.

As a result, they said, he had decided - at least for now - not to take on Mrs. Clinton directly. In one sign of that, he has spent more time trying to shore up his own shortcomings and challenges, often to the point of nearly ignoring her, as he intensified his attacks on Mr. McCain.

But questions face his campaign that were barely discussed among his advisers only a few months ago, when he seemed on the cusp of quickly winning the Democratic nomination. Is his candidacy now off the table for some white voters? Was it bound to happen anyway? Have voters' concerns about his patriotism and religion become a permanent weight on his biography?

Mr. Obama's aides said that they remained confident he would win the nomination. "We feel very good about the position that we are in," said David Axelrod, his chief strategist. "But we have gotten to the position we are in by taking every week and every contest seriously."

Still, they said they were no longer as hopeful as they once were that the contest could be resolved before June 3, the day of the last primaries. As a result, they were girding for six weeks of attacks by Mrs. Clinton and potential election defeats that could raise further questions among superdelegates - the elected Democrats and party leaders who will ultimately determine the nominee - about Mr. Obama's strength as a general election candidate.

While Mrs. Clinton has raised enough money to compete aggressively in Indiana, Mr. Obama's overall advantage in fund-raising is allowing him to build a heavier presence in the other states still on the calendar.

A victory in Indiana, some Obama associates said, might make it more difficult for Mrs. Clinton to go on and send even more superdelegates toward his camp. Which was why Mr. Obama, on a trip through central Indiana this weekend, spent his spare minutes dialing uncommitted superdelegates. Back in Chicago, a more sophisticated operation was methodically checking in with superdelegates who had already pledged to Mr. Obama - just to make certain there had not been any slippage.

That said, a loss in Indiana could be problematic for Mr. Obama in no small part because it adjoins his home state. And even before the presidential race, he was a familiar face to voters in northwest Indiana who watch Chicago television stations.

When Mr. Obama walked into his campaign events this weekend, no music played from the loudspeakers. At a stop on Saturday in Marion, Ind., the applause quickly subsided as he took his seat on a stool and listened as a local resident, Bernard Smith, 55, told of how he was laid off from his job at a plant in town after 31 years. His income reduced by half, he now works at the Dollar General store.

Mr. Obama's sleeves were rolled up, his suit jacket left behind stage. He took questions for nearly an hour, often weaving in the fact that he was raised by a single mother and his grandparents. "Nobody is looking for a handout," the senator said. "Nobody is looking for easy street."

In discussions with donors and supporters last week, Mr. Obama's advisers played down the loss in Pennsylvania, noting that both sides had expected Mrs. Clinton to win there.

Still, the message belied private frustration and disappointment that Mr. Obama shared with a few associates and advisers, particularly over the hardening narrative that he could not appeal to working-class voters, and a personal frustration for comments he made about some small-town voters being "bitter" at their economic conditions. (Mrs. Clinton seized on those remarks, which have shadowed his campaign.)

"Everyone's got a real calmness about where we are," said David Plouffe, who is Mr. Obama's campaign manager, "but a real sense of urgency that we have eight contests coming up in pretty rapid succession."

Mr. Obama, who often complains aloud about the rigors of the campaign, had been scheduled to spend Sunday with his family in Chicago. But fearful of losing Indiana, he told his advisers that he wanted to campaign, so two events were hastily added.

The senator attended services at St. Luke's United Methodist Church, a visit intended to help contradict the fictitious rumor that he was not Christian. And in addition to a game of 3-on-3 basketball in Kokomo, he also dropped by the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame.

For the last year, advisers had been reluctant to highlight him playing basketball, thinking it could raise racial stereotypes or make him look less serious. But in Indiana, where basketball is sacrosanct, Mr. Obama scored four baskets and his team won the 20-minute game, a far better showing than his much-derided bowling outing in Pennsylvania.

Arizona Sen. John McCain could understandably be scowling: He could face a more difficult political landscape than any presidential candidate in a generation.

Only 39% of Americans have a favorable view of the Republican Party he represents, the latest USA TODAY/Gallup Poll shows. A record 63% say the Iraq war he defends was a mistake. The disapproval rating for President Bush, the incumbent McCain has embraced, has hit 69%, the most negative assessment of any president since Gallup began asking the question 70 years ago.

Yet in what seems to be the most promising election for Democrats since 1976 - when the aftermath of the Watergate scandal opened the door for Democrat Jimmy Carter to win the presidency - the USA TODAY/Gallup Poll shows the presumptive Republican presidential nominee within striking distance of either Illinois Sen. Barack Obama or New York Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

"Sen. McCain will not be a pushover in Ohio," cautions Ted Strickland, the Democratic governor of one of the nation's most important battleground states. "It will be a hotly contested race."

At least at the moment, McCain's personal qualities - his stature as a Vietnam war hero, reputation as an independent-minded Republican and persona as a strong leader - are trumping the significant policy disadvantages he faces in pursuing a third consecutive term for the GOP in the White House.

The protracted and increasingly bitter rivalry between Obama and Clinton for the Democratic nomination is a boost for McCain, too.

He has stayed competitive by drawing support from unlikely quarters.

One in four voters who say the invasion of Iraq was a mistake back him, as do one in four who disapprove of Bush. In a worrisome sign for Democrats, one in five Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents say they'll switch to McCain if the Democrats don't nominate Obama; another one in five say they'll switch if the party doesn't nominate Clinton.

Tim Quinn, 61, of Brewster, N.Y., is an independent voter who calls the invasion of Iraq "a big mistake" and criticizes Bush's actions as president. Even so, he's supporting McCain.

"He has taken unpopular positions over the years, and even though I don't agree with a lot of them, I believe he's a man of character," says Quinn, an IT project manager who was among those surveyed. "He's a man of character while the other two will say whatever it takes to get votes."

A general election many Democrats assumed six months ago would be difficult to lose seems a little less of a sure thing.

At the beginning of the year, many polls showed a generic, unidentified Democratic presidential candidate thumping a generic Republican by close to 20 percentage points.

In the USA TODAY Poll taken April 18-20, however, McCain kept the contest against Obama and Clinton within the survey's margin of error. Obama led McCain 47%-44% among registered voters. Clinton led 50%-44%.

Republicans lined up more solidly behind McCain than Democrats did behind Obama. Nine of 10 Republicans backed the Arizona senator, compared with eight of 10 Democrats who supported the Illinois senator. Each got equal support, 8%, from members of the other party.

They split independents: 46% for Obama, 42% for McCain. (The divide in a Clinton-McCain matchup was similar.)

"Some of it defies the philosophy or ideology of John McCain and gets into John McCain the American hero, John McCain the maverick Republican, John McCain the antithesis of the Democratic and independent voters' stereotypes of Republicans," says Bill Carrick, a Democratic strategist based in California. "He looks much stronger in these polls than any other imaginable Republican nominee would be."

USA TODAY combined the responses in nationwide surveys taken over the past two months to get a large enough sample to analyze the demographics of some of McCain's surprising backers: Americans who disapprove of Bush. Those voters, who make up more than a third of McCain's support, presumably would be the first target of a Democratic opponent.

Almost all of them were white, and most were middle-aged. Many were blue-collar workers. Slightly more were male than female. Almost half were independents; one in five were Democrats.

A contradictory coalition?

Shirley Smith of Hollidaysburg, Pa., is a Democrat who didn't vote for Bush and criticizes his tenure, but she likes McCain because he strikes her as honest and straightforward.

"I think he's the best one to be president," the 75-year-old retiree says, though he hasn't moderated her anti-pathy toward his party. "I just don't care for the Republicans," she adds. "They're mostly for the rich people."

The question is whether McCain can hold together that sort of conflicted coalition.

Probably not, Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg says. The Arizona senator has consolidated the Republican base by emphasizing his party credentials while he has cultivated independent voters by portraying himself as a maverick willing to break with party orthodoxy.

Nearly half of Americans in the USA TODAY survey, 45%, described McCain as "a different kind of Republican."

That's an image he nurtured during a campaign tour last week of the nation's "forgotten places," including stops in Selma, Ala., site of a historic civil rights confrontation, and the Appalachian town of Inez, Ky., where President Johnson launched his administration's War on Poverty.

Standing in the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans on Thursday, McCain blasted the Bush administration's faltering response to Hurricane Katrina as "disgraceful," distancing himself from a president he also defends.

"He's been able to present himself both as a party person and as an independent, but that contradiction will get exposed when the Democratic nominee emerges," Greenberg says.

At that point, he says, either the enthusiasm of Republicans will fade, the support of independents will erode, or both.

A poll sponsored by the Democratic National Committee in March tested McCain's standing among undecided voters in 17 swing states. The bad news for Democrats was that it found 59% of them said McCain had some or a lot of appeal. The good news: After giving them "factual information about his record" - designed to raise questions about him - that number dropped, to 44%.

The DNC now attacks McCain's standing as a maverick in a daily barrage of e-mails, including a series labeled the "McCain Myth Buster." They spotlight examples of him changing positions or hewing to the GOP line - for instance, voting against the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and now calling for them to be extended.

McCain's high-profile alliances with Democrats, dry sense of humor and coziness with some of the reporters who cover him prompt some voters to assume he has less conservative policy positions than he does. A survey by the political arm of Planned Parenthood in 16 swing states found that 23% of women who support abortion rights and support McCain over Obama said they believed McCain agreed with them on abortion. Eighteen percent said, accurately, that he opposes abortion rights.

"As soon as people know where he stands on the economy, Iraq and health care, support for him drops off dramatically," Democratic National Chairman Howard Dean says.

Even so, Dean acknowledges the focus by Obama and Clinton on each other has delayed Democrats' efforts to target McCain. As the Democratic rivals provide fodder for GOP attacks in the fall, McCain has been able to rest, raise money and get organized.

"We're having a vigorous campaign on our side, and he's getting a complete free ride," Dean says. Given that, he says, McCain's failure to build a lead over his prospective Democratic opponents signals that "he's got big problems."

Combating Bush fatigue

McCain's biggest problem is beyond his control.

The electorate is rattled by the economy's downturn, largely opposed to the Iraq war, weary of Bush and convinced in record numbers that the nation is headed in the wrong direction after eight years of Republican rule.

No political landscape has been so hostile to one side since 1980, an election shaped by oil shocks and the Iranian hostage crisis. That year, Republican Ronald Reagan ousted Carter and Democrats lost control of the Senate.

"I would say that if the debate is about leadership and personal qualities that McCain will do well," says Frank Donatelli, a McCain adviser who was recently installed as deputy chairman of the Republican National Committee. "If the debate on the issues side is about the present as opposed to the past, he'll do well. If the debate is only about the past, it'll be more challenging."

Aides describe McCain as a "brand" that is established and trusted by voters, and one Democrats will find difficult to dent.

"People view him as fundamentally different from what they're sick of in Washington, which is partisanship for partisanship's sake," strategist Steve Schmidt says. "The American people view him as his own man."

On the other hand, Dean and other Democrats say McCain offers a sort of third Bush term, which would continue policies toward Iraq, Iran and the economy that voters already reject.

The fundamental question over the next six months could turn out to be this: Does McCain manage to "re-brand" the GOP? Or does the GOP "re-brand" him?

"I'm not happy the way Bush has run the country the last eight years, and I'm afraid that McCain is just going to continue on with the choices that are similar to George Bush's," says Patti Tremmel, 38, a stay-at-home mother from Thornton, Colo., who voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004. She supports Clinton this time.

If the Democrats nominate Obama, though, she'll switch to McCain. "There's too much at stake right now in the country with the economy, health care and the war," she says. "I don't think he (Obama) has enough experience."

On a list of eight positive characteristics, Americans rated McCain more highly than Obama or Clinton on three: as honest and trustworthy, as a strong and decisive leader, and as someone who can manage the government effectively.

His weaknesses were on empathic qualities, including understanding the problems Americans face in their daily lives, and on having a clear plan for solving the country's problems.

McCain's personal story is a powerful asset. As most Americans know, he is an admiral's son who volunteered to serve in Vietnam as a Navy pilot and spent five years as a prisoner of war there. In the USA TODAY poll, two-thirds of Americans said they personally considered McCain to be a war hero. Nearly four in 10 said his military service made them more likely to vote for him; 7% said it made them less likely.

"He's a person who sacrificed for our country," says Neil Thistle, 71, a retired banker from Kenwood, Calif. "To me, that's important."

'The right kind of race'

To defeat McCain in November, Democratic strategists say they need to succeed in depicting him as out of touch with most Americans' daily lives, ill-suited to address the economic challenges they worry about and determined to continue the U.S. engagement in Iraq.

His age, 71, also provides a generational contrast, especially with the 46-year-old Obama. (Clinton is 60.) McCain would be the oldest new president in U.S. history.

For McCain to win in November, Republican analysts say he needs to successfully paint his Democratic opponent as an out-of-the-mainstream liberal who would raise taxes and stumble as commander in chief - that is, candidates in the mold of George McGovern and Michael Dukakis. He'll pitch his long service as invaluable experience.

McCain also will need some help from outside events - that the economy steadies and violence in Iraq subsides, keeping those issues from dominating the election debate.

"The truth of the matter is if the race becomes a race about the issues environment, as opposed to a race about personality and stature differences and ideology, McCain has a real problem," Republican pollster Tony Fabrizio says. "If we're fighting over whose policy is better on the economy as opposed to who's outside the mainstream in America, we've got a problem as Republicans."

The substantive issues not only strongly favor Democrats but also could cast McCain as just another Republican, the factors that make him the underdog for the White House. But if he runs "the right kind of race," Fabrizio says, "I will tell you that John McCain could win in an electoral landslide."

WASHINGTON - The electoral road to the White House favors Democrats this fall -- either Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton -- and has Republican John McCain playing defense to thwart a presidential power shift.

A downtrodden economy, the war in Iraq and a public call for change have created an Electoral College outlook and a political environment filled with extraordinary opportunity for the Democrats and enormous challenge for the GOP nominee-in-waiting.

Both parties count on victory in dozens of states that long have voted their way. The competition to reach the 270 electoral votes needed to win is expected to play out primarily in 14 states. All but one saw the greatest action in 2004. The exception is Virginia, a longtime Republican stronghold where Democrats have made inroads.

Eight of the states went for President Bush four years ago, including the crown jewels Ohio and Florida. Six, including big-prize Pennsylvania, voted for Democrat John Kerry. In the battlegrounds, far more electoral votes, 97, are up for grabs for Democrats than the 69 available for McCain to go after. Twice as many of the closest states -- decided by 2 or fewer percentage points -- voted Republican in 2004; they include New Mexico and Iowa, which the GOP won by 1 point.

Both sides argue that their candidates can expand the playing field by making more states competitive than in previous elections. But they likely will only spend time and money to test that theory once they feel confident about higher priority states.

"This is going to be a tough campaign. I have no illusions how hard we have to work to win," McCain says, a sobering assessment of a Republican's chances when most voters say the country is on the wrong track under a GOP president.

Conversely, Democrats exude confidence that Nov. 4 will break their way -- even as they continue their nomination slugfest.

"I have every reason to believe we're going to have a Democratic president," Clinton argues. Obama declares: "We will beat John McCain in November. You can take that to the bank!"

Recent polls, however, show McCain competing strongly with both Clinton and Obama in hypothetical matchups, and Republicans and Democrats envision a close race.

In 2004, Bush won 286 electoral votes to 251 for Kerry. This year's Democratic nominee must triumph in all the states Kerry won, and pick up 19 more votes to prevail -- or come up with another game plan to reach the magic number. McCain, for his part, must fend off Democratic challenges to hang on to the GOP advantage.

DEMOCRATIC OPPORTUNITIES:

Of the 14 battlegrounds, Bush won eight with 97 electoral votes. Half of those states were decided by only 1 or 2 percentage points, and all were under 10 points. Five have Democratic governors this year. Electoral votes are in parentheses.

To the east, Iowa (7) holds promise for the Democrats; Republicans narrowly put it into their column in 2004 after years of Democratic dominance. Both Obama and Clinton competed here during the primary. McCain's opposition to ethanol subsidies complicate his chances, nor is he a favorite of evangelicals. Though less likely to change hands, Missouri (11) is a perennial battleground.

McCain also must defend the two vote-rich prizes that decided the past two elections.

Ohio (20), a bellwether that tipped the race to Bush in 2004, may be poised for a switch, with a rash of job losses, high numbers of Iraq casualties and a series of Republican statewide political defeats in 2006, including the governor.

Florida (27), which put Bush in the White House in 2000 and voted for him again in 2004, will certainly be hard-fought, given its electoral treasure chest. Its demographics are tilting more Republican, though, and Obama has fared poorly in the primaries among Jewish and Hispanic voters. Clinton may have a better shot.

Virginia (13) is a case where Obama, who is black, might play stronger than Clinton because of the state's large black population. The state moves into the competitive category given Democratic gains fueled by the growing Washington suburbs. Virginia also is home to large communities of military veterans who may have an affinity for McCain, a former Navy pilot who spent more than five years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

REPUBLICAN OPPORTUNITIES:

Kerry won six of the hard-fought states offering 69 electoral votes that McCain will try to put in the GOP column. All of those were decided by under 5 percentage points. Most have Democratic governors as well as long histories as swing states.

In the upper Midwest, Minnesota (10) has a quirky independent streak that presents an opening for McCain. It also has a Republican governor and will host the GOP's national convention. Wisconsin (10) and Michigan (17) have high numbers of Reagan Democrats that McCain could attract. But voters in all three states are reeling from economic woes, and that works in the Democrats' favor.

New Hampshire (4) fell to Kerry by a razor-thin margin four years ago and, Democrats captured two House seats two years later. But McCain has a close bond with the state that made him in his first presidential primary in 2000, and saved him this year.

It's been 20 years since Pennsylvania (21) voted Republican. Further complicating McCain's chances: The state's economy is bad and many Pennsylvanians have died in Iraq, the war he staunchly supports. Still, conservative swaths that are home to right-leaning Democrats could give McCain an opening. As usual, the Philadelphia suburbs figure to be pivotal.

Oregon (7) has become more competitive in recent elections, but Democrats have won it in each of the last five. McCain hopes his moderate image and support for curbing climate change will tip the state to Republicans.

WILD-CARDS:

Beyond the core states, several others are worth watching.

If Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, Arkansas (6) will certainly be contested. It has voted Republican in back-to-back elections but her husband, a former governor there, carried it twice. West Virginia (5), too, could be a target given that Bill Clinton won it twice and it's home to a large number of the working-class voters she attracts.

Should Obama be the nominee, Democrats say they hope to put solid Southern GOP states in play, those with large black populations. Among them: North Carolina (15) and Georgia (15), and possibly even Louisiana (9) and Mississippi (6). But these are unlikely targets unless the Democrats think the election is in hand.

Democrats also say they may look at Montana (3), which has a Democratic governor, and Kentucky (8), which twice voted for Bill Clinton. But they're also long-shots.

McCain should hold his home state of Arizona (10) despite Democratic threats to play there. He sees potential opportunities in Democratic-leaning states on both coasts because of his appeal to voters across the political spectrum. These include Washington (11) and Maine (4), and, perhaps, even New Jersey (15) and Delaware (3). McCain also talks big about California (55) but the last Republican to win there was George H.W. Bush in 1988.

By Liz Sidoti, The Associated Press, April 28, 2008

"We want the voters to have their say. That's over on June 3," Dean said in an interview on ABC's "Good Morning America."

Dean also said that while the party rules say Democratic superdelegates can wait until the party's August 25 convention to make up their minds, that would be too late to unify the party and defeat the presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain.

"We really can't have a divided convention. If we do it's going to be very hard to heal the party afterwards," Dean said. "So we'll know who the nominee is and that'll give us an extra 2 1/2 months to get our party together, heal the wounds of having a very closely divided race and take on Senator McCain."

Dean said he won't have to tell either Clinton or Obama when it's time to leave the race.

"Either of these candidates, if it's time for them to go, they'll know it and they will go," Dean said. "They don't need any pushing from me. You know when to get in and you know when to get out. That's just part of the deal."

Obama has more delegates and popular votes than Clinton, but she is also fresh off a big-state win in Pennsylvania.

Dean said that "none of the so-called party elders I talked to" think the contest should go until the convention. "I agree with that," Dean said.

"We've got nine more primaries ... Five hundred of the 800 unpledged delegates have already said who they are for. The remaining 300 will do that by the end of June and we'll know who our nominee is and that's what we need to do," Dean said on NBC's "Today" show.

The Associated Press, April 28, 2008

"We're an all-volunteer organization," said Dianne Wheatley-Giliotti, president of the League of Women Voters in Florida, which plans to sue. "It's a matter of being able to protect the leagues from liability."

Eight years after the debacle of "hanging chads," Florida once again seems to be courting electoral trouble. A handful of laws have been passed since the 2000 presidential recount, with state officials saying they bring order to a chaotic system.

"Some say we err on the side of caution," said Joe Pickens, a Republican from Palatka who served on the Florida House's Ethics and Elections Committee in 2005 and 2006. "I would say that's the place we should be."

But Election Day may end up looking oddly familiar. According to independent elections experts at Pew's Electionline.org and other organizations, it is now harder to vote here than in nearly every other state in the nation. Some critics predict that tens of thousands of potential voters will be kept off the rolls - many of them poor, black or Hispanic.

In many ways, the battle over the laws reflects the larger national debate over how to overhaul the election system after the 2000 recount. Congress tried to institute a uniform guide for voter registration, but the compromise legislation left many details to the states, and partisanship arose in the void. Republicans typically demanded high standards of accuracy to eliminate voter fraud, while Democrats focused on making voting as easy as possible.

Many states decided that disputes would be worked out case by case, without written rules. But more ambitious states, including Florida, responded with new policies or laws. By 2006, for example, at least 11 states had "no match, no vote" provisions, rejecting potential voters whose Social Security numbers or driver's license numbers did not match state databases.

Civil rights groups challenged much of the new legislation in court, and they often won. But in Florida, many of the cases remain unresolved.

Three laws in particular are at issue, including a "no match, no vote" measure; the provision managing voter registration drives conducted by third parties, like the League of Women Voters; and a law that would keep a voter from correcting mistakes or omissions on a registration form in the final month before an election and would bar that person from having his or her vote counted.

Two recent federal rulings have gone in the state's favor.

On March 25, a Federal District Court in Miami rejected a challenge to the provision on corrections and omissions.

An oversight can be as simple as failing to check what many Florida residents call the "crazy box." It asks people to affirm: "I have not been adjudicated mentally incapacitated with respect to voting or, if I have, my competency has been restored."

So far, about 3 percent of voter registrations collected by the Florida chapter of Acorn, a national organizing group, have lacked the required checkmarks.

In the second decision, on April 3, the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta, sent a case challenging the "no match, no vote" law back to a Federal District Court, reversing an earlier injunction without ruling whether the law was unconstitutional.

Other states, meanwhile, have been moving in the opposite direction. Now, 33 states allow voters to amend forms after their registration deadlines. In 2006, a judge in Washington State struck down a "no match, no vote" law, and at least six other states have abandoned similar provisions.

Election lawyers say Florida's Republican-controlled government has introduced more restrictions on the voting process than other states since 2000 and has fought harder to keep them.

Critics say state officials are subtly trying to block new voters, many of whom tend to vote for Democrats, from participating.

Gov. Charlie Crist of Florida, a Republican, sidestepped specific questions about the state's approach.

"We want to have as many people vote as want to vote that are legally registered to vote," Mr. Crist said. He also offered to "do some campaigning to encourage people to register to vote."

Some volunteers actually registering voters are not pleased. The Florida statute governing such groups is somewhat unusual. Besides Florida, only New Mexico assesses fines on them. The law is also a second try.

The first effort, in 2006, called for fines of up to $5,000 per form, but it was struck down in federal court after the League of Women Voters filed suit.

The state appealed but in the meantime passed an amended law, cutting the fines but keeping some original elements in place. A "standstill agreement" between the state and the plaintiffs kept the new law from being enforced, until Secretary of State Kurt S. Browning gave notice of his plans in court documents in late March. In a statement, his office said it was obligated to enforce the new law.

His office said it had not started assessing penalties. It has also acknowledged that the law is vague on whether the cap of $1,000 would apply to an entire organization, a chapter or individual volunteers.

Ms. Wheatley-Giliotti of the League of Women Voters said her group's roughly 3,000 members could not risk paying the fines. The organization stopped helping voters register for the first time in 2006, before a federal judge struck down the original law that August.

Now, she said, the group must stop again because some local leagues have a budget of only $1,000.

Ms. Wheatley-Giliotti said: "I just believe it's making it much more difficult for many sectors of the population to register. It's groups like the League of Women Voters that take extra steps so that seniors, the poor, the underrepresented have an opportunity to register to vote conveniently."

By Damien Cave, The New York Times, April 28, 2008

After Barack Obama's defeat in Pennsylvania, David Axelrod, his campaign manager, brushed it off: "Nothing has changed tonight in the basic physics of this race."

He may well be right -- but what a comedown. "Yes, we can" has become "No, she can't."

This wasn't the way things were supposed to play out.

Obama was supposed to be a transformational figure, with an almost magical ability to transcend partisan differences and unify the nation. Once voters got to know him -- and once he had eliminated Hillary Clinton's initial financial and organizational advantage -- he was supposed to sweep easily to the nomination, then march on to a huge victory in November.

Well, now he has an overwhelming money advantage and the support of much of the Democratic establishment -- yet he still can't seem to win over large blocs of Democratic voters, especially among the white working class.

As a result, he keeps losing big states. And general election polls suggest that he might well lose to John McCain.

What's gone wrong?

According to many Obama supporters, it's all Hillary's fault. If she hadn't launched all those vile, negative attacks -- if she had just gone away -- his aura would be intact, and his mission of unifying America still on track.

But the attacks from the Clinton campaign have been badminton compared with the hardball that Republicans will play this fall. If the relatively mild rough-and-tumble of the Democratic fight has been enough to knock Obama off his pedestal, what hope did he ever have of staying on it through the general election?

Let me offer an alternative suggestion: Maybe his transformational campaign isn't winning over working-class voters because transformation isn't what they're looking for.

From the beginning, I wondered what Obama's soaring rhetoric, his talk of a new politics and declarations that "we are the ones we've been waiting for," would mean to families troubled by lagging wages, insecure jobs and fear of losing health coverage. The answer, from Ohio and Pennsylvania, seems pretty clear: not much. Clinton has been able to stay in the race, against heavy odds, largely because her no-nonsense style, her obvious interest in the wonkish details of policy, resonate with many voters in a way that Obama's eloquence does not.

The question Democrats, both inside and outside the Obama campaign, should be asking themselves is this: Now that the magic has dissipated, what is the campaign about? More generally, what are the Democrats for in this election?

That should be an easy question to answer. Democrats can justly portray themselves as the party of economic security, the party that created Social Security and Medicare and defended those programs against Republican attacks -- and the party that can bring assured health coverage to all Americans.

They can also portray themselves as the party of prosperity: The contrast between the Clinton economy and the Bush economy is the best free advertisement that Democrats have had since Herbert Hoover.

But the message that Democrats are ready to continue and build on a grand tradition doesn't mesh well with claims to be bringing a "new politics" and rhetoric that places blame for our current state equally on both parties.

And unless Democrats can get past this self-inflicted state of confusion, there's a very good chance that they'll snatch defeat from the jaws of victory this fall.

But even as Mr. Dean and others lament the downward tone of the campaign, they say that with the convention in Denver in August, the healing will begin. They dismiss the intramural tensions wrought by the protracted season, citing historical patterns of voters uniting behind the nominee after similarly competitive primaries.

Still, depending on the circumstances (particularly if those circumstances involve the superdelegates overriding the popular vote or the choice of the pledged delegates), the historical comparisons might not hold up. Identity politics, some say, create a deeper schism, and the polarization by race exposed by results in Pennsylvania and elsewhere could indicate a rift that can't be mended easily.

Certainly the depth of voters' devotion pulsates on every politics blog, with loyalists in one camp insisting they would never back the other's candidate. Some threaten to vote for John McCain or a third-party candidate. Whether that is fleeting angst or lasting sentiment remains to be seen.

Michael Dawson, a political science professor at the University of Chicago, posited last week at TheRoot.com that if Mr. Obama is not the nominee: "The Democratic Party will face the Herculean task of trying to mobilize its most loyal constituency - black voters - in the face of deep and widespread black bitterness and active campaigns in the black community encouraging black voters to defect or abstain. You can already hear the angry comparisons. Just like in 2000, the protests will go, an election will have been "stolen.' "

In an interview, Mr. Dawson elaborated, saying that a Clinton nomination could result in disaffection among black voters. "The sentiment is there and it's very dangerous," he said. "I think it doesn't take any work at all for images of 2000 to become visible again in black discourse" if Mrs. Clinton "takes the nomination away from Obama."

The racial undertones have been exacerbated by the contentious remarks of former President Bill Clinton toward Mr. Obama. Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina warned last week that Mr. Clinton's comments had caused an irreparable breach with African-Americans.

Jamal Simmons, an Obama supporter and Democratic analyst, agreed that this election cycle is different. The race-and-gender divide makes for a "treacherous" road ahead, he said. While Mrs. Clinton keeps pointing to her victory in Michigan (where Mr. Obama's name was not on the ballot), he noted: "She lost every single precinct in the city of Detroit. You cannot win the state of Michigan without African-American voters."

Democrats including Mr. Simmons were quick to point out, though, that were Mrs. Clinton to be the nominee, she would still benefit from what many consider a change or anger election - the wish of many voters to overturn the Republican hold on the White House after eight years, given the economy and the war in Iraq.

But disenchantment could affect the November vote in states where victory is all about slim margins. There was Ohio, for example, where Senator John Kerry lost to President Bush in 2004, in part because Mr. Bush garnered a sizable portion of black voters when issues like a gay-marriage amendment were on the ballot.

"Democrats can't win in November without black people," said James Rucker, executive director for ColorofChange.org, a grassroots online organization that says it has 400,000 minority activists, adding that "party leaders know it and so do everyday black folks."

Much turns on what the superdelegates decide to do. In a Gallup poll in mid-March, before the Pennsylvania primary, 7 percent of Democrats and Democrat-leaning independent voters said they would not vote at all in November if superdelegates gave the nomination to Mrs. Clinton, and 2 percent indicated a third-party choice. In addition, 11 percent said they would vote for a Republican.

Maren Hensla, director of independent expenditures with Emily's List, which has campaigned heavily for Mrs. Clinton, acknowledged that some surveys also suggest that women (who voted 2-1 for Mrs. Clinton in Pennsylvania) may drift away if she is not the nominee.

But unlike the split between, say, Jimmy Carter and Senator Edward M. Kennedy in 1980, she said, there is little policy difference between the 2008 Democrats. So perhaps any disaffection among women would not be enduring.

Other Democratic analysts believe the tensions will dissipate once a nominee is chosen. Stephanie Cutter, a campaign spokeswoman for Mr. Kerry in 2004, said the battle lines are "something for the party to pay attention to." But, she added, "It's the responsibility of everyone, including Barack and Hillary, to pull the base together." She said either could do that through endorsements and campaigning, by providing validation of the other.

Page Gardner, head of the Women's Voices, Women's Vote Action Fund, senses that the overarching issue of economic worry will persuade people - especially her core target of unmarried women who have begun voting in larger numbers - to overcome any disappointment.

Others also view the November lens as harboring ways of smoothing over differences. William Julius Wilson, a Harvard sociologist, said he believed "there is too much hysteria right now - understandably people are upset." He predicted that Mr. Obama will win the nomination, and that both Clintons will campaign hard for a Democrat to win the White House, with Mr. Clinton "regaining the affection of black voters."

Come fall, he said, "The focus will be on McCain, who will be burdened with his association with the president, an economy in deep recession and an unpopular war in Iraq that rages on."

The high level of discontent toward the Bush administration is readily apparent in surveys of public opinion, which could help Democrats, said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center. But, given the firm allegiances to Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, he added: "I think that does put a lot of pressure on the Democratic Party to say this person did not win or lose the nomination on the basis of his or her identity."

Hillary Clinton's solid Pennsylvania primary victory may stem more from Democratic demographics than anything that happened in the bitter six-week campaign leading up to it.

After all, the New York senator's 9-point winning margin and showing with most major constituencies were almost identical to her performance seven weeks ago in neighboring Ohio.

The initial reaction from pundits and the media is that she did more to keep her candidacy alive than to reduce the likelihood that Barack Obama ultimately will be the Democratic nominee to face Republican John McCain.

But Obama's failure to make more than modest inroads into groups that form the Democratic core only will encourage the questions about his patriotism and ties to controversial associates that marked the campaign.

McCain made that quite clear Sunday when he was asked on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" if he believed that Obama "shares" his sense of patriotism.

"I'm sure he's very patriotic," the Arizona senator began. Then, without prompting, he raised the question of Obama's relationship with onetime radical leader William Ayers, denouncing the Illinois senator for his closeness to "an unrepentant terrorist."

Another sign that the GOP sees political mileage in this approach is Wednesday's unveiling by the North Carolina Republican Party - over McCain's objections - of an ad that questions the "judgment" of the two top Democratic gubernatorial candidates for backing Obama and shows a clip of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.

Still, despite their prevalence in last week's televised debate and in day-to-day campaign coverage, there remains doubt how much these issues affected the outcome.

Obama did marginally better in Pennsylvania than in Ohio among white voters and men, his final deficit was less than in early polls, voters saw Clinton's campaign as the more negative, and most Democrats said race was not a factor in their votes.

Besides, when exit pollsters asked if voters felt the two were interested in "people like you," they rated them the same.

Still, about a quarter of the Clinton voters said they would vote for McCain if she weren't the nominee, and 18 percent said they would stay home in November.

That would be disastrous for Obama, but the likelihood is that those numbers would fall in the general election, when contrasts between the nominees' key positions became evident.

Even as Clinton remains stronger among basic groups that the party needs in order to win such key states as Ohio and Pennsylvania, Obama continues to show that his appeal extends beyond those groups in a way that is also necessary for victory, since core Democrats are not enough to win an election.

That was evident in Pennsylvania in his strong support among the 300,000 new Democrats who have joined the party since January. In a broader context, he continues to show almost daily an appeal beyond liberal Democrats that Clinton can't match.

Wednesday, Gov. Brad Henry of Oklahoma, the conservative Democratic governor of a "red" state, announced his support for Obama.

He joins, from the last week, two respected conservative Democrats - former Sens. Sam Nunn of Georgia and David Boren of Oklahoma - and two notable Republicans - William Ruckelshaus, a key figure in past Republican administrations; and Julie Nixon Eisenhower, the daughter of former President Richard Nixon and the sister-in-law of another Obama backer, Susan Eisenhower.

None has the political clout that Gov. Edward Rendell gave Clinton in Pennsylvania or Sen. Evan Bayh hopes to provide May 6 in Indiana.

But they suggest the kind of coalition that remains possible for Obama, assuming he can survive the fierce challenge of the former first lady and legitimate questions about who he is and what he believes.

By Carl P. Leubsdorf, Lawrence Journal-World, April 27, 2008

They've got just that with the Kentucky Derby on Saturday followed shortly later by a race of a different sort - the neck-and-neck scramble for the Democratic presidential nomination between Sens. Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Traditionally, because its primary falls late in the cycle, Kentucky has fallen to the back of the pack when it comes to the national presidential scene. But this year, as one of the last states holding a primary, Kentucky is finding itself increasingly in the spotlight.

What in the past has rendered Kentucky voters essentially voiceless in picking the Republican and Democratic presidential nominees could this year become a blessing in the campaign's final stretch. At least for Democrats.

Not since 1988 has Kentucky had much of a voice in choosing a presidential nominee. That's the year the state joined with others in the South for a Super Tuesday vote.

While other states rushed to hold early primaries this year, Kentucky election officials chose to keep the traditional May balloting, saying that doing so could strengthen the state's political muscle in a tight race. Maybe it has.

Kentucky's primary is May 20.

With the Democratic nomination still up for grabs, Clinton has already campaigned in the state, making stops in Louisville and Madisonville, and dispatching her husband, former President Bill Clinton, and daughter, Chelsea Clinton, to campaign in other Kentucky towns. Obama has opened campaign offices in Kentucky, and presumed Republican nominee John McCain visited Kentucky last week.

Jennifer Moore, chairwoman of the Kentucky Democratic party and a superdelegate, predicted there would be a higher turnout than usual in this year's primary. And, more people Kentucky seem to be getting enthusiastic about the presidential race, Moore said.

"We're one of the last primaries and that is going to have a significant factor in who becomes the Democratic nominee," Moore said. "And Kentuckians have the opportunity to make their voices heard loud and clear on May 20."

Secretary of State Trey Grayson, the state's chief election official, predicted early last year that keeping the traditional date could make Kentucky a player in the presidential race, though he acknowledged at the time that such a scenario was a longshot.

"Ironically, it probably did benefit us, although we will know for sure after the Indiana and North Carolina primaries happen," Grayson said.

A sweep by Obama in those two states on May 6 could cement his nomination. If not, Grayson said, Kentucky remains relevant.

In Kentucky, political campaigns typically go into high gear only after the derby winner is decided. Republican National Committee Chairman Mike Duncan, a former Inez banker, calls the Derby "the demarcation" that signals the start of primary campaigns in the state.

"In any election, the focus comes toward the end," Duncan said. "You start running your ads on a more intense basis during that time, and it's more on people's minds."

Joe Gershtenson, director of the Center for Kentucky History and Politics at Eastern Kentucky University, said he is concerned that the excitement could wane before voters go to the polls.

"It's clear that neither of these candidates can wrap this thing up," he said. "There's a feeling that, gosh, no matter what happens in Kentucky and some of these other states, that it's not going to be decided until the convention anyway."

But Jonathan Hurst, state director for Clinton's campaign in Kentucky, said the race here is being taken "very seriously." The campaign was opening headquarters throughout the state, and the senator is expected to make more visits to the state in the coming weeks, Hurst said.

"Kentuckians by and large are very excited that they are going to be major players in the presidential race," Hurst said. "They're one of the few states remaining in a very closely fought primary. That, I think, is a real positive."

WASHINGTON - As the presidential campaign continues its painful, costly march toward the nominating conventions, Republicans and Democrats are in rare political agreement on the state of the race: Hillary Clinton is in trouble.

And so is Barack Obama.

And so is John McCain.

And so are both the Democratic and the Republican parties, which are each dealing with fractured electorates that could bolt to the other party or stay home in disgust this November, handing a default victory to the other side.

Republicans are salivating over the very public - and sometimes personal - sparring between Democratic contenders Obama and Clinton as the two fight down to the final primaries for the right to face McCain in November. Once hoping for a Clinton victory in the primaries, Republicans now say the battle-scarred Obama is also looking like an increasingly appealing target, wounded by primary season attacks on his patriotism and his association with a firebrand preacher.

But while McCain happily travels around the country campaigning for a nomination he has already sewn up, problems loom for the GOP as well. Republican fundraising has been weak, veteran GOP congressmen and senators are retiring in droves, and many analysts predict the Republicans could lose seats in both chambers of Congress this November.

In addition, ideological divisions within the Republican party have kept McCain from unifying the party behind his candidacy, leading some Republicans - who controlled the House, Senate, and the White House as recently as 2006 - to worry that they will emerge from November's contests with control of neither the executive nor the legislative branches.

While Republicans profess new confidence that they can beat the Democrat in November after the wounding primary season, they broadly acknowledge that McCain still has some mending to do with the conservative wing of the party. Even though McCain has already secured the GOP nomination, 16 percent of Pennsylvania Republicans voted for Representative Ron Paul last Tuesday, and 11 percent for former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee.

"When a quarter of primary voters cast their votes for someone else, there's clearly work to be done," said GOP consultant Dan Schnur.

Halfway through a critical election year, neither party boasts a united rank-and-file membership, and both are facing squabbles among party leaders.

Democrats are enmeshed in an increasingly nasty fight for the nomination, and superdelegates are squirming under pressure from party leaders to choose by early June.

"Nobody wants the superdelegates to have a deciding" role in the nomination, said Representative Barney Frank, a Newton Democrat who has endorsed Clinton.

Meanwhile, Michigan and Florida Democrats are still fighting to get their convention delegates seated, despite the fact that both broke DNC rules and moved their primaries to January. The mess is exasperating Democrats, who fear that the wrangling could alienate voters in those two crucial states in the fall.

"People don't want to see us having food fights in public," said Jenny Backus, a Democratic consultant not working for a presidential candidate.

The Republicans - while watching the Democrats' political writhing with glee - have serious problems of their own.

The House and Senate prospects are bleak: Having already lost a safe GOP seat in a special election to replace former House Speaker J. Dennis Hastert in Illinois, the Republicans are facing some daunting math this fall. Twenty-seven GOP House members and six senators are retiring, giving Democrats a chance to run against untested GOP candidates in many districts that were once safely Republican.

Strengthened by their majority status, Democratic congressional committees have far out-raised their GOP counterparts for this fall's election.

So far, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has reaped $87 million to help its candidates, compared to $65 million for the National Republican Congressional Committee. The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee has collected $72 million for its candidates, while the National Republican Senatorial Committee has lagged with $39 million.

In addition, individual Republican candidates for the House and Senate have been far out-raised by Democrats.

And while McCain is enjoying a quiet campaign stretch, as the media and voters focus on the volatile Democratic contest, the Arizona lawmaker has not come close to generating the fund-raising might of his Democratic opponents.

In all, McCain has raised a total of $77 million in the campaign, compared to $235 million raised by Obama and $189 million collected by Clinton.

Religious and social conservatives have been critical of McCain, who appears to delight in defying his fellow Republicans on matters ranging from taxes to the environment. His authorship of campaign finance reform legislation alienated key conservative activist groups, which felt their political voices were muffled by laws limiting what they could say in paid television ads.

McCain's support for immigration reform has not only aggravated the GOP base, but threatens to put him in a politically untenable position this fall: while he needs Latino votes to win battleground states in the general election, any mention of his coauthorship of an immigration package giving undocumented immigrants a path to legal residency infuriates anti-illegal immigration forces that make up a critical part of the GOP base.

"On the one hand, he's dogged, justifiably, for his partnership with [Massachusetts Senator Edward M.] Kennedy on last year's amnesty bill," said Bob Dane, communications director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform, which does not endorse presidential candidates. "He needs to successfully distance himself to make his core happy."

But "the Hispanic vote is critical in these swing states," Dane noted, so "he doesn't want to upset the apple cart."

McCain's opposition to the Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2002 has irritated GOP stalwarts such as Americans for Tax Reform, while the conservative Club for Growth greeted McCain's electoral success by bemoaning the fact that the GOP had selected "a candidate at odds with a large portion of its conservative members to be the standard-bearer" of the party.

"Just because the Republican nomination is over doesn't mean the division in the Republican party is over," said Jim Demers, a Democratic activist who co-chaired Obama's primary campaign in New Hampshire. "They just aren't talking about it because the press is focused on the Democratic race. I do believe it still exists."

Tony Fabrizio, a Republican pollster, suggested that some of McCain's woes in uniting the GOP may actually be caused by the Democratic failure to produce a nominee. Once either Clinton or Obama wears the Democratic crown, he said, Republicans will realize what they're up against and align themselves squarely with McCain.

"Either of his opponents becomes the energizer" for the GOP nominee in the fall, Fabrizio added.

Democrats, for their part, are increasingly anxious to resolve the nomination fight, but many point to one benefit of the extended primary season: The party has registered millions of new Democrats, including a half million in Pennsylvania, Indiana, and North Carolina, said DNC spokeswoman Stacie Paxton.

Those new voters - which Paxton said are likely to come out to vote in November regardless of who wins the nomination - could make the difference in battleground states, she said.

"The interest doesn't hurt. The excitement doesn't hurt," said Representative Michael Capuano, a Somerville Democrat who has endorsed Obama. But if the Democratic campaign is not resolved soon, the party and the candidates will suffer, he said

"The longer it goes, the higher the risk is," Capuano said. "But I don't think we're there yet."

The practice is legal, and the campaign of McCain, long an advocate of campaign finance reform, has changed its policy over the past year on use of private planes - from banning such corporate-jet travel to allowing limited use. McCain is the only remaining candidate who has flown on corporate jets during the campaign. Neither of the Democratic presidential candidates, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, uses private jets, and both have flown on commercial charter flights since the outset of the campaign.

Until September, when new ethics reforms went into effect, candidates were allowed to fly on corporate jets provided by supporters and pay only the equivalent of first-class airfare, even if the plane was a top-end corporate jet that would have cost many times that amount to charter. After Sept. 14, candidates had to pay the market-rate cost of renting such aircraft, and those who were making use of the loophole switched to commercial charter jets to transport the candidate, staff, and surrogates.

Last December, McCain spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker told the Globe that McCain took no corporate travel but "on a few occasions, prior to the passage of the law" flew on the jets of "individual supporters." Many are major McCain fund-raisers.

But when the Globe last week identified campaign reimbursements to at least 10 corporations for private jet transport both before and after Sept. 14, another McCain spokesman said: "The campaign will not fly on private aircraft owned by public corporations employing lobbyists."

A check of the Senate Clerk's database of lobbyist reports, however, revealed that one company, Molded Fiber Glass Companies of Ashtabula, Ohio, that provided transportation last year for McCain, retains Washington lobbyists for Department of Defense appropriation bills and another plane provider, Harry Sargeant III of Gulf Stream, Fla., owns two companies that have used lobbyists in the past and another that provides fuel to the Defense Department.

Molded Fiber Glass was paid $1,183 last August before the reforms went into effect, and the company that owns Sargeant's aircraft was paid $2,619 shortly before the Florida primary in January under the new rules. Sargeant, a close friend of Florida Governor Charlie Crist, a key McCain supporter, hosted a fundraiser for McCain at his home last month.

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said in an e-mail Friday that both flights "were completely permitted under campaign finance regulations, and until today we did not even realize the two instances didn't meet our internal standard, which is a much higher ethical standard than the previous or current law even requires."

The New York Times reported today that over a seven-month period beginning last summer, McCain's cash-short campaign used a corporate jet owned by a company headed by his wife, Cindy McCain, according to public records. For five of those months, the plane was used almost exclusively for campaign-related purposes, those records show.

According to the Times, McCain's campaign paid a total of $241,149 for the use of that plane from last August through February, records show. That amount is approximately the cost of chartering a similar jet for a month or two, according to industry estimates, the Times reported.

McCain was able to fly so inexpensively because the law specifically exempts aircraft owned by a candidate or his family or by a privately held company they control. The Federal Election Commission adopted rules in December to close the loophole - rules that would have required substantial payments by candidates using family-owned planes - but the agency soon lost the requisite number of commissioners needed to complete the rule making.

Because that exemption remains, McCain's campaign was able to use his wife's corporate plane like a charter jet while paying first-class rates, several campaign finance experts said. Several of those experts, however, added that his campaign's actions, while keeping with the letter of law, did not reflect its spirit.

The use of private planes constitutes a small amount of the transport costs of the McCain campaign, which through the end of March had spent more than $3.2 million on commercial air charters. A Globe review of campaign finance reports identified 13 private companies, all with executives who contributed or raised funds for McCain, that were reimbursed a total of $78,000 for air transport.

Roughly half the amount was paid prior to last Sept. 14 when the new ethics reform law went into effect, banning the longstanding practice that allowed candidates to pay discounted rates, a fraction of the true cost of the service. Since then, the campaign has reimbursed several companies that provided private aircraft the estimated cost of what a commercial charter flight company would charge for a similar plane, Bounds said.

The campaign gave up the policy of not using private jets when it was struggling financially in mid-2007 and McCain's rivals, Mitt Romney and Rudy Giuliani, were frequent flyers gaining a financial advantage from low-cost corporate jets made available by supporters under the reduced "first-class" rates. Last December, the Globe reported that Giuliani's campaign had paid 26 companies a total of $703,000 under the old discounts, and Romney's paid 27 companies nearly $300,000.

Among other businesses that the McCain campaign last week acknowledged had provided private aircraft for the campaign under the old discount rates before the ethics reform were:

* Johnson Development Associates of Spartanburg, S.C., a real estate firm founded by George Dean Johnson Jr., a major McCain fund-raiser in South Carolina. The McCain campaign paid a total of $8,787 for travel costs to two companies, Idaho Associates and Arizona Associates, that own aircraft of Johnson-related firms. Both used billing addresses at the same postal box in Spartanburg.

* Thayer Services LLC of McLean, Va., an affiliate of Thayer Capital Partners, which is chaired by Frederic V. Malek, a cochairman of McCain's national finance committee, and which provided flights to Iowa and New Hampshire shortly before the law changed last Sept. 14, according to McCain's campaign. The campaign paid the company a total of $7,751 to the Kennesaw, Ga., address of an aircraft management company.

* Diamond A Ford Corp., an investment firm in Dallas, headed by Gerald J. Ford, a McCain supporter, $1,657 last July.

*John A. Moran & Associates of Palm Beach, Fla., two flights flights totalling $4,553 last year under the old regulations and two flights in January totalling $13,455 under the full charter reimbursement costs. Moran, retired chairman of a large New York-based private investment company, is a major Republican fund-raiser and one of McCain's national finance committee cochairmen.

Other companies that provided aircraft to the campaign include: McKinley Inc. of Ann Arbor, Mich., a national real estate investment company founded by Ronald Weiser, a McCain national finance committee cochairman, $5,192 in January under the full commercial rate; PVS Chemicals Inc., Detroit, Michigan, headed by McCain supporter James B. Nicholson, $1,299 for a flight under the old first-class fare rate last August, and $17,385 for two flights under the higher commercial rate; Web Service Co., a Manhattan Beach, Calif.,-based company that manages laundry rooms in 30,000 apartment buildings and is headed by William E. Bloomfield, $3,407, last September, and Red Eagle Ventures of San Francisco, Calif., a private equity firm chaired by David S. Pottruck, who is also a member of the board of Intel Corp., was paid $5,314, last September for a day of flights to four cities in California.

Moran, Bloomfield, Weiser, Nicholson, and Malek have each raised more than $250,000, according to a list of major fund-raisers disclosed by the McCain campaign on its website. Sargeant and Pottruck have raised more than $100,000. The McCain campaign also reported paying $15,749 for travel-related expenses to Thomas G. Loeffler, a former congressman from San Antonio, Texas, and head of a large lobbying firm with dozens of clients in Washington, but the campaign said they were not aircraft-related. Loeffler, one of six general cochairmen of the McCain campaign, was reimbursed for expenses incurred while travelling on behalf of the campaign, a spokesman said. He also has raised more than $250,000, according to the McCain campaign list.

"I think the system is ripe for reform," Klobuchar said.

She said superdelegates, who are not bound by the voters, should account for about 10 percent of the Democratic delegates as opposed to the current 20 percent.

Nationally, there are about 800 unpledged superdelegates out of 4,049 who will meet in August at the Democratic Convention in Denver. Clinton leads Obama in the committed superdelegate count, 259-235, according to USA Today.

Neither Clinton nor Obama is expected to win the 2,025 delegates needed to clinch the nomination because of the Democrats' rules on how delegates are allotted. Obama leads with 1,724 pledged delegates; Clinton has 1,593, according to The Associated Press. That's why the nomination could hinge on superdelegates.

So far, 10 of Minnesota's superdelegates say they are supporting Obama; three are backing Clinton. One, Rep. Collin Peterson, is undecided. Peterson did not make himself available for an interview. Two additional delegates will be selected at the state convention June 6-8.

Obama won the Feb. 5 state primary 66.4 percent to 32.2 percent for Clinton and won every congressional district, according to the state Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.

Klobuchar also is sponsoring legislation in Congress to establish a rotating regional primary system to avoid the debacles that occurred in Florida and Michigan. Party leaders have penalized Florida and Michigan for holding early primaries by refusing to confirm the states' delegates.

"We need to put some order to this chaos," she said.

Klobuchar said the current primary system is "confusing and volatile" and has evolved into a "primary arms race."

States "are trying to leapfrog one another to be first," she said. "It turns out the ones that were later (this year) were in a better position" to determine the nominee.

Clinton supporter Jackie Stevenson, a Democratic National Committee member, said she has mixed views on the role of superdelegates.

"The good is that you have people with experience who understand how government really works," she said.

The downside, she said, is the pressure.

"I've received some positive feedback, but I've also received about 20 threatening e-mails because I support Hillary Clinton," she said. "I consider myself a die-hard Clinton supporter. I'll look for direction from Clinton to change my vote."

Nancy Larson, a DNC member and Obama supporter, said there are too many superdelegates and agreed the system needs to be reformed.

"This system hasn't worked very well," she said.

Larson, who announced her support for Obama on April 13, relishes the independence of superdelegates.

"Right now, I'm committed to Obama," she said. "But I have to respect that role and that I can change my mind."

By Pamela Brogan, St Cloud Times, April 27, 2008

By Bill Curry, The Hartford Courant, April 27, 2008

These days, the battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton is mostly about electability, about who has the better chance to win in the fall.

And both sides have an argument to make - having to do with the electoral map, among other things - which hasn't always been the case.

For much of the campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, electability was Obama's strong suit.

He was the one bringing in new voters and beating Republican John McCain in polls, while she was seen as carrying too much political baggage.

That's changed to some degree recently, with the revelations about Obama's past associations and Clinton's continued success in the larger states, including Pennsylvania.

"This is, for me, a no-brainer," said Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland, calling Clinton the candidate with "the greatest strength in the states that are necessary to get us the electoral votes that we need."

Countered Obama's campaign m