McCain to focus on reintroducing himself to the electorate

Rick Davis, campaign manager for John McCain, talked strategy.

John McCain's campaign manager yesterday laid out his strategy as he moves from winning the Republican nomination to preparing for the general election campaign.

The Arizona senator - who has been trying to burnish his foreign policy credentials on an extended congressional trip this week to the Middle East and Europe, will return to the United States focused on reintroducing himself to the broader electorate, campaign manager Rick Davis said in a memo.

McCain will discuss how his life experiences, including the Naval Academy and the Vietnam War, have shaped his values, which Davis said will resonate with independent and swing voters who will likely decide the next president.

The memo also mentions new polls that show McCain ahead of both potential Democratic nominees, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, in hypothetical matchups and that show him competitive in key swing states such as Florida, Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. "In stark contrast to either potential Democratic opponent, his ideology has always traditionally tracked very close to the electorate," Davis writes.

And Davis argues that the continuing Democratic nomination battle helps McCain. "The volatility of the Democratic race has given us a strategic window to organize our general election campaign structure, to raise money and to be prepared for what will be a dramatic general election cycle," he says in the memo.

FOON RHEE

Mostly good marks for Obama's speech on race
Barack Obama's speech this week on race relations has mostly received glowing praise from the pundocracy. Average Americans quite liked it, too, according to a new poll released yesterday.

The CBS News poll found that 69 percent of voters who heard or read about the speech Tuesday say Obama did a good job addressing the issue of race, and 71 percent say he did well explaining his relationship with his spiritual mentor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., whose inflammatory sermons on the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the US government, and other topics caused a huge controversy.

But the survey had a warning sign for Obama: The percentage of voters who said Obama would unite the country dropped from 67 percent last month to 52 percent. Most voters, however, said the controversy would make no difference in their vote.

For the poll, CBS said it reinterviewed on Thursday voters who were first surveyed between March 15 and 18, in the midst of the Wright controversy and before Obama's speech. The survey results have a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

FOON RHEE

Fla. Democrats can refile lawsuit over delegates
ATLANTA - A federal appeals court has dismissed a lawsuit against the Democratic National Committee over the party's decision to strip Florida of its delegates to its national convention.

But the 11th US Circuit Court of Appeals, in a ruling released yesterday, said the lawsuit "raises a number of interesting and potentially significant questions," and gave the plaintiff an opening to amend and refile the lawsuit.

The plaintiff, Victor DiMaio, a Democratic Party activist from Tampa, Fla., said he would refile the lawsuit. He initially filed it in 2007 accusing the party of disenfranchising Florida's Democratic voters by barring them from having their say in choosing their party's nominee. The party stripped both Florida and Michigan of their national convention delegates because they moved their primaries to January dates that were earlier than party rules allowed.

The Democratic National Committee argued the party has the right to set its own rules and not seat delegates who refuse to follow them, and said it was pleased with the ruling.

ASSOCIATED PRESS