The latest Gallup poll is like manna from heaven for Barack Obama it so neatly backs up two key arguments he and his supporters are making -- that he is the stronger candidate for the fall, and that the marathon nomination fight is hurting the party.

In the poll, 59 percent of Democrats said that Obama would have the better chance as the Democratic nominee in November, compared to 30 percent for Hillary Clinton. Among Republicans, 64 percent said their presumptive nominee, John McCain, would have a better chance to win against Clinton, while only 22 percent said Obama would be the weaker Democrat.

"Clearly at this point, the party rank-and-file thinks Obama would present a stronger challenge to McCain in the fall than Clinton would," the pollsters said in a release. "Those attitudes could certainly change over the remainder of the campaign, but it is notable that Obama maintains a wide lead in these perceptions shortly after the Jeremiah Wright controversy knocked his campaign off stride."

The poll, released today, also found that 56 percent of Democrats believe that the drawn-out nomination battle is doing "more harm than good," while 35 percent believe it is doing "more good than harm." A growing drumbeat of Obama backers, most notably Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont, have urged Clinton to consider dropping out for the party's good.

The survey, conducted March 24-27, has an overall margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points and a margin of error among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents of plus or minus 5 percentage points.

Barack Obama is vastly outspending Hillary Clinton so far on Pennsylvania's airwaves leading up to the crucial April 22 primary.

By some counts, he is buying five times more air time than Clinton. Thus far, the TV ads have mostly been biographical. One features a snippet of his speech at the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston, where he burst on to the national stage, plus testimonials from a Republican and Democratic leader in the Illinois legislature about his record there.

The $2 million in ad buys could help partly explain why Obama, who is in the middle of a bus tour across the Keystone State, is closing the gap in the polls to the low double digits. Governor Ed Rendell, Clinton's biggest-name supporter in the state, predicted on CNN this afternoon that she would win -- but probably not by as big a margin.

Obama also outspent Clinton in Ohio, but she won the Buckeye State on March 4 to revive her candidacy. But by holding down the size of a Clinton victory in Pennsylvania, Obama could preserve his edge in both total delegates and total popular vote.

Democratic Party elder Mario Cuomo said today that the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama camps have indicated no interest in an idea he floated in the Boston Globe -- that they should form a joint ticket.

At the least, he said in his op-ed piece, Clinton and Obama should agree to pick the other as vice president as a way to soothe the disappointment and bitterness of the other's supporters.

Appearing on CNN to plug his proposal, the former New York governor said he fears lasting damage in the party that could end up putting Republican John McCain in the White House. Cuomo is the latest big-name Democrat to publicly air such misgivings because the campaign has become filled with nearly daily attacks, with no end in sight -- at least not until June.

Cuomo said he's surprised by the cold shoulder he's received so far from the candidates, especially from Obama, since he has agreed to meet Iranian leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad without preconditions. If the Democrats are willing to negotiate with foreign leaders, Cuomo asked, why not each other?

In part jockeying for the support of Hispanic voters, both Democratic presidential hopefuls today praised the late farmworker activist Cesar Chavez on his birthday.

"Under his leadership -- highlighted by nonviolent protest -- thousands of farmers across the country were able to secure improved wages and benefits, humane living and working conditions, and better job security. Through his lifetime of service, he has paved the way for many, and provided inspiration for countless others," Hillary Clinton, who has the endorsement of Chavez's grandson, said in a statement.

"We honor a true American hero and a role model to all of us who are committed to bringing change and fight for justice."

Obama, who has taken to chanting his "Yes We Can" slogan in Spanish -- "Sí Se Puede" -- at every opportunity, one-upped Clinton by calling for a national holiday to honor Chavez.

"Chavez left a legacy as an educator, environmentalist, and a civil rights leader," Obama said in a statement. "And his cause lives on. As farmworkers and laborers across America continue to struggle for fair treatment and fair wages, we find strength in what Cesar Chavez accomplished so many years ago. And we should honor him for what he's taught us about making America a stronger, more just, and more prosperous nation. That's why I support the call to make Cesar Chavez's birthday a national holiday. It's time to recognize the contributions of this American icon to the ongoing efforts to perfect our union."

Both Democratic presidential hopefuls jumped on the resignation today of President Bush's housing secretary to decry the "cronyism" they said he represented and the inaction they said is worsening the housing crisis.

"While Secretary Jackson’s resignation is appropriate, it does nothing to address the Bush Administration’s wait-and-don’t-see posture to our nation’s housing crisis, which is threatening to drive our economy into a painful recession," Hillary Clinton said in a statement. "Now is the time for immediate action, not more half-measures and white papers. While I appreciate the Administration’s willingness to acknowledge the need for more regulation of our financial markets, we cannot let a discussion about rearranging the regulatory deck chairs divert us from the fact that our housing and credit markets are in crisis, and are sinking deeper every day that we fail to take aggressive action."

Alphonso Jackson, the secretary of Housing and Urban Development, has been under fire from Democrats who accused him of steering contracts to political allies.

"Secretary Jackson’s resignation amid a housing crisis and charges of cronyism serves as a stark reminder of what’s at stake in this election," Barack Obama said in a statement. "It’s harder than ever for working families to achieve the American Dream, and that’s why we need a president who will cut ties with the special interests so that we can implement a plan that provides real relief to homeowners and prevents the lobbyists from writing the laws that regulate them."

Both Democrats gave speeches last week calling for more government intervention to stem the foreclosure crisis and slamming Republican John McCain for not proposing new programs.

If Democrats were looking to Al Gore to be the white knight to settle the bitter nomination fight, they should probably find someone else.

Gore, viewed by some as one of the few party leaders who could nudge Hillary Clinton to withdraw or to broker some kind of compromise between Clinton and Barack Obama, said on "60 Minutes" said he's not interested in being any kind of "Boss Tweed" figure.

"I'm trying to stay out of it," he said in the interview, broadcast Sunday night. "I'm not applying for the job of broker."

The former vice president and nominee in 2000 also shrugged off speculation that if the nomination battle tightens further and goes to the convention in late August, he could emerge as a compromise candidate. "I doubt very seriously that I'll ever be a candidate again," said Gore, who was philosophical about his political fortunes and new life as Nobel Prize-winning advocate against global warming.

MERIDIAN, Miss. -- Instead of mining his "martial heritage" for anecdotes about military ancestors who can be portrayed as likeable if dutiful scoundrels -- ramblers and gamblers, rounders and bounders, as it might be put in local parlance -- John McCain today focused on family as a conservative institution that demanded government support.

"The family I was born to, and the family I am blessed with now, made me the
man I am, and instilled in me a deep and abiding respect for the social institution that wields the greatest influence in the formation of our individual character and the character of our society," McCain said downtown theatre here, on the first stop of a week-long tour designed to reintroduce his biography to the electorate.

On the surface, little was new in McCain’s speech. Much of his family's military history was exhaustively recounted in similar language in a decade-old memoir, "Faith of My Fathers." Policy prescriptions for government to help families were all staples of his stump speech: offering school choice, fighting Internet predators, and modernizing federal unemployment programs.

Yet the speech did seem to find a new role for the institution of the family in the McCain cosmology. McCain rarely speaks in modern-conservative tones of family as a proto-religious institution, but instead as a proxy for public service, the channel through which standards of duty and honor are pulled forward through the generations. The faith of McCain's father and grandfather, both Navy admirals, was a secular one; for McCain, connecting with them was indistinguishable from connecting with their idea of America.

"I may have been raised in a time when government did not dare to assume the responsibilities of parents," McCain said. "I am a father in a time when parents worry that threats to their children’s well-being are proliferating and undermining the values they have worked to impart to them."

Riding over to the event, McCain shared nostalgia for that earlier time, recalling the stiff drink Admiral William Halsey gave him as a 15-year old and the rough and rowdy days he spent in Meridian as a young flight instructor.

"We worked very hard, but we also played very hard. We were young, healthy, enjoyed life -- good social life, interesting social life, a lot of southern hospitality," McCain said, employing favorite euphemisms for experiences that contributed little to the formation of society’s character.

The trickle of Democratic superdelegates declaring for Barack Obama is turning into more of a gusher, fast closing Hillary Clinton's one lead in the nomination race and ratcheting up pressure on her to defend her candidacy.

Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota is announcing her support this morning. The Wall Street Journal reported today that all seven Democratic US House members from North Carolina plan to come out for Obama in one fell swoop before that state's May 6 primary.

"The Democratic Party is blessed this year with two candidates with many excellent leadership qualities, and I believe each of them would be a strong president. I am endorsing Barack Obama today, because he has inspired an enthusiasm and idealism that we have not seen in this country in a long time," Klobuchar said in a statement issued by the Obama campaign.

"I am endorsing Barack because he is a new kind of leader -- speaking with a different voice, bringing a new perspective and inspiring a real excitement from the American people. He is able to dissolve the hard cynical edge that has dominated our politics under the Bush Administration. I believe Barack can unify the American people to address the many challenges facing our nation.”

She is the 64th superdelegate to endorse Obama since Super Tuesday on Feb. 5.

Obama, boasting a more than 6-1 edge in superdelegate endorsements since Super Tuesday, is quickly catching up to Clinton in that count. He already leads in overall delegates and popular vote heading into the next contest, the April 22 primary in Pennsylvania. The 795 superdelegates -- elected officials, party leaders, and others -- are likely to decide the nominee because neither Clinton nor Obama appear likely to reach the clinching number just from those delegates awarded by primaries and caucuses.

Clinton, who along with Obama is campaigning today in Pennsylvania, stressed several times over the weekend that she has no plans to drop out and may indeed take the fight all the way to the national convention in late August.

As Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton campaign through Pennsylvania, a state long identified with steel mills and factories, one issue is notably absent: NAFTA.

While controversial free trade agreement dominated campaign talk in Ohio, the Globe's Sasha Issenberg notes both candidates have focused on consumer-driven issues such as the home ownership or the cost of food while stumping in the Quaker State:

"Yet as they traveled through Pennsylvania last week, neither Clinton nor her opponent, Barack Obama, once mentioned the North American Free Trade Agreement - a frequent bugaboo in their Ohio politicking - and refrained from a prolonged discussion of trade issues altogether."

Many Pennsylvanians say the state's economy isn't as reliant on manufacturing as neighboring Ohio and Michigan, and thus not as susceptible to the negative affects of NAFTA.

But given that both candidates have been burned by NAFTA recently -- Obama with an aide purportedly contradicting his tough stance to Canadian officials, and Clinton rejecting claims that she personally supported the agreement in the past -- perhaps both campaigns also sense NAFTA is a thorny issue worth avoiding altogether.

Chelsea Clinton said in public today what she told a voter privately in South Carolina in January: She believes her mom Hillary Clinton would be a better president than her dad Bill.

Asked at a campaign event in Pennsylvania who would be better, the former first daughter said, "I don't take anything for granted, but hopefully with Pennsylvania's help, she will be our next president. And yes, I do think she'll be a better president."

Chelsea Clinton didn't elaborate, but Bill Clinton has all but said the same at several points during the campaign.

Even with the bitterness of the nomination battle and the exhausting campaign schedule, the candidates can still manage a little humor.

Barack Obama told a crowd in Pennsylvania today that the Democratic race was like "a good movie that lasted about a half an hour too long," according to ABC News.

Told about the comment, CBS said Clinton replied at an Indiana event, "I like long movies."

So it doesn't look like curtains anytime soon.

While many Democratic leaders would apparently be satisfied if the nomination fight were settled in June, two New England senators who back Barack Obama are calling for an earlier resolution.

Patrick Leahy of Vermont went the furthest, telling Vermont Public Radio that Obama, who leads in delegates and popular vote, is the de facto nominee and that Hillary Clinton "ought to withdraw" and unite the party behind Obama. "Now, obviously that's a decision that only she can make," Leahy added.

Still, Leahy said in the interview that he was "very concerned" about the trajectory of the race.

"John McCain, who has been making one gaffe after another, is getting a free ride on it because Senator Obama and Senator Clinton have to fight with each other," he said. "I think that her criticism is hurting him more than anything John McCain has said."

UPDATE: But Leahy issued a statement this afternoon that appeared to soften his position by not saying Clinton "ought" to withdraw. "Senator Clinton has every right, but not a very good reason, to remain a candidate for as long as she wants to," the statement said.

The Clinton campaign this afternoon rounded up some of its supporters' statements disagreeing with Leahy's call. "While I appreciate the loyalty Senator Leahy feels to Senator Obama and the concern he may have about his candidate’s ability to win, what he’s proposing would be like calling a baseball game in the 7th inning," Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said in a statement. "Let's play this out."

Chris Dodd of Connecticut told National Journal on Thursday that he'd prefer that the nominee is decided after the North Carolina and Indiana primaries on May 6 because a protracted battle would be "devastating."

But Clinton is giving no indication that she'll do anything until after the last primaries on June 3. Several Democrats, most prominently Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen, are calling for a primary of the 795 superdelegatess in June to put a candidate over the top.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean made the rounds of the morning TV news shows today to declare that it would be good if the superdelegates decided before July 1.

He also let on that he has urged the Clinton and Obama campaigns to cool it on the personal attacks, warning that they could demoralize the party's base. "I don't think the party is going to implode," Dean said on CNN.

In the spirit of March Madness, Barack Obama is offering a unique incentive for Indiana high-schoolers to register their friends to vote in the May 6 primary: If they collect the registration forms, he'll play a little basketball with them.

It's a program the Obama campaign is calling the "3-on-3 Challenge for Change." Here's how it works: Every high school student who gets completed registration forms from at least 20 friends will qualify for a 3-on-3 game against Obama and his undisclosed teammates. (A warning to the high-schoolers: One of Obama's closest aides, Reggie Love, played on Duke's 2001 national championship team.)

As they did in Iowa, high school students will matter in Indiana, because state election laws allow anyone who will be 18 by Election Day in November to participate in the May primary. Registration ends on April 7.

"High school and college students have been inspired by Barack's message and the possibility that Americans can come together around a leader whose mission it is to bring them together," former Indiana University star Calbert Cheaney, an Evansville, Ind. native, says in a statement on Obama's website. "The Obama campaign has waged an unprecedented effort to engage young people and register them, and young people have returned the attention with countless volunteer hours and precious votes."

Let's just establish this for the record, though: If Cheaney ends up on Obama's team, too, this thing will be grossly unfair.

Mark McKinnon, John McCain's media guru, said today that Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are helping McCain and doing "a lot" of damage to each other with their daily barrage of invectives.

McKinnon, in an interview with National Journal On Air, also confirmed what he told the Globe last month -- that if Obama wins the Democratic nomination, he will step down from his official role with McCain because he admires Obama and does not want to run negative ads against him.

"I'm a man of my word," McKinnon said.

Asked whether part of his hesitancy is because Obama could be the nation's first African-American president, McKinnon replied, "I suppose that is in part, but it's more that I just like and admire the guy. I've come to a point in my life where I think character is important. I think he has great character."

Asked about Clinton, on the other hand, McKinnon echoed some of Obama's talking points.

"I think that fundamentally she represents an extension of the Clinton legacy, which this country is just tired of," he said. "They are tired of the Clinton-style politics."

PITTSBURGH -- Senator Bob Casey, a champion of the working-class Catholic voters at the core of Hillary Clinton's Pennsylvania coalition, bypassed Clinton to endorse Barack Obama today, the latest swipe between two warring dynasties whose battles have defined the Democratic party's search for a modern identity.

"This is about all of us, of all ages, across this state and across America," Casey said at a rally at an auditorium here, where he attributed his endorsement to the enthusiasm Obama's candidacy has generated among Casey's four daughters.

Casey's endorsement not only assuaged his children but avenged slights against his father -- a popular two-term governor Pennsylvania -- at the hands of Bill Clinton, with whom he feuded throughout the 1990s as the two emerged as figureheads for competing wings of a party in transition.

The father, also Bob Casey, a pro-life Catholic elected in 1986, rallied the blue-collar white ethnic voters -- socially conservative, New Deal economic liberals -- who became known as "Casey Democrats" to back him when he pursued both new limits on abortion and expanded state health-insurance plans for children.

"It's going to be a little ironic that the people who are going to save Hillary in Pennsylvania are going to be the Casey Democrats and not Bill Clinton’s traditional Democratic base in the large cities and rim counties," said Joe Vignola, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate in 1988.

In 1992, as Clinton was coasting to the party's nomination, Casey encouraged his party to dump the Arkansas governor and use the convention to pick a new nominee, citing "the character issue" around Clinton and his "tiny, fly speck of support." Casey, who had enacted a tough state-level anti-abortion laws then under review by the U.S. Supreme Court, suggested that Clinton could have trouble winning the presidency due to his pro-choice views.

When Pennsylvania held its primary days later, Clinton lost only two counties in the state: Casey's home of Lackawanna and neighboring Luzerne, both carried by former California governor Jerry Brown, who barely campaigned in the state.

Their fight continued through the party's nominating convention that year, when Clinton kept Casey from addressing the party about abortion and banished the governor's contingent to the rafters of Madison Square Garden.

After leaving office in 1995, Casey set out immediately to run in the following year's Democratic primaries as a challenger to Clinton, who Casey wrote in his memoir had failed to "identify with the basic values and economic interests of ordinary Americans." Casey launched an exploratory committee for a campaign designed largely to legitimize a pro-life agenda within the party, but abandoned the challenge after being rediagnosed with a genetic condition that had forced him to earlier undergo a heart-liver transplant.

Yet in his memoir, "Fighting for Life," Casey took credit for pushing Clinton towards a social conservatism that allowed him to win over working-class whites key to his 1996 reelection -- and have become an essential constituency in his wife’s campaign to derail Obama. Hillary Clinton has tried to use her family’s ties to Scranton, the northeastern Pennsylvania coal town home to the Casey political base, to emphasize a personal connection with the state's blue-collar voters.

"The Casey family is very influential in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre," said Mary Isenhour, Clinton’s state director, naming a few weeks ago when Casey was still neutral. "People up there love Bobby Casey, they loved his father."

More than seven months before Election Day, John McCain launched his first TV ad for the general election campaign, a heavily biographical spot that plays up his "American hero" biography.

The ad, which will air in the swing state of New Mexico, opens with McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, giving a campaign speech. "Keep that faith," he says. "Keep your courage. Stick together. Stay strong. Do not yield. Stand up. We're Americans. And we'll never surrender."

Then, the narrator talks about freedom and liberty as approving newspaper headlines scroll across the screen about McCain's tax relief plan, his readiness to be commander in chief, among other things. The announcer intones a series of questions:

"What must a president believe about us? About America? That she is worth protecting? That liberty is priceless? Our people, honorable?Our future, prosperous, remarkable and free? And, what must we believe about that president? What does he think? Where has he been? Has he walked the walk?"

The ad ends with the much-played grainy black-and-white footage of McCain, during his five-and-a-half years in the Hanoi Hilton as a prisoner of war, laying in bed and answering an interrogator's question.

"What is your rank?"

"Lieutenant commander in the Navy," McCain answers.

"And your official number?"

"624787," McCain replies.

"John McCain," the announcer says. "The American president Americans have been waiting for."

UPDATE: Democatic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean issued a statement about the ad: "The American people have been waiting for a president who understands the challenges they face, not another out-of-touch Bush Republican who promises four more years of the same failed leadership. John McCain can try to reintroduce himself to the country, but he can't change the fact that he cast aside his principles to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with President Bush for the last seven years. While we honor McCain's military service, the fact is Americans want a real leader who offers real solutions, not a blatant opportunist who doesn't understand the economy and is promising to keep our troops in Iraq for 100 years."

Senator Barack Obama uses a daytime talk show as his latest forum to address the controversy surrounding his former pastor.

On ABC's "The View" airing later this morning, Obama says that if the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. hadn't recently retired from the pulpit at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago and hadn't acknowledged that some of his remarks were inappropriate, he would not have felt comfortable staying in the church.

Rival Hillary Clinton restoked the controversy earlier this week by saying if her pastor had made the inflammatory remarks about the US government's treatment of African-Americans and culpability for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, she would have left her church.

Obama also said that he didn't vet Wright and described his spiritual adviser as a "brilliant man who was still stuck in a time warp" -- a similar description as in Obama's speech on race relations last week in which he sought to explain the anger of African-Americans of Wright's generation who had been discriminated against and in which he faulted Wright for not recognizing the racial progress the country has made.

The Illinois senator said he has talked to Wright since the controversy started and Wright is saddened by what has happened.

The interview was taped Thursday in New York with Obama seated among the five women who host the show.

PHILADELPHIA -- On the eve of his six-day bus tour of Pennsylvania, Barack Obama is bringing in a new operative to lead his efforts in the state.

Paul Tewes, who directed Obama's impressive win in the Iowa caucuses, will take over the Pennsylvania campaign from Jim DeMay, according to campaign sources. Tewes could not be immediately reached for comment.

Obama's national campaign has come under criticism from supporters that his defensive strategy in Pennsylvania -- designed largely to limit Hillary Clinton's ability to run up her popular-vote total -- was tantamount to conceding the state.

Even before Tewes's appointment was confirmed today, campaign officials had hoped that the extended bus tour -- a commitment Obama's campaign has not made to an individual state since Iowa -- and a sizeable advertising buy over the past week would help to quell internal skeptics.

"My guess is it's a smokescreen, I don't think it changes the strategy at all," said one Obama fundraiser in Pennsylvania. "I think a lot of people were catching wind of the fact that they were writing off Pennsylvania."

By Brian C. Mooney, Globe Staff

Reintroducing himself to voters as the Republicans' presumptive presidential nominee, Senator John McCain will visit several states next week in what his campaign is billing as a "biographical tour."

Each stop will represent a chapter in McCain's life and military career, be used to emphasize a "service to America" theme, and to highlight issues and aspects of his character.

Logistically and thematically, his campaign continues to make the transition from securing the nomination to girding for a general election contest against the Democrats, who have not yet settled on a nominee.

Final details of the trip were still being worked out today, but some tentative stops were already posted on McCain's campaign website and more were expected to be added. The tour will extend over five or possibly six days.

The stops include a Monday morning speech in Meridian, Miss., not far from the naval air station where McCain once served as a naval flight instructor and McCain Field is named for his grandfather, a Navy admiral and native Mississippian.

Two Florida events are scheduled later next week -- in Pensacola, where, as a hard-partying young officer, he underwent flight training at the naval air station, and Jacksonville, where, after his release as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, he became commander of a large air group that trained crews and pilots for aircraft carrier assignments.

At the end of the tour are tentative stops in his home state of Arizona, including Prescott, where in 1964, after winning the Republican nomination, Barry Goldwater launched his general election campaign. McCain succeeded Goldwater, who is credited with starting the conservative ascendancy of the GOP, in the Senate.

Here's the latest indicator of divisions caused by the close, bitter Democratic presidential race.

In a new CNN/Opinion Research poll, voters were asked, on a scale of 1 to 10, how certain they were to vote in November. If Barack Obama were the nominee, 74 percent of Obama backers -- but only 59 percent of Hillary Clinton supporters -- answered 10.

If Clinton won the nomination, 79 percent of her voters, but only 61 percent of Obama supporters, answered 10 -- they would definitely vote, according to the poll.

That gap among Democrats, if it proved real, would make it much more difficult for the eventual Democratic nominee to beat John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee.

Pollsters caution, however, that in the heat of the primary season, especially one as heated as this one, voters often say they will sit out the general election if their favorite doesn't win, but then return to the fold as loyal partisans in the fall.

Another poll released Wednesday found that at least one in five of Clinton and Obama supporters would vote for McCain in November if their preferred candidate wasn't the nominee.

Asked about that today, Clinton urged voters in North Carolina not to bolt the party. "Please think through this decision. It's not a wise decision for yourself or your country," she said.

She said that when a primary is "vigorous," supporters get intense, but the differences between she and Obama "pale in comparison" to those between Democrats and McCain.

"I intend to do everything I can to make sure we have a unified Democratic party," Clinton said. "The most important goal is for us to put a Democrat in the White House next January."

The 20 Hillary Clinton supporters who sent House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a letter telling her to keep hands off the superdelegate fight warned ominously that they had been enthusiastic financial backers of the Democratic Party.

Now a campaign finance watchdog group has tallied up how enthusiastic: the letter-signers, along with their spouses, have contributed $23.6 million to Democrats since 1999, the Center for Responsive Politics said.

That largess includes $554,000 to Clinton's campaigns and political action committee -- 10 times what they gave to Barack Obama -- and nearly $3 million to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, which helps Pelosi and other House members.

That committee played a key role in winning the majority in the House in 2006 that catapulted Pelosi into becoming the first female House speaker.

The letter writers were angered by Pelosi's statements that the superdelegates, the elected officials and party leaders, should not overturn the will of the people -- as measured by the tally of pledged delegates. Obama leads Clinton in that count, but Clinton argues that superdelegates were created to exercise independent judgment of who would be the best nominee.

Even as fresh polls suggest that Barack Obama emerged rather unscathed from the controversy over his former pastor, new potentially troublesome remarks emerged today.

This time it's church newsletters from the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.

NBC News reported today that newsletters at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago while Wright was in charge reprinted writings that could be construed as anti-Israel. Obama had already told the Jerusalem Post that Wright was "outrageously wrong" to reprint a Los Angeles Times column from a Hamas leader, NBC reported.

A Pew Research Center poll out today said that the Wright controversy has attracted the most attention of any event so far in the presidential race, and that 51 percent of voters believed that Obama had done an excellent or good job handling the situation .

Also, an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released Wednesday night found little significant damage to Obama's candidacy after days of coverage of portions of Wright's sermons in which he blasted the US government for its treatment of minorities and suggested that the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks were at least partly the result of US policy in the Middle East.

In the poll, 32 percent said Obama had addressed the Wright issue "sufficiently" with his speech on race relations last week in which he repudiated the comments but not the man, while 26 percent said he needed to do more and while 31 percent either hadn't seen the speech or had no opinion. Among those who saw the speech, 47 percent said Obama had done enough, while 37 percent he had not.

The survey, conducted Monday and Tuesday, also found that Obama's favorable-unfavorable numbers dropped only slightly to 49 percent positive, 32 percent negative.

Hillary Clinton, on the other hand, had her favorable rating drop to 37 percent, the lowest the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll has recorded since March 2001.

Both Democratic presidential contenders are all about the faltering economy today, focusing on the pocketbook issue on which the party's hopes in the fall could rest.

Barack Obama started it off with what his campaign billed as a major speech in New York City in which he called for aiding homeowners caught in the housing crisis, updating financial regulations, and pumping $30 billion more into the economy and help protect families from the economic slowdown..

"Each American does better when all Americans do better," he said, but the country has lost that a sense of share prosperity.

Deregulation pushed by corporations that gave large sums to politicians led to a "winner-take-all, anything goes environment" that has harmed the economy, he said.

"Under Republican and Democratic administrations, we've failed to guard against practices that all too often rewarded financial manipulation instead of productivity and sound business practices," said the Illinois senator, who was introduced by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and spoke to an audience that included former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker. "We let the special interests put their thumbs on the economic scales. The result has been a distorted market that creates bubbles instead of steady, sustainable growth; a market that favors Wall Street over Main Streets, but ends up hurting both."

Obama also criticized both President Bush and John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, saying neither is proposing enough to deal with the housing crisis.

"His main proposal -- extending tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans -- is completely divorced from the reality that people are facing around the country," Obama said of the president. "John McCain recently announced his own plan, and it amounts to little more than watching this crisis happen. While this is consistent with Senator McCain’s determination to run for George Bush’s third term, it won’t help families who are suffering, and it won’t help lift our economy out of recession."

McCain just issued a statement that reiterated his Tuesday speech that he would consider any responsible proposal. "I believe the role of government is to help the truly needy, prevent systemic economic risk, and enact reforms that prevent the kind of crisis we are currently experiencing from ever happening again," he said in the statement. "Those reforms should focus on improving transparency and accountability in our capital markets -- both of which were lacking in the lead-up to the current situation.

"However, what is not necessary is a multi-billion dollar bailout for big banks and speculators, as Senators Clinton and Obama have proposed. There is a tendency for liberals to seek big government programs that sock it to American taxpayers while failing to solve the very real problems we face."

In Raleigh, N.C., Hillary Clinton offered a $12.5 billion, five-year initiative to rebuild the middle class by helping laid-off workers and boosting job training. The program includes about $2 billion a year for worker retraining and $500 million a year in grants for on-the-job training.

"We are competing in a new global economy, but our policies to equip American worker for the twenty-first century are stuck back in the twentieth. When it comes to retraining assistance, our government is more focused on how you lost your job than how you can find a new one," Clinton said in a statement. "And while we have been rightly focused on trying to help people who are out of work, there’s been too little thought and effort to help people gain new skills while they still have their existing jobs – so they can move up or move on to higher-wage positions."

Clinton said the next president needs to aggressively work to boost the economy -- in stark contrast, she said, to President Bush. Clinton also took her shots at McCain.

"It's time for a president who is ready on day one to be the commander-in-chief of our economy. Sometimes the phone rings at 3 a.m. in the White House, and it’s an economic crisis," she said, alluding to her much-played TV ad about an international emergency.

"And we need a president who is ready and willing and able to answer that call. I read the speech that Senator McCain gave the other day which set forth his plan which does virtually nothing to ease the credit crisis or the housing crisis. It seems like if the phone were ringing, he would just let it ring and ring and ring.

"Senator McCain is a friend of mine and I admire his service to our country greatly. But he recently admitted, 'The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should.' And it turns out he’d rather ignore the credit crisis and mortgage crisis -- or blame middle-class families instead of offering solutions on their behalf."

The middle class is being hammered by bad policies and decisions that are causing lost jobs and lower wages. "You pay the price," she said at Wake Technical Community College, where she praised local and state workforce development programs in North Carolina.

Her husband, Bill Clinton, followed the mantra, "It's the economy, stupid," all the way to the White House in 1992.

Mitt Romney is planning to make his first campaign appearances today with John McCain since endorsing the presumptive Republican nominee.

The former Massachusetts governor plans to help McCain raise money at an event in Salt Lake City, then go to another fund-raiser in Denver, the Associated Press is reporting. McCain is on a weeklong swing to replenish his campaign offers, and Romney is popular in Utah and Colorado, states with large numbers of fellow Mormons.

Asked about the possibility, Romney has already said he would be "honored" if McCain picked him as his running mate. But at several points during the Republican primary race, such joint appearances seemed far-fetched.

Before the New Hampshire primary, Romney suggested that McCain was too old and decrepit to change Washington, and McCain compared Romney to a pig wallowing in the campaign muck. Before the Florida primary, Romney accused McCain of lying about his stand on Iraq and of not knowing much about the economy. They had several heated exchanges during a debate before Super Tuesday.

In today's Globe, Brian Mooney points out that the contest for the Democratic nomination, as historic and exciting as it may be, is potentially chipping away at the party's solidarity for the general election.

Mooney notes a recent poll showing sizable minorities of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama supporters say they'll vote for Republican John McCain if their candidate doesn't win the nomination.

"The percentage of Clinton voters who say they would be upset if Obama received the nomination has jumped from 35 percent in January to 51 percent this month, while the percentage of Obama supporters who say they would be upset if Clinton got the nod has risen from 26 percent to 41 percent.

Some Democratic Party leaders, behind the scenes and now more often in public, are pushing for a resolution before the convention."

Jim Smith, Globe politics editor, echoed a similar vein on NECN's "Talk around the Globe" yesterday (click play below).

In an opinion piece, former Globe reporter and editorial page editor Martin F. Nolan reminds readers we saw this dynamic in the 1980 race, when hometown candidate Edward Kennedy fought a losing, bitter battle against Jimmy Carter in a race that ultimately ended with Republican Ronald Reagan in the White House.

What do you think? Is the Democratic race hurting the party's chances?

By Brian C. Mooney, Globe Staff

Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen went on political shows on CNN and MSNBC today to promote his proposal to settle the increasingly nasty Democratic presidential fight: a June gathering of superdelegates, the nearly 800 elected officials and party leaders, to declare their intentions after the last primaries on June 3 and settle the nominee before the party convention in late August.

"Things have gotten very bitter; it's very different than it was 90 days ago when Democrats were saying, 'Isn't it wonderful we have two great candidates,' " Bredesen, a moderate who describes himself as "genuinely uncommitted" in the Obama-Clinton fight, said in an interview with the Boston Globe.

His fear is that if Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama continue to slug it out all the way to the convention floor in Denver, it will leave the party divided and exhausted less than 10 weeks before the Nov. 4 election.

Obama told reporters last night that he was open to Bredesen's plan. "I think giving whoever the nominee is two or three months to pivot into the general election would be extremely helpful," he said.

Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, is cool to the idea of a June summit of superdelegates, but Bredesen said he will continue to try to build support for the proposal, including this weekend at a policy conference that will be attended by about a dozen Democratic governors.

In the interview with the Globe, Bredesen said he remains open to other suggestions, however. "Most of the other suggestions seem to be, 'Let's cross our fingers and hope for the best,' " he said. "Hope is not a strategy."

Clinton's campaign has been under pressure from some Obama partisans, citing his lead in delegates, total votes, and fund-raising, to give up because she has almost no chance of overtaking him in the contest for pledged delegates. With 10 contests remaining until June 3, Clinton trails Obama by 122 delegates, according to the Associated Press tally. Clinton holds an edge among the more than half of all superdelegates who have already declared their allegiance.

The Clinton campaign, however, continues to send strong signals that it won't fold. Clinton said this week that voters don't want to "shut this race down."

Senator Clinton's chief surrogate, former president Bill Clinton, told voters in West Virginia today, "My family's not big on quitting."

He also downplayed concern over the campaign's tone, saying, "Let's just saddle up and have an argument. What's the matter with that?"

A group of Republican Jews called this week on Barack Obama to sack retired General Merrill A. "Tony" McPeak for what it considers anti-Israel views and comments.

The Republican Jewish Coalition cited past interviews in which McPeak blamed lack of progress on a Middle East peace deal on the political influence of US Jews, and pointed to McPeak's past criticism of Israel for not returning to pre-1967 war borders.

"Senator Obama continues to surround himself with advisors holding troubling and disturbing anti-Israel bias. General McPeak's views are alarming," coalition executive director Matt Brooks said in a statement Tuesday. "...Rather than putting the blame where it belongs -- on the Palestinian leadership and their continued reliance on terror, General McPeak finds it more convenient to blame American Jewry and their perceived influence."

Brooks said McPeak's continued presence in Obama's inner circle raises questions about the Illinois senator's judgment on Middle East issues. The group, which is supporting presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, has hosted GOP presidential hopefuls.

Hillary Clinton's campaign on Tuesday also pointed to McPeak's views, sending reporters an article predicting that McPeak would be forced out.

McPeak, a defense policy adviser and national campaign co-chairman for Obama, has vouched for his readiness to be commander-in-chief and has been in the news recently for accusing former president Bill Clinton of McCarthyism for some of his remarks.

Obama's campaign had no immediate comment.

John McCain called today for a more cooperative foreign policy enshrined in a new League of Democracies and for closing the prison camp at Guantanamo Bay for terrorist suspects in a speech also tinged with personal history and a warning about the horrors of war.

"Our great power does not mean we can do whatever we want whenever we want, nor should we assume we have all the wisdom and knowledge necessary to succeed," the presumptive Republican nominee told the Los Angeles World Affairs Council. "We need to listen -- we need to listen -- to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies."

He said in a world "where power of all kinds is more widely and evenly distributed, the United States cannot lead by virtue of its power alone."

"We have to strengthen our global alliances as the core of a new global compact -- a League of Democracies -- that can harness the vast influence of more than one hundred democratic nations around the world to advance our values and defend our shared interests," he declared.

McCain, who sees foreign policy and national security as a strength versus the Democrats, appears to be responding to criticism of President Bush for a go-it-alone approach to the world, culminating in the invasion of Iraq with only the British by America's side. Democrats have criticized McCain, the most notable champion of the so-called surge of troops in Iraq.

He directly addressed the proposals of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to withdraw US troops within 16 months or so of taking office.

"I believe a reckless and premature withdrawal would be a terrible defeat for our security interests and our values," he said. "Iran will also view our premature withdrawal as a victory, and the biggest state supporter of terrorists, a country with nuclear ambitions and a stated desire to destroy the State of Israel, will see its influence in the Middle East grow significantly. These consequences of our defeat would threaten us for years, and those who argue for it, as both Democratic candidates do, are arguing for a course that would eventually draw us into a wider and more difficult war that would entail far greater dangers and sacrifices than we have suffered to date.

"I do not argue against withdrawal, any more than I argued several years ago for the change in tactics and additional forces that are now succeeding in Iraq, because I am somehow indifferent to war and the suffering it inflicts on too many American families," he continued. "I hold my position because I hate war, and I know very well and very personally how grievous its wages are. But I know, too, that we must sometimes pay those wages to avoid paying even higher ones later."

UPDATE: Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton responded: "John McCain is determined to carry out four more years of George Bush's failed policies, including an open-ended war in Iraq that has cost us thousands of lives and billions of dollars while making us less safe. Barack Obama will change our foreign policy and renew America's leadership by responsibly ending the war in Iraq, finishing the fight in Afghanistan, and focusing on the 21st century challenges that conventional Washington has ignored for too long -- al Qaeda's core leadership and nuclear proliferation, poverty and genocide, climate change and disease."

UPDATE: Clinton issued a statement that read: "While there is much to praise in Senator McCain’s speech, he and I continue to have a fundamental disagreement on Iraq. Like President Bush, Senator McCain continues to oppose a swift and responsible withdrawal from Iraq. Like President Bush, Senator McCain discounts the warnings of our senior military leadership of the consequences of the Iraq war on the readiness of our armed forces, and on the need to focus on the forgotten front line in Afghanistan. Like President Bush, Senator McCain wants to keep us tied to another country's civil war."

In the speech, McCain agreed with many Democrats on the need to ban torture and to take action on global warming.

To further the cause of freedom and democracy, McCain said, America must be a "model citizen." "We must fight the terrorists and at the same time defend the rights that are at the foundation of our society. We can’t torture or treat inhumanely suspected terrorists we have captured," he said, drawing applause. "I believe we should close Guantanamo and work with our allies to forge a new international understanding on the disposition of dangerous detainees under our control."

McCain also described himself as a "realistic idealist" about the threats the United States faces in the world.

"We cannot wish the world to be a better place than it is," he said. "We have enemies for whom no attack is too cruel, and no innocent life safe, and who would, if they could, strike us with the world’s most terrible weapons. There are states that support them, and which might help them acquire those weapons because they share with terrorists the same animating hatred for the West, and will not be placated by fresh appeals to the better angels of their nature. This is the central threat of our time, and we must understand the implications of our decisions on all manner of regional and global challenges that could have for our success in defeating it."

But he also said he hates war -- something his family knows all too well.

"When I was five years old, a car pulled up in front of our house in New London, Connecticut, a Navy officer rolled down the window, and shouted at my father, 'The Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor,' " he said. "My father immediately left for the submarine base where he was stationed.... I rarely saw him again for four years. My grandfather, who commanded the fast carrier task force under Admiral Halsey, came home from the war exhausted from the burdens he had borne, and died the next day. In Vietnam, where I formed the closest friendships of my life, some of those friends never came home to the country they loved so well.

"I detest war," continued McCain, a Navy pilot who was shot down during the Vietnam War and was a prisoner-of war. "It might not be the worst thing to befall human beings, but it is wretched beyond all description. When nations seek to resolve their differences by force of arms, a million tragedies ensue. The lives of a nation's finest patriots are sacrificed. Innocent people suffer and die. Commerce is disrupted; economies are damaged; strategic interests shielded by years of patient statecraft are endangered as the exigencies of war and diplomacy conflict. Not the valor with which it is fought, nor the nobility of the cause it serves can glorify war. Whatever gains are secured, it is loss the veteran remembers most keenly. Only a fool or a fraud sentimentalizes the merciless reality of war. However heady the appeal of a call to arms, however just the cause, we should still shed a tear for all that is lost when war claims its wages from us."

The speech came a day after a major economic speech, also in California, in which McCain warned against any rush to government bailouts of banks or homeowners caught in the housing crisis and credit crunch.

UPDATE: The Democratic National Committee said McCain, in what his campaign had billed as a major policy speech, did not offer a way forward in Iraq and just repackaged old boilerplate.

"John McCain's empty rhetoric today can't change the fact that he has steadfastly stood with President Bush from day one and is now talking about keeping our troops in Iraq for 100 years," DNC Chairman Howard Dean said in a statement. "His new appreciation for diplomacy has no credibility after he mimicked President Bush's misleading case for a unilateral war of choice when it mattered most. Why should the American people now trust John McCain to offer anything more than four more years of President Bush's reckless economic policies and failed foreign policy?"

Barack Obama said this afternoon that John McCain proved he doesn't understand economics with what the presumptive Republican nominee's campaign had billed as a major speech Tuesday on the housing crisis.

Obama said despite the growing wave of foreclosures that is putting families out of their homes, depressing house values, and forcing consumers to put off purchases, McCain "offered not one policy, not one idea, not one bit of relief."

McCain focused instead on warning against a leap to government intervention that would reward speculators and the irresponsible and hurt taxpayers in general.

But Obama said action is needed. "Our economy is grinding to a halt," Obama told voters in Greensboro, N.C., returning to the campaign trail after a family holiday in the US Virgin Islands.

The Democratic front-runner said that McCain would be more of the same as President Bush, whose call for an "ownership society" turned into a "you're-on-your own society."

"We can't afford another four years of Bush economics," Obama said.

UPDATE: McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds issued a response.

"Senator Obama’s blatant mischaracterizations aren't the new politics he’s promised America, they're the old attack and smear tactics that Americans are tired of," Bounds said in a statement. "Barack Obama's diagnosis for our housing market is clearly that Barack Obama knows best -- raise taxes on hardworking Americans and give government a prescription to spend."

By Brian C. Mooney, Globe Staff

Despite all the acrimony in the Democratic presidential race, leading fund-raisers for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton plan to join forces for a dinner tonight in Boston to benefit the national party.

Steve Grossman, who is supporting Clinton, and Alan Solomont, who is backing Obama, are to co-host the event KO Prime in Boston. Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean is the scheduled featured guest.

Grossman, a former national party chairman, and Solomont, a former national fund-raising chairman, are close friends but this is not the first time they are on opposing sides in a primary campaign. In 2004, Grossman was national co-chairman of Dean's campaign for president, while Solomont raised millions for Senator John F. Kerry.

At the same time tonight about 10 blocks away at the Westin Copley Place hotel, former president Bill Clinton is to headline a $500-a-person fund-raiser for his wife's campaign.

The most fateful decision that John McCain could face is who to pick as his vice presidential nominee, recent polling suggests.

SurveyUSA polls across the country, conducted March 14-16, say that, depending on the state, between 30 and 40 percent of voters would support McCain depending who his number two is.

And in a recent Gallup poll, 11 percent of Republicans said they would vote for the Democratic nominee or a third-party candidate if McCain does not choose a vice president considerably more conservative than he is.

While McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee, has just started the vetting process, quite a few names have been bandied about. Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, threw his own name into the pot recently, saying it would be an honor.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are now officially the only active Democratic presidential hopefuls.

Mike Gravel, the former Alaska senator, told supporters today that he plans to join the Libertarian Party "because the Democratic Party no longer represents my vision for our great country."

He had long been an afterthought in the race, and had not won enough votes to get included in debates, but had still been an official candidate. Gravel's main cause is to take power away from Washington and give lawmaking power to local voters. He was also a vocal opponent of the Iraq war.

As the Democratic steel-cage death match shows no signs of ending soon, here's the latest sign that the bitter fight is hurting Democratic chances of capturing the White House in the fall.

A new Gallup poll says that 28 percent of Hillary Clinton supporters would vote for Republican John McCain over Democrat Barack Obama, while 59 percent would definitely vote for Obama.

Among Obama backers, 19 percent would vote for McCain over Clinton, while 72 percent would support for Clinton.

The results, from daily tracking polls conducted March 7-22, suggest that supporters of Clinton, who trails in the delegate and popular vote counts, are more upset with the nomination race than Obama's backers.

With several polls showing McCain now leading either Democrat in a hypothetical race, the new findings are already being promoted by McCain's campaign and the Republican National Committee. They both sent out the results, with this quotation from the pollsters:

“The data suggest that the continuing and sometimes fractious Democratic nomination fight could have a negative impact for the Democratic Party in next November's election. A not insignificant percentage of both Obama and Clinton supporters currently say they would vote for McCain if he ends up running against the candidate they do not support.”

Meanwhile, both Clinton's and Obama's schedules suggest that they believe she has a solid lead in Pennsylvania, where the next Democratic showdown comes April 22, while North Carolina, which votes on May 6 along with Indiana, could be in play. Neither is in the Keystone State today, while Obama holds a town hall meeting in Greensboro, N.C., and Clinton plans three events in the Tar Heel state on Thursday.

Hillary Clinton has largely stayed out of the fray over the inflammatory remarks made by Barack Obama's longtime pastor.

But in an interview today with reporters and editors at the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Clinton weighed in, telling them she would have left her church if her pastor had said the kinds of things about the US government and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright did.

"He would not have been my pastor," Clinton said. "You don't choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend."

UPDATE: The Obama campaign just responded to Clinton's comments.

"After originally refusing to play politics with this issue, it's disappointing to see Hillary Clinton’s campaign sink to this low in a transparent effort to distract attention away from the story she made up about dodging sniper fire in Bosnia. The truth is, Barack Obama has already spoken out against his pastor’s offensive comments and addressed the issue of race in America with a deeply personal and uncommonly honest speech. The American people deserve better than tired political games that do nothing to solve the larger challenges facing this country," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement.

In his speech on race relations last week, Obama said while he was in the pews at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago for some controversial statements by Wright over two decades, he wasn't in attendance for the specific comments that caused the uproar. Obama also declared that while he rejected those remarks, he could no more disown Wright than he could the black community or his white grandmother and sought to explain the life history behind Wright's anger at the government.

In the interview today, Clinton compared Wright's remarks to those of talk show host Don Imus, who was fired last year for racially insensitive comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team.

"You know, I spoke out against Don Imus, saying that hate speech was unacceptable in any setting, and I believe that," she told the Pittsburgh newspaper. "I just think you have to speak out against that. You certainly have to do that, if not explicitly, then implicitly by getting up and moving."

Hillary Clinton sought this afternoon to downplay embellishing her description of a visit to war-torn Bosnia, telling reporters in Pennsylvania:
"I made a mistake. That proves I'm human, which for some people is a revelation."

Clinton said she was told before the 1996 visit that Tuzla was a war zone and she and that her entourage did take precautions, but her memory of sniper fire and running across the tarmac was faulty. "I made a mistake in describing it," she said after a campaign appearance in Greensburg, Pa.

The broader point, she said, is that she would be happy to put up her national security credentials and experience to that of rival Barack Obama "any day."

She also repeated what she told a Pittsburgh newspaper editorial board earlier today -- that she would have left the church if her pastor had said the kinds of things from the pulpit that Obama's long-time pastor did.

"We don't have a choice when it comes to our relatives," Clinton said. "We have a choice when it comes to our pastors."

Clinton declined to say whether the Wright issue should be considered by superdelegates, the elected officials and party leaders who will likely decide the Democratic nominee. And she deflected questions about whether she was attacking Obama, asserting that answered a direct question with a direct answer about her personal choice.

"I don't think that's negative," she said.

Hillary Clinton's concession that she "misspoke" when she gave a vivid description of landing under sniper fire in Bosnia is prompting another round of recriminations with Barack Obama's campaign, with both camps today accusing the other candidate of misrepresenting their biographies.

Obama's campaign characterized her exaggeration of the 1996 landing in Tuzla as part of a pattern of deception. Now, it just sent reporters an item, posted on the ABC News political blog, casting doubt on an anecdote that Clinton told a group building a memorial to women in the military that she went to a Marine recruiting office in 1975, just after the Vietnam War ended.

"You're too old. You can't see. And you're a woman," the recruiter told her, according to Clinton's account to Women in Military Service in 1994. The ABC item says that rejection seems odd because pregnant Marines were allowed to serve and says the timing seems strange because Clinton was about to get married.

Clinton's camp just fired back with an entire memo of what it describes as Obama's embellishments of his resume, including claiming to be a full law professor and having to clarify that when he said his parents fell in love during the tumult of Selma, he meant the civil rights movement as a whole.

"They are personally attacking Hillary even though Sen. Obama has been found mispeaking and embellishing facts about himself more than ten times in recent months," the Clinton memo says. "Senator Obama’s campaign is based on words –not a record of deeds – and if those words aren’t backed up by facts, there’s not much else left."

While Hillary Clinton and others are offering government help for homeowners facing foreclosure, John McCain is more about tough love.

The presumptive Republican nominee, in a speech today in Santa Ana, Calif., blames the housing and credit crisis on a "bubble" created by lenders who lowered their standards, Americans who bought homes they couldn't afford, and financial players who invested in complex securities that were not transparent.

Saying he's offering more trademark "straight talk," McCain said he "will not play election year politics." Nor will he support any help to speculators or to people who got in over their head by buying second homes.

"I have always been committed to the principle that it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers," he said. "Government assistance to the banking system should be based on solely preventing systemic risk that would endanger the entire financial system and the economy.

"In our effort to help deserving homeowners, no assistance should be given to speculators," McCain continued. "Any assistance for borrowers should be focused solely on homeowners, not people who bought houses for speculative purposes, to rent or as second homes. Any assistance must be temporary and must not reward people who were irresponsible at the expense of those who weren’t."

He then called for homeowners to be required to put down payments on homes, for lenders to raise standards, and for all those involved to move to more transparency. The nation's top accounting professionals should offer new rules, and the nation's top mortgage lenders should convene to figure out how to help credit-worthy customers, he says.

McCain's approach is far more limited than those of Democrats such as Clinton, who on Monday proposed a $30 billion fund to help states and local governments stem foreclosures and their fallout on neighborhoods. The Democratic National Committee is already faulting McCain, saying he isn't offering any new proposals "to deal with the millions of struggling homeowners who played by the rules or the larger issues that local communities are facing in light of the crisis."

"Instead of offering a concrete plan to address the crisis at all levels, McCain promised to take the same hands off approach that President Bush used to lead us into this crisis," DNC chairman Howard Dean said in a statement.

Barack Obama likes to joke that he and Vice President Dick Cheney are distant cousins.

Now, it turns out that he and the other major presidential contenders share lineage with several other famous historical figures and current celebrities, according to the New England Historic Genealogical Society.

To wit, Obama, whose mother was born in Kansas, has at least six presidents, hailing from both parties, as distant cousins, including President Bush and his father, Gerald Ford, Lyndon Johnson, Harry Truman, and James Madison. Other cousins include Winston Churchill, Confederate General Robert E. Lee, and actor Brad Pitt.

The genealogical society, tracing the family trees of the presidential candidates, said today it also found that HiIlary Clinton has common ancestors with actress Angelina Jolie and Camilla Parker-Bowles, mistress and now wife of Prince Charles. Because Clinton's family has French-Canadian heritage, she is also distantly related to author Jack Kerouac and singers Madonna, Celine Dion, and Alanis Morissette.

On the Republican side, John McCain is a sixth cousin of First Lady Laura Bush, the genealogical society said. Because most of his ancestry is Southern makes "notable connections somewhat harder to trace because of challenges to genealogists in that region," genealogist Christopher Child said in a statement.

Child, while noting that famous cousins are interesting, said "it should not influence voters."

Barack Obama just posted six years of income tax returns on his website -- his latest maneuver to pressure Hillary Clinton to release hers and hit his Democratic rival on the issue of transparency.

The most recent return, for 2006, shows that Obama and his wife Michelle reported wages of about $430,000, plus another $507,000 in business income, mostly from book sales. Their tax bill topped $277,000, and they received a refund of nearly $41,000. They also gave more than $60,000 to charity.

So far, Clinton has pledged to disclose hers at least three days before the Pennsylvania primary on April 22.

Obama's campaign said today that Clinton should release her full returns because she loaned her campaign $5 million in January and because of reports that former president Bill Clinton is about to pick up a $20 million payout from a holding company.

“Senator Clinton recently claimed that she’s ‘the most transparent figure in public life,’ yet she’s dragging her feet in releasing something as basic as her annual tax returns,” Obama communications director Robert Gibbs said in a statement. “Senator Clinton can’t claim to be vetted until she allows the public the opportunity to see her finances—particularly with respect to any investment in tax shelters.”

The Clinton campaign immediately responded with a memo arguing that Obama has not been forthcoming about his record in the Illinois state senate.

Hillary Clinton launched her first TV ad today in her must-win state of Pennsylvania, focusing her pitch to the working-class voters who form the base of her support.

The 30-second spot is filled with footage of Clinton talking with, listening to, and hugging workers. "It's time to level the playing field against the special interests," she says.

The announcer then outlines her plan to take $55 billion in tax breaks to corporate special interests and redirect the money to tax cuts for the middle class and to programs to create new jobs. The narrator also says, "She’ll get tough on unfair trade deals and end tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas."

"Standing up for people who weren't getting a fair shake, that's been the purpose of my life," Clinton concludes. "And it will be the purpose of my presidency."

Barack Obama started his TV ads last week, leading up to the April 22 primary. His three spots are more biographical, reminding voters of his life history and highlighting his efforts to unite people.

Hello, Montana and South Dakota.

If the Democratic nomination fight goes to the bitter end, those two western states will hold the last contests -- on June 3. That's barring any do-overs in Florida or Michigan, of course.

The national party today approved Puerto Rico's request to move its contest from June 7 to June 1 and to change it from a caucus to a primary. Democratic leaders in the US territory say more voters will be able to take part in a primary.

Of the 10 contests remaining, Puerto Rico's 55 delegates at stake is the fourth most, behind only Pennsylvania on April 22 and Indiana and North Carolina on May 6.

According to the latest Associated Press tally, Obama leads with 1,620 delegates, including declared superdelegates, the elected and party leaders who automatically attend the convention. Clinton has 1,499 delegates.

After a brief respite in the Virgin Islands, a rally in North Carolina, and a little fund-raising in New York, Barack Obama returns to Pennsylvania Friday for a six-day bus tour, his campaign announced today.

Despite Pennsylvania's high-stakes primary on April 22, Obama has not campaigned aggressively in the Keystone State in the two weeks since the March 11 contest in Mississippi. His most visible appearance so far was his big speech in Philadelphia last week on race.

The bus tour kicks off in Western Pennsylvania, home to Pittsburgh, and concludes in the southeast part of the state, where Philadelphia is located. Obama's campaign says he will "continue his dialogue with voters about the need to change Washington in order to tackle challenges like creating jobs, improving our schools and making health care available to every American."

That suggests Obama, as he tries to close Hillary Clinton's wide lead in polls, will continue holding more intimate policy-oriented events with voters, which have increasingly become part of a campaign calendar once dominated by big, boisterous rallies.

As is becoming par for the course this campaign, Hillary Clinton is quickly turning around the latest controversy into a fund-raising appeal.

Over the weekend, retired Air Force General Merrill A. McPeak, an adviser to rival Barack Obama, compared former president Bill Clinton to Joe McCarthy for, in McPeak's view, questioning Obama's patriotism. Clinton's campaign said her husband's remarks to veterans in North Carolina on Friday had been misconstrued.

And this afternoon, Clinton campaign manager Terry McAuliffe sent a pitch to potential donors that begins: "Dear Friend, Do you think Bill Clinton is like Joe McCarthy?

"Of course you don't. Neither do I. But Barack Obama must because this past weekend, his campaign compared President Clinton to Joe McCarthy. Joe McCarthy!" the fund-raising appeal continues. "Ever since we won in Ohio and Texas we have been seeing these kinds of personal attacks from the Obama campaign....Well I'm not going to stand for it, and neither should you. There's no better way to fight back than to show your support for our campaign in the face of these attacks."

James Carville, a Hillary Clinton partisan, today did not back away at all from comparing New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson to Judas.

Carville had said Richardson had betrayed the Clintons -- much as Judas betrayed Jesus -- by endorsing Barack Obama on Friday despite working in former president Bill Clinton's administration. Richardson should have stayed neutral in the Democratic primary fight, Carville said today on CNN.

Carville said he wanted to show his strong displeasure and used a "seasonal metaphor."

"I'm not going to get in the gutter with him," Richardson responded on MSNBC this afternoon, saying that some Clinton supporters seem to believe she is entitled to the presidency.

"This litmus test of loyalty is unfortunate," he said.

Richardson called on both campaigns to stop the personal attacks, saying that the "bloodletting" was hurting both. "We're tearing each other apart," he said.

Now that a video has surfaced and after questions were raised about her account, Hillary Clinton's campaign acknowledged today that she may have misspoken when she described a harrowing visit to Bosnia while first lady.

"I remember landing under sniper fire," she said last week as she sought to burnish her commander-in-chief credentials. "There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base."

But a CBS report on the 1996 visit -- distributed by Barack Obama's campaign -- shows Clinton greeting soldiers at the base near Tuzla without even wearing a helmet and with daughter Chelsea in tow, almost sans helmet. The CBS correspondent, however, says it is one of the more dangerous places in Bosnia -- too hazardous for the president to tour.

The Clinton camp emphasized that latter point, while conceding she might have embellished the details.

The war of words between surrogates for the Democratic presidential hopefuls descends further into the muck.

The campaigns sniped at each other over the weekend after retired Air Force General Merrill A. McPeak, an adviser to Barack Obama, accused former President Bill Clinton of McCarthyism for, in McPeak's view, questioning Obama's patriotism. Hillary Clinton's campaign said her husband's remarks to veterans in North Carolina had been misconstrued.

Today, another Obama supporter, former Iowa Democratic Party chairman Gordon Fischer, complained that Bill Clinton was hurting the Democratic Party and leaving "a stain on his legacy much worse, much deeper, than the one on Monica's blue dress." That, of course, is a blunt reference to the former president's affair with intern Monica Lewinsky that led to impeachment hearings.

Fischer has already apologized for that comment, which he posted on his own blog, Iowa True Blue. Calling it "stupid" and "tasteless and gratuitous," Fischer said, "It was unnecessary and wrong."

But the Clinton camp is not letting bygones be bygones, calling it the most personal attack yet in the increasingly bitter nomination fight.

Within a couple of minutes, both Democratic presidential hopefuls issued statements today marking the 4,000th US death in Iraq by vowing to honor the sacrifice by bringing the troops home.

"Each death is a tragedy, and we honor every fallen American and send our thoughts and prayers to their families. It is past time to end this war that should never have been waged by bringing our troops home, and finally pushing Iraq's leaders to take responsibility for their future. As we do, we must serve the memory of all who have died as well as they served our country, by providing support for their families, caring for our troops and veterans, and upholding the American values which our fallen heroes exemplified through their service," said the statement from Barack Obama.

Hillary Clinton also promised to bring "a responsible end to this war." "In the last five years, our soldiers have done everything we asked of them and more. They were asked to remove Saddam Hussein from power and bring him to justice and they did. They were asked to give the Iraqi people the opportunity for free and fair elections and they did. They were asked to give the Iraqi government the space and time for political reconciliation, and they did," Clinton's statement says.

If you can't wait for the fall presidential debates, the Democratic National Committee is offering its own take -- a cartoonish face-off between John McCain the senator and John McCain the presidential candidate.

The DNC launched a McCain vs. McCain debate website today, starting with a series of apparently contradictory statements on the Iraq war. After each of four examples, an image of President Bush appears in the middle of the two McCains, giving a thumbs up.

"No matter which McCain you listen to, he only offers a third Bush term on Iraq," the video concludes.

Hillary Clinton called this morning for emergency, far-reaching steps to stem home foreclosures, saying the crisis is weakening the entire economy.

In what her campaign billed as a major policy speech, she outlined a four-point plan that includes giving more aid so homeowners in danger of losing their houses can restructure their mortgages, launching a high-powered working group that would report back in three weeks on ways to broadly restructure at-risk mortgages, easing legal liability for mortgage servicers to help unfreeze the mortgage market, and giving states and cities an additional $30 billion to fight foreclosures..

"We are experiencing a crisis of confidence in our country," she told supporters in Philadelphia, the largest city in Pennsylvania, which holds the next Democratic nomination showdown on April 22. "....Our economy is in serious trouble."

The subprime loan problem has widened into national mortgage crisis, she said. The question now, she said, is how to keep the credit crisis from spiraling into a long, painful recession.

The Federal Reserve has taken steps, unprecedented since the Great Depression, to shore up Wall Street, Clinton said. Now it's time for equally aggressive action to help Main Street and communities across the country, she said. And the country needs someone in the White House who anticipates problems and does not wait for them to worsen, Clinton said.

"We need a president ready on day one to be commander-in-chief of the economy," she said.

But even before her speech, Barack Obama's campaign held a conference call with reporters knocking the plan, and the Republican National Committee sent a compendium of critics saying her plan could worsen the problem.

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said the Illinois senator had proposed a similar summit as Clinton a year ago.

"One key difference, however, is the diversity and representation that Obama called for – not just some of the same people who helped to create these problems or have a direct financial industry stake in the outcome," Burton said in a statement.

Obama does not have any public campaign events scheduled until Wednesday in North Carolina.

PHILADELPHIA -- Most people have been naturally referring to mortgage-relief legislation proposed by Senator Chris Dodd and Representative Barney Frank -- and embraced by both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama -- as "Dodd-Frank," putting the senator's name first.

But in her speech here this morning in which she trumpeted the legislation, Clinton called it "Frank-Dodd," offering primacy to the congressman who endorsed her over the senator and former rival who is now backing Obama.

PHILADELPHIA -- Hillary Clinton will turn her attention to housing issues in a speech billed as a "major policy address" that she will give Monday morning at the University of Pennsylvania, according to a campaign source.

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

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.

Bill Richardson, who once hoped to be the nation's first minority president himself, endorsed Barack Obama this afternoon for the Democratic nomination, citing Obama's widely praised speech this week on race relations.

"Earlier this week an extraordinary American gave a historic speech," the New Mexico governor said at a campaign event in Portland, Ore . He "didn't evade the tough issues," rather "he inspired us" and started a long overdue conversation on race, Richardson said.

"As an Hispanic-American, I was particularly touched by his words," said Richardson, who took the stage with Obama to thunderous applause.

Richardson, the nation's lone Latino governor, held several posts in the administration of former President Bill Clinton and is a long-time friend of Hillary Clinton, but found more affinity with Obama, who is seeking to become the first black president. Richardson has been wooed by both campaigns, both as a superdelegate and for his particular influence among Hispanic voters -- a constituency Obama has struggled to secure.

"You are a once-in-a-lifetime leader," Richardson said. "You will make every American proud to be an American."

He also praised Clinton, saying his admiration for her and former President Bill Clinton will never waver. But, Richardson added, "It is time for a new generation of American leadership to lead the country forward....It is time for Democrats to stop fighting amongst ourselves and prepare for the tough fight we will have with John McCain in the fall."

Richardson said during the campaign, he learned of Obama's "steadfast patriotism and remarkable talents" and discovered that he's "a really good guy."

During one debate, Richardson said, he wasn't paying enough attention and didn't know what the question was about. Obama, standing next to him, whispered, "Katrina, Katrina."

"He could have thrown me under the bus, but he stood behind me," Richardson said.

Mark Penn, Clinton's chief strategist, downplayed the endorsement. "Perhaps the time when he could have been most effective has long since past. Long since past," Penn told reporters in a conference call this morning.

"So it's not significant?" he was asked. Replied Penn: "I don't think that it is a significant endorsement in this environment."

UPDATE: Penn was apparently referring to the fact that the endorsement might have made more difference in primary ballots in states with heavy Hispanic populations -- Texas, Arizona, New Mexico -- that have already voted and that Clinton won. The remaining contests, except for Puerto Rico, are in states with smaller numbers of Latino voters.

Richardson said he resented that argument. "That's typical of some of her advisers who turn me off," he told CNN.

He said that in deciding his endorsement, he felt compelled to go beyond personal loyalties to what he believed was good for the country.

Asked whether he would be interested in being vice president, he flashed his trademark humor, replying, "I love being governor of New Mexico and growing my beard."

Richardson often played peacemaker during debates when the barbs became heated. He often highlighted his experience, arguing that he was the only one who had been a chief executive. And he raised nearly $24 million during the campaign. But he failed to catch fire among Democratic voters before dropping out in January.

He follows Senator Chris Dodd of Connecticut among former Democratic presidential rivals publicly supporting Obama. The strongest competitor to Clinton and Obama, former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina, has yet to give his endorsement.

Asked on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" Thursday night about a possible endorsement, Edwards said he feels torn between the two candidates.

"I think they both bring great strengths, but I think the strengths are different," Edwards said, calling Obama "inspirational" and praising his ability to bring new people into politics, and ascribing to Clinton "a toughness and a tenacity and experience that has value."

"So I think both -- either of them I think will be a great candidate and I think either one will be a great president," said Edwards, who added he is surprised the nomination fight is still raging.

John McCain's campaign manager just issued a memo laying out his strategy as he transitions from winning the Republican nomination to preparing for the general election campaign.

McCain, who has been trying to burnish his foreign policy credentials on an extended trip this week to the Middle East and Europe, will return to the US focused on reintroducing himself to the broader electorate, campaign manager Rick Davis says.

"This re-introduction is important strategically. The transition to a general election campaign means two things: our geographic targets have greatly expanded beyond key primary states like Iowa, New Hampshire, Michigan, South Carolina and Florida AND we have expanded our target audience beyond our base coalition of Republican primary voters," the memo says.

McCain will discuss how his life experiences, including the Naval Academy and the Vietnam War, has 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 Democrats, 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. He is, in short, an ideological match with America," 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.

The State Department just acknowledged that presidential contenders Hillary Clinton and John McCain -- as well Barack Obama -- had their personal passport files peeked at without permission.

Spokesman Sean McCormack said that last summer, a trainee in the passport office looked at Clinton's records. Trainees are instructed to look up a family member, but chose Clinton instead, he said.

McCain's file was breached earlier this year by one of the same contract workers who looked at Obama's file, McCormack said. That worker was disciplined and no longer has access to passport records, but "we are reviewing our options" for further action, McCormack said.

The department dismissed two other contract employees for snooping into Obama's files. The unauthorized peeks happened at three different locations on Jan. 9, Feb. 21, and March 14, the department says.

"We're sorry that this happened and we take it very seriously," McCormack said.

Earlier today Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said she personally apologized to Obama, whose campaign Thursday night declared, “This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an Administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years."

"I told him that I was sorry," Rice told reporters, adding that she would be troubled if her files had been breached in the same way. She pledged to comply with Obama's demand for a full investigation. "I will stay on top of it," she said.

Rice also apologized to Clinton and will soon be doing so to McCain, who is traveling in Europe, McCormack said. State Department officials are briefing the staffs of all three senators, he said.

McCain issued a statement, saying: "The U.S. government has a responsibility to respect the privacy of all Americans. It appears that privacy was breached and I expect a thorough review and a change in procedures as necessary to ensure the privacy of all passport files."

Clinton has not commented yet.

McCormack told reporters that what is in a person's passport file depends on the individual. He said he did not know what is in the candidates' records and wouldn't say if he did without their permission.

At minimum, the file would include the passport application, which seeks biographical data, emergency contacts, travel plans, and other information.

This could ruffle some diplomatic feathers. The Toronto Star reports:

The Supreme Court of Canada has agreed to hear arguments about the legality of the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo, where Canadian Omar Khadr is being held.

The high court ruled yesterday that it could consider submissions on whether Guantanamo violates international law, dismissing the federal government's objections that the Canadian courts were not the place to examine the actions of the United States.

Barack Obama's campaign, after a week of largely playing defense over his spiritual mentor's sermons, is going on the offense with a vengeance this morning with a memo accusing Hillary Clinton of "a history of misleading voters."

The memo cites a new Gallup poll in which 53 percent of Americans say Clinton is not trustworthy -- 63 percent for Obama and 67 percent for presumptive Republican nominee John McCain -- and argues that such a low honesty score makes Clinton unelectable in the fall.

"After eight years of an untrustworthy President, can we really expect that a candidate who is viewed as so much more dishonest than McCain will somehow be able to beat him?" the memo asks.

Then, the memo goes on to cite Clinton's newly released schedules as first lady to assert that they cast grave doubt on her claims of experience and accomplishment on family leave, foreign policy, and other issues. The memo also accuses Clinton of dishonesty on the North American Free Trade Agreement, of disingenuousness on the disputed Florida and Michigan primaries, and of abetting a false rumor that Obama is Muslim during a recent "60 Minutes" interview.

And after Clinton long chiding the press for treating her more aggressively than Obama, his campaign is seeking to turn the tables.

"It's time for Hillary Clinton to explain these inconsistencies -- and to put an end to the dishonesty," the memo says. "As she campaigns in working-class areas of Pennsylvania, will she finally admit to workers that she was one of the chief proponents of NAFTA? Will she admit to even a basic understanding of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq Resolution of 2002? Will she drop FMLA from her list of accomplishments? And if she won’t, will the press call her on it?"

UPDATE: The Clinton campaign just responded with a memo of its own, saying that Obama is "desperate to change the subject" and is resorting to negative politics.

The memo says Obama, by not agreeing to re-votes in Florida and Michigan, is disenfranchises millions of voters. It says by giving the New York Times a photo of his controversial former pastor -- the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. -- with former President Bill Clinton at a White House event with dozens of pastors, Obama is retreating from his Tuesday speech "calling for a high-minded conversation on race."

The memo also accuses some Obama partisans of trying to link the Clinton campaign to the breach of his personal passport records.

"So it’s not a pretty sight – it’s all part of a pattern of just words," the Clinton memo says. "Senator Obama talks about voter participation while actively disenfranchising millions. He calls for high minded debates while practicing lowdown politics. He promises a different kind of campaign while attacking Hillary’s character. He promises transparency while hiding basic info and stonewalling the press. It’s no wonder that Americans are coming to see that for all of his lofty rhetoric, Senator Obama’s candidacy is really just words."

While it was already clear that Barack Obama was winning the fund-raising war with Hillary Clinton, their campaign finance reports for February show the breadth and depth of that edge.

Obama raised a record $55 million last month, allowing him to outspend Clinton by 50 percent (an average of $1.5 million a day to $1 million) and still end up the month with more campaign cash in the bank, nearly $39 million, including $32 million he could use for the primaries.

Clinton brought in nearly $35 million during February, but had less than $12 million in the bank to spend on the primaries. Her campaign also had debt of nearly $9 million, including $5 million she loaned herself.

For the entire campaign, the figures are staggering -- Obama has raised nearly $193 million, while Clinton has reaped nearly $153 million. Presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, by contrast, has raised about $60 million.

The two Democrats combined spent more just during February than McCain has for his entire campaign.

Barack Obama's campaign tonight is demanding a full investigation of reports that his passport files at the State Department were viewed without authorization.

“This is an outrageous breach of security and privacy, even from an Administration that has shown little regard for either over the last eight years. Our government’s duty is to protect the private information of the American people, not use it for political purposes. This is a serious matter that merits a complete investigation, and we demand to know who looked at Senator Obama’s passport file, for what purpose, and why it took so long for them to reveal this security breach,” Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement.

The Associated Press is reporting that two contract employees for the State Department have been fired and a third disciplined for inappropriately looking at the passport file. Spokesman Sean McCormack said the department itself detected the instances of "imprudent curiosity," which occurred separately on Jan. 9, Feb. 21, and March 14. He would not release the names of those who were fired and disciplined.

John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee, reported this evening that he raised nearly $11.6 million last month and had $8 million in cash at month's end.

McCain, who numerically clinched the nomination after the March 4 primaries, still owed more than $4 million in loans, according to his campaign's report to the Federal Election Commission.

For the entire campaign, the Arizona senator reported bringing in nearly $60 million and spending about $48 million.

Those figures are far less than both Democratic contenders -- a gap that has been fueling a feud with Barack Obama over possible public financing for the general election.

Politico is reporting that McCain took a step towards public financing by filing paperwork with the FEC earlier this month, though his campaign stressed today that he hasn't decided whether to accept public money.

Candidates who do so get $84 million for the general election campaign, but agree not to raise private money. Obama had earlier pledged to accept public financing, but has backed away since setting records for online fund-raising.

The first major national poll on the issue since Barack Obama's speech on race says that while most Americans don't believe that he shares the controversial views of his spiritual mentor, more than one-third say the controversy has raised doubts about Obama.

The Fox News poll, posted on the network's website this afternoon, found that one in four of those surveyed believes that Obama does share the views of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., the recently retired pastor at the Chicago church which Obama has attended for two decades.

The poll said that 35 percent of voters, including 26 percent of Democrats surveyed, said Obama's relationship with Wright raises doubts about Obama. Forty percent of white voters, but only 2 percent of black ones said they believe that, according to the poll, which was conducted after Obama's address Tuesday morning.

The poll does not make clear how much damage is being done to Obama. Among Democrats, 40 percent said they want Hillary Clinton as the party's nominee, compared to 38 percent for Obama. In the same poll last month, the two were tied at 44 percent.

The poll, done Tuesday and Wednesday nights, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points, Fox News said.

Geraldine Ferraro is none too pleased with Barack Obama again.

The 1984 vice presidential nominee believed Obama's campaign unfairly stoked the controversy -- and all but accused her of racism -- over her remarks earlier this month about Obama being "lucky" to be black because it helped push him to the front of the Democratic presidential race.

Now, she has told the same local newspaper in California where that interview was published that she objects to the comparison Obama drew in his much-discussed speech on race between her and his former pastor, whose sermons caused an uproar.

In his Tuesday address, Obama said: "We can dismiss Reverend Wright as a crank or a demagogue, just as some have dismissed Geraldine Ferraro, in the aftermath of her recent statements, as harboring some deep-seated bias."

In a story published today, Ferraro told the Daily Breeze of Torrance, Calif.: "To equate what I said with what this racist bigot has said from the pulpit is unbelievable. He gave a very good speech on race relations, but he did not address the fact that this man is up there spewing hatred." She also said that Obama's 20-year association with Wright raises questions about his judgment.

Ferraro, a strong champion for Hillary Clinton, told the newspaper that she had "no clue" why Obama mentioned her. She also said she didn't understand why Obama also linked his white grandmother with Wright when he said: "I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother -- a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed her by on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."

Retorted Ferraro: "I could not believe that. That's my mother's generation."

UPDATE: Obama said in an interview today with Philadelphia sports radio station WIP 610 that the point he was making about his grandmother is not that she holds racial animosity, but "she is a typical white person," the Associated Press reported.

"If she sees somebody on the street that she doesn't know, there's a reaction in her that doesn't go away and it comes out in the wrong way," he said.

Barack Obama's campaign is trying to capitalize on the release of Hillary Clinton's first lady schedules by jumping on her early support for the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Particularly before her big win in anti-NAFTA Ohio earlier this month, Clinton harshly criticized the deal and said, if elected president, she would seek to renegotiate it in ways to help American workers.

But the 11,000-plus pages of White House schedules, released Wednesday, show her holding at least five meetings in 1993 aimed at helping win congressional approval of the deal. The papers, however, don't show what was discussed and what Clinton said in those meetings.

The Obama camp issued a strongly worded memo that all but accuses her of lying to voters in Ohio and elsewhere.

"It’s about trust," the memo says.

"Working Americans are looking for a President who will be consistent in standing up for American workers -- and have the integrity to be consistent in his or her views," the memo continues. "Senator Clinton has failed that test: though she now rails against NAFTA on the campaign trail, her records as first lady show that she actively lobbied for NAFTA’s passage....American workers are already facing the uncertainly of a changing economy. The last thing they need is another President who changes views when there’s an election coming up."

Responding to the criticism, Clinton's campaign issued a talking points memo to supporters that asserts: "It is no secret that passing NAFTA was a priority of the Clinton Administration, but numerous contemporary accounts make clear that Hillary Clinton was personally opposed to NAFTA, and her position on NAFTA was and remains consistent."

UPDATE: Clinton spokesman Phil Singer sent out a more direct response: "Once again the Obama campaign is demonstrating that Senator Obama's words can't be trusted. Last year, Senator Obama said that he would not engage in personal attacks. Now, after losses in Ohio and Texas, the Obama campaign is explicitly attacking Senator Clinton's character. Instead of attacking Senator Clinton, Senator Obama should explain to the American people why his top economic policy advisor was telling the Canadians that his promise to fix NAFTA shouldn’t be taken seriously. The fact is that independent accounts make clear that Senator Clinton did not support NAFTA and that she is the candidate Americans can trust to fix it."

The talking points memo, labeled "myths and facts" about the schedules, also argues that the Clintons were not responsible for delays in their release or for the portions that are blacked out. The memo also asserts that the schedules do not undercut her claims of valuable White House experience or show that her policy role diminished after Congress scuttled healthcare reform in 1993.

"The schedules cannot and do not speak to the substance of her meetings with staff, advisers, administration officials, citizens, activists, foreign leaders, and others with whom she worked on policy issues," the memo asserts. "That should be no surprise -- it's not what they were created to do. What the schedules do show is an incredibly active and involved First Lady, and add detail to the already voluminous public record about her work."

With March Madness about to officially kick off with the first full day of NCAA tourney games today, Barack Obama found a way to combine his love of basketball with his desire to be president.

Obama, who superstitiously takes to the court on the morning of primaries, has filled out his bracket and announced his Final Four picks: North Carolina, Pittsburgh, UCLA, and Kansas. His national champion: North Carolina over UCLA.

Those predictions could come from many prognosticators, but not-so coincidentally, the schools are from key states in the presidential race.

North Carolina is ranked number one and has the likely player of the year in Tyler Hansbrough, but it's also the flagship school in a state whose primary on May 6 could be key in the Democratic nomination fight. Obama announced his picks Wednesday while flying to Charlotte, where the Tar Heels hope to win the regional, after earlier shooting some hoops with soldiers at Fort Bragg.

Pittsburgh, a sleeper pick for some bracketologists, is, of course, in Pennsylvania, site of the next big showdown on April 22.

UCLA, a traditional power, is a high-profile school in California, a must-win state for a Democratic candidate in November.

And Kansas, also a top regional seed, is the home state of his mother, whose death from cancer Obama often weaves into his healthcare pitch.

President Bush sought to link success in the five-year-old war in Iraq to economic issues, warning of dire consequences if the US withdraws too soon and al Qaeda wrests control of Iraq's oil fields.

Today, Barack Obama made a similar connection -- but to make a different point. The war he wants to end has already taken a toll on the US economy and burdened working families.

"At a time when we're on the brink of recession -- when neighborhoods have 'For Sale' signs outside every home, and working families are struggling to keep up with rising costs -- ordinary Americans are paying a price for this war," he told a crowd in Charleston, West Va.

The Democratic senator from Illinois also argued that the $10 billion a month being spent on the war could have been invested for better purposes.

"Instead of fighting this war, we could be fighting for the people of West Virginia," he said, according to prepared remarks provided by his campaign. "For what folks in this state have been spending on the Iraq war, we could be giving health care to nearly 450,000 of your neighbors, hiring nearly 30,000 new elementary school teachers, and making college more affordable for over 300,000 students."

Today's speech followed up on one Wednesday in North Carolina in which Obama argued the strategic costs of the Iraq war, saying it had diverted attention and resources from Afghanistan, nuclear proliferation, and other security challenges.

While not specifically mentioning the contretemps involving Barack Obama's former pastor, Hillary Clinton's campaign is already pressing the case that the polls are showing its impact -- and raising questions about what that will do to Obama's electability in November.

Mark Penn, Clinton's chief strategist, issued a memo this morning that argues that polls are starting to show a shift her way.

"The more that the voters learn about Barack Obama, the more his ability to beat John McCain is declining compared to Hillary," Penn posits in the memo. "For a long time we have explained that poll numbers for a candidate who has not yet been vetted or tested are not firm numbers, and we are beginning to see that clearly."

The memo cites several polls -- nationwide and in key upcoming states -- that show Clinton leading Obama and Clinton faring better against presumptive Republican nominee John McCain.

"Ultimately, this Democratic nominating process is meant to select the candidate who will: a) be the best president – the best commander-in-chief, steward of the economy, and exercise leadership; b) defeat John McCain; and c) promote and defend core Democratic principles such as universal health care. On all three fronts, Hillary is the best choice for the Democratic Party," Penn writes.

But no polls have come out yet measuring the impact of Obama's much-praised speech on race Tuesday in which he condemned the inflammatory remarks of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., but sought to place them in a larger context of America's racial history and challenges.

The April 22 primary in Pennsylvania, the state with the most delegates up for grabs left, looms as the next big Democratic showdown.

But neither Hillary Clinton nor Barack Obama will be there today. Instead, they are already looking ahead to the next contests in May.

Clinton plans three stops today in Indiana, which votes May 6 with 72 delegates at stake. Her schedule then calls for her to take a three-day weekend off the campaign trail, while her surrogate-in-chief, former President Bill Clinton, stumps in North Carolina, which also votes May 6 with 115 delegates.

Obama, who was in the Tar Heel state on Wednesday, plans two events today in West Virginia, which votes May 13 with 28 delegates. Friday, he plans three stops in Oregon, whose primary for 52 delegates isn't until May 20.

Part of the geographic strategy might be that Clinton, who is counting on a big win in Pennsylvania to snag most of the 158 delegates, appears to be extending her lead. A Franklin & Marshall University poll released today shows her with a 51 percent to 35 percent edge over Obama, up from a 44 percent to 32 percent lead last month.

The poll, conducted for several Pittsburgh media organizations, also gives the latest indication that the controversy over inflammatory remarks made by his former pastor might be hurting Obama. The survey, which was done March 11-16 while the firestorm was well underway, showed that the percentage of Democratic voters who view Obama favorably dropped by 10 percentage points from last month to 47 percent and his unfavorable number jumped by 16 percentage points to 25 percent.

Meanwhile, the Associated Press is reporting that Democratic voter registration in Pennsylvania has swelled by more than 111,000 -- about 3 percent -- since last fall's election. Both campaigns are urging new voters, Republicans, and independents to register as Democrats, since only registered Democrats can vote in the primary. With the registration deadline coming up on Monday, Democratic registration is barely 5,000 votes shy of a record 4 million, the state elections commissioner told the AP.

CHICAGO -- Boldness has long defined Trinity United Church of Christ, the spiritual home of Barack Obama that is suddenly dominating headlines because of its former pastor's controversial rhetoric.

Trinity's size -- 8,000 members -- is bold. Its rollicking services, with hundreds of gospel singers and a heavily amped band, are bold. And, as much of the country now knows, the sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., are nothing if not bold.

So it's fitting that the church and its members, feeling unfairly targeted in recent days, are showing a defiant boldness in response. "This is an attack on the legacy of the African-American Church, which led and continues to lead the fight for human rights in America and around the world," the church said in statement issued on Sunday.

At a small prayer service this morning, worshippers expressed anger and frustration at how their congregation and Wright have been portrayed. "Every time you turn on the TV or the radio our church and our pastor are under attack," said the Rev. Barbara A. Heard, an associate pastor, as the faithful offered their assent. Of Wright, who retired last month, she said: "We don't want him to go out like this."

Heard asked the group to add a prayer for the congregation, and she urged them to stay focused on God. "It is easy to say you have faith when everything is going right ... or the church is not going through what it's going through today," she said. "Prayer is our key, right now."

She then led the worshippers through a devotion that recounted the many things Wright had done in the church and in the community over the past 36 years. They repeated together in refrain, "Thank you, Pastor Wright." Heard also sought to remind them of God's power. "When you walk through fire, you will not be burned," she said. "We are standing on a solid rock, Jesus the Christ."

They ended the service by singing the gospel hymn "Victory Is Mine."

By Brian C. Mooney, Globe Staff

Unless Florida and Michigan Democrats devise workable plans to redo their outlaw primaries, there is no chance the national party will cave in to pressure and approve their delegates if it could tip the outcome of the Democratic presidential race, a potential key arbiter of the dispute said today.

James Roosevelt Jr. of Massachusetts, co-chairman of the national party's rules and bylaws committee, said in an interview with the Boston Globe that he doubts there will be a resolution of the standoff without the states devising do-over contests to be held before June 10.

Florida's Democratic Party this week abandoned a proposal to hold a mail-in primary and there were signs today that the Michigan legislature's plan for a June 3 primary was falling apart after legal questions were raised by the campaign of Barack Obama. At a hastily arranged campaign stop in Detroit, rival Hillary Clinton challenged Obama to support new contests in Michigan and Florida, saying it would be "wrong and frankly un-American" to disenfranchise nearly 2.5 million voters.

Her campaign accused Obama of blocking a re-vote, citing a memo issued earlier yesterday by Roosevelt and his rules committee co-chairperson, Alexis Herman, saying they believed the Michigan plan could pass muster with the party.

Obama accused Clinton of being "completely disingenuous" on Florida and Michigan, telling CNN that she didn't show concern for the voters in the two states until "it looked like she would have no prospects of winning the nomination without having them count."

Roosevelt, asked if the party might yield to a compromise to seat the Florida and Michigan delegations that did not include another contest approved by the Democratic National Committee, said: "As long as it could affect the outcome, [there's] no chance of that."

At stake are 128 pledged delegates in Michigan and 185 in Florida, which were voided by the DNC because their two states flouted party rules and moved up their primaries to January. Another 28 superdelegates -- elected officials and party leaders -- in Michigan and 25 in Florida are also in limbo.

Clinton, who trails Obama by 118 delegates in the latest Associated Press tally, beat Obama handily in Florida and "uncommitted" by a wide margin in Michigan, where Obama's name did not appear on the ballot. Both candidates kept a pledge not to campaign in either state. Had the January results counted, Clinton would have picked up a net gain of 38 delegates in Florida and at least 18 in Michigan.

In the interview, Roosevelt also said national party officials are resolved to maintain an orderly nominating process. That could be jeopardized if the party backs down against the two scofflaw states.

"If there is simply a caving on this, we'll end up with primaries on Halloween and so that does at least counter some of the purely political campaign influences here," said Roosevelt, who is also CEO of the Tufts Health Plan of Massachusetts.

The only matters now officially before the rules committee are two challenges by a Florida DNC member. One seeks instatement of the state's 25 superdelegates who were excluded from the convention as part of the DNC decision to punish Florida. The other seeks to restore half of the pledged delegates. The penalty called for stripping the state of at least half its delegates, but the party decided to exclude 100 percent. The committee is expected to take up the matter next month.

Every aspect of the process now will be viewed through the prism of the politics of this historic and divisive campaign for the party's nomination. Several members of the rules committee have contributed to either Clinton or Obama and member Harold Ickes is a high-profile adviser to the Clinton campaign.

But Roosevelt said he and 29 other members of the rules and bylaws committee, despite relationships and loyalties based on years in party politics, take very seriously the role of impartial referee. The members, he said, "tend to be, first of all, committed to the institution of the Democratic Party and secondly, they also tend to be rules geeks."

He cited Ickes, a friend, as a good example, voting as a committee member to penalize the two states but, as a Clinton partisan, advocating that the delegations be seated. "Harold's been pretty straightforward about that," Roosevelt said. "He'll say, 'I'm talking with a different hat on now.' "

Roosevelt, who has earned a reputation for probity during several decades as a party activist, has never endorsed a candidate in a contested Democratic primary. He has been a member of the rules and bylaws committee for more than 20 years and a co-chairman since 1995. Roosevelt and Herman, both of whom held posts in the administration of Bill Clinton, have stayed neutral in the Clinton-Obama contest.

Roosevelt said he has "good feelings" for both Senator Clinton, a friend for 20 years, and for Senator Obama, whom he introduced at his first speech at the National Press Club on the subject of Social Security, a key piece of the New Deal legacy of his grandfather, Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Roosevelt, who is a superdelegate, said he will ultimately vote for a candidate at the convention but has given no hint whom he favors. Until then, he said, "I am neutral in my heart because I am committed to the fairness of the process."

Barack Obama, in the wake of his much-discussed treatise on race, said today that the controversy over his former pastor that led to the speech has reminded him of the audacity of his White House bid.

"In some ways, this controversy has actually shaken me up a little bit and gotten me back into remembering that the odds of me being elected have always been lower than some of the other conventional candidates," he says in an interview to air tonight on CNN.

He declined to speculate whether the hullabaloo will hurt him.

But most of the early reviews have been glowing for Tuesday's lengthy speech on America's racial history and challenges. Newspaper editorial boards across the country and many commentators effusively praised the speech, saying that Obama had tackled the thorny issue of race with an honesty and complexity rare for a politician.

Another measure of the speech's impact: It has been viewed on YouTube more than 1.6 million times and counting -- far more than the snippets of Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.'s sermons on Sept. 11, Hillary Clinton, and other topics that stoked the controversy.

But other pundits said Obama's speech still had not completely resolved his relationship with Wright and predicted the issue could still hurt Obama, especially among white working-class voters.

And a new national poll out tonight hints that the Wright issue might have hurt Obama.

Clinton led Obama 49 percent to 42 percent among Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters in Gallup's daily tracking polling conducted this Sunday to Tuesday -- while the controversy was in full bloom. It was her first lead in six weeks, following her strong showing on Super Tuesday.

As Hillary Clinton holds a rally in Michigan this morning to press for a do-over nomination contest, the Democratic National Committee's rules committee has issued an opinion that the working plan could pass muster.

"Our review of this legislation indicates that it would, in fact, fit within the framework of the Rules if, it were, passed by the state legislature and used by the Michigan State Democratic Party as the basis of drafting a formal Delegate Selection Plan," the memo says.

But Barack Obama's campaign issued a memo of its own this morning that lays out all the problems with a re-vote.

The proposal in play for a June 3 primary would unconstitutionally disqualify voters who cast ballots in the Republican primary in January, which unlike the Democratic primary, officially counted.

The plan would never win approval in time from the Justice Department under the Voting Rights Act, the memo says. There's no way an election can be fairly and adequately prepared in time.

And the idea that private donors, or the campaigns themselves, would pay for the primary could be legally problematic. "It is therefore well within the realm of possibility that such a case will be made, subjecting the party and its candidates to potential liability," the memo says.

The Clinton campaign is accusing Obama of being the lone roadblock to a re-vote. "On February 8, 2008, Barack Obama stood in the aisle of his airplane and told reporters that he would be 'fine' with a new primary in Michigan if it could be done in a way that gave him and Senator Clinton time to make their respective cases and the DNC signed off. Since then, such a plan has garnered broad support from top Michigan lawmakers and the DNC has given its blessing," the Clinton camp said in a memo. "So Barack Obama is on board, right? Guess again. It turns out that his comments about being fine with a re-vote if the above conditions were met were just words."

UPDATE: Obama accused Clinton of being "completely disingenuous" on Florida and Michigan, telling CNN that she didn't show concern for the voters in the two states until "it looked like she would have no prospects of winning the nomination without having them count."

"I understand the politics of it, but let's be clear that it's politics," he said in the CNN interview scheduled to air tonight.

Clinton won the Michigan primary, but Obama's name wasn't on the ballot because Democrats had agreed not to campaign in the state after the DNC penalized the state party for holding the primary earlier than allowed. The DNC also punished Florida, which Clinton also won, for the same reason.

Clinton badly needs the delegates from Florida and Michigan to have any hope of catching Obama in the delegate count.

UPDATE: At the Detroit rally, Clinton said millions of Democrats would be disenfranchised if the two states' delegates aren't seated.

"I think that's wrong and frankly un-American," she said. "We can't let that continue. Every voice should have the chance to be heard, and every vote counted."

Clinton sought to compare the dispute to the fight for voting rights during the 1960s. She said one reason that Democrats will have a historic nominee -- either the first woman or the first African-American -- is because that struggle was successful.

Immediately after President Bush marked the fifth anniversary of the Iraq war with a speech this morning defending its conduct and consequences, the Democrats who want to replace him in the White House tussled over who is best to change course.

Barack Obama indirectly and directly assailed Hillary Clinton.

The indirect: Obama said that the war began because too many politicians in Washington spent too little time reading intelligence reports and too much time reading political polls -- a slap at Clinton, who has acknowledged not digesting reports on Iraq's weapons programs before her 2002 vote authorizing the conflict.

The direct: Obama said that by claiming that her experience makes her more qualified than him to be commander-in-chief, she is playing right into the hands of Republican John McCain, who has more years in Washington and more national security credentials. And if McCain wins in November, the Iraq war will continue and "we all lose," Obama said.

"The way to win that debate and to keep America safe is to offer a clear contrast, and that’s what I will do when I am the nominee of the Democratic Party – because since before this war in Iraq began, I have made different judgments, I have a different vision, and I will offer a clean break from the failed policies and politics of the past," Obama said in a speech in Fayetteville, N.C., near Fort Bragg, one of the nation's largest military bases.

In the speech, Obama said without ending the war in Iraq, the US can't address its national security and foreign policy needs.

He called for a renewed focus on Afghanistan to finish the fight against the Taliban and root out al Qaeda, including $1 billion more a year in non-military assistance to help the Afghan people. Obama also proposed a comprehensive anti-terrorism strategy. He also called for enhanced efforts to stop nuclear proliferation, to cut global poverty in half, and to reduce global warming.

"I have no illusions that any of this will be easy," he said. "But I do know that we can only begin to make these changes when we end the mindset that focuses on Iraq and ignores the rest of the world."

For her part, Clinton, who gave her Iraq speech earlier in the week, released a video featuring testimonials from some of the 34 retired generals and admirals supporting her.

“We face growing threats around the globe. Sen. Clinton is the candidate that we believe is the strongest, most experienced leader,” Rear Admiral David Stone says in the video.

UPDATE: The Clinton campaign also released a web video questioning Obama's commitment to withdraw troops, splicing together clips of him making the pledge and of former adviser Samantha Power calling his 16-month plan a "best-case scenario."

UPDATE: McCain issued a statement today that warned of dire consequences if the US withdraws from Iraq too soon. Clinton and Obama both propose a phased withdrawal of combat troops that would likely take a year or more after they take office.

"America and our allies stand on the precipice of winning a major victory against radical Islamic extremism," McCain's statement said. "The security gains over the past year have been dramatic and undeniable."

"Americans should be proud that they led the way in removing a vicious, predatory dictator and opening the possibility of a free and stable Iraq," the statement continues. "Americans should be proud that once we implemented the surge and new counterinsurgency strategy, a dire situation has been dramatically improved. And, Americans know that the consequences of failure would leave our nation less secure for generations to come."

UPDATE: McCain's campaign followed up with a critique of what it called Obama's "fantasy plan for making us safer."

"Senator Obama says that ending the war will not be easy, that 'there will be dangers involved,' " senior adviser Mark Salter said in a statement. "Yet, in that patented way of his, he declines to name those dangers. Let me enumerate a few: al Qaeda, which is now on the run, will survive, claim victory, and continue to provoke sectarian tensions that, while they have been subdued by the 'tactics' of the surge, still exist and are ripe for provocation by al Qaeda, which would almost certainly ignite again civil war in Iraq, a civil war that could easily descend into genocide. To say that invading Iraq was used as a recruiting tool for al Qaeda is one thing. To pretend that our defeat there won't provide an even bigger one is foolish supposition."

Trying to frame the discussion over the release this morning of more than 11,000 pages of her schedules as first lady, Hillary Clinton said that they prove the value of her White House experience.

"These documents are outlines of the First Lady's activities and illustrate the array of substantive issues she worked on -- including healthcare, child care, adoption, education, veterans, microenterprise and international development, women's rights, and democracy," the Clinton campaign said in a statement. "Her daily schedules also list some of the meetings and travel she conducted to more than 80 countries in pursuit of the administration's domestic and foreign policy goals. They are a guide, and of course cannot reflect all of Senator Clinton's activities as First Lady.

"The schedules do help illustrate Hillary Clinton's extensive and exhaustive work as a public servant and her role as an influential advocate at home and around the world on behalf of our country," the statement continued. "As such, they are a valuable addition to the substantive and vast public record already made available by President Clinton."

While Judicial Watch, a conservative watchdog group, sued to speed the release of the records, the Clinton campaign said that the documents showed former President Clinton's commitment to public access.

Her campaign also issued a challenge to Democratic presidential rival Barack Obama to release similar records from his years as a state senator in Illinois.

Hillary Clinton really wants delegates from Michigan to count in the Democratic race.

How much? She's taking a valuable day on the campaign trail to go to Michigan on Wednesday for a Detroit event to press for a revote.

Her campaign tonight announced the stop as a do-over on June 3 is looking less likely. Michigan legislators are debating the issue, but agreement does not appear close.

Clinton needs the delegates from Michigan and Florida, whose primaries she won in January, to have any hope of getting close to Barack Obama in the pledged delegate count.

The Democratic National Committee barred the two states' delegates because their primaries were held earlier than party rules allowed.

US Representative John Murtha of Pennsylvania announced his support today for Hillary Clinton -- and endorsement that is noteworthy on a couple of levels.

Murtha, a veteran congressman, is one of only two superdelegates to come out for Clinton since she saved her bid with victories in Ohio and Texas earlier this month. And the former Marine is a vocal opponent of the Iraq war who can help protect her on a key flank -- her 2002 vote to authorize the war that rival Barack Obama continually criticizes.

In a statement announcing his endorsement, Murtha said he believes Clinton can forge a consensus on healthcare, education, and the economy, as well as Iraq. Murtha's support will also boost her for the April 22 primary.

CHICAGO -- Zariff, who mans the scissors at the Hyde Park Hair Salon on Chicago's South Side, cut Barack Obama's hair when Obama was a state senator, a failed Congressional candidate, and a US senator.

Now that Obama is making a run at the White House, things are different, and yet they're not. Obama was in Zariff's chair on Sunday, getting his latest trim, like always. "We gotta keep him looking good," said Zariff, who goes by one name.

What is new is the wall-to-wall coverage of Obama beaming down from the barber shop's TV sets. That was especially true today given Obama's big speech on race. Not surprisingly, Obama's barber gave him high marks.

"He said what needed to be said," Zariff said. "He took what a lot of us feel and expressed it nationally."

He added, "It touched a lot of people. It was beyond the normal political jargon -- it was personal."

Boston Globe politics editor Jim Smith offered some analysis on Barack Obama's speech on race in the United States.

What did you think of Obama's speech?

Even as Barack Obama preached racial unity today in a much-discussed speech that sought to put controversial comments by his former pastor in a broader context, a little-noticed poll shows racial divisions in how the remarks were perceived and might affect Obama's campaign.

While 77 percent of white voters surveyed by Rasmussen Reports said the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright's remarks were racially divisive, only 58 percent of African-American voters said so.

While 56 percent of all voters and 44 percent of Democrats said that Wright's comments made them less likely to support Obama, 29 percent of African Americans said the remarks made them more likely to vote for Obama and half of black voters said they had no impact.

And while voters overall were evenly divided over whether Obama should leave his Chicago church, 68 percent of African Americans said he should not.

The survey, released Monday, was conducted Friday through Sunday among 1,200 likely voters across the country and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

UPDATE: A CBS News poll released this afternoon found that one-third of voters who had heard at least something about Wright's remarks said their views of Obama had become more negative. Republicans and independents were more apt to say the remarks gave them a less favorable view of Obama.

Hillary Clinton's schedules as first lady -- more than 11,000 pages of them -- will be released Wednesday, the National Archives announced today.

The papers include schedules for 2,888 days, but not the 19 in January 2003 before Bill Clinton's inauguration. Of the 11,046 pages being released, more than 4,700 have parts blacked out for privacy reasons, the archives said.

A conservative watchdog group has sued over the documents. Democratic rival Barack Obama's campaign has also pressed for the release, arguing that if Clinton wants to cite her White House experience, voters deserve to know what exactly she did and whom she met.

UPDATE: "It is about time. We're pleased, thanks to Judicial Watch's lawsuit, that the American people will be able to review Hillary’s daily schedule records. The Clintons slow-pedaled this process but were unsuccessful in delaying the document release any further," Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement.

"However, this does not put an end to Judicial Watch’s pursuit of Hillary’s White House records, including her telephone logs. It would be an injustice to force the American people to wait ‘one to two years’ for the telephone logs of a candidate for the presidency. We are asking the court to force the National Archives to comply with the law and release these records as soon as possible."

The Democratic National Committee unveiled a new Internet ad today that says that John McCain and President Bush have been in "lockstep" on the Iraq war since "day one."

Trying to tie the Republican nominee in waiting to the president's unpopular policy, the ad shows McCain making similar statements to former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and Bush, over the sound of soldiers marching.

"After Five Years, We Don't Need a Third Bush Term," it says on the screen at the close. "Bush & McCain: Wrong Then, Wrong Now."

The ad, however, does not mention that McCain broke with the Bush administration and was highly critical of Rumsfeld for not deploying enough troops after Saddam Hussein's fall and for not following a counterinsurgency strategy. He pushed the president for the so-called surge, which McCain and others say has quelled violence in Iraq.

UPDATE: The DNC is also trying to make hay out of McCain misspeaking by confusing Shiites and Sunnis in Iraq. At one point, according to news accounts, he said that Iran was supplying weapons to al Qaeda, a Sunni group, as opposed to Shiite extremists.

"Just one day after meeting with senior Iraqi and military leaders, John McCain got the basic facts about the violence in Iraq wrong today," the DNC said.

By Peter S. Canellos, Globe Staff

PHILADELPHIA -- After a year of speaking of racial reconciliation in mostly hopeful, uplifting terms, Barack Obama today offered a fuller, deeper, and more personal testament to the nation's tormented racial history and how to begin to overcome it.

The speech had greater weight and specificity than his usual stump speech, and made fewer promises as it wrestled with the legacy of his former pastor and his inflammatory rhetoric. It suggested that an Obama administration would be a time of grappling with difficult and sometimes unpleasant issues rather than conjuring great visions.

For some voters, the speech might serve to remove the glow of optimism surrounding Obama's candidacy; but for many others, it could make him a more realistic president.

Like Mitt Romney's address on his Mormon faith last year, Obama's speech was delivered in a presidential setting -- in the very shadow of Independence Hall -- and invoked common values and historic truths; it showcased Obama more as a national teacher, a role that particularly flatters him, rather than simply an eloquent speaker.

As such, it added gravitas to a candidacy that some have found superficial; and it also served to quell the controversy-of-the-moment over Obama's long association with Rev. Jeremiah Wright, the pastor whose statements Obama condemned in no uncertain terms while offering a reasonable explanation for why he's sticking by his church and its former minister.

"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community," said Obama. "I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother."

Starting with a reference to slavery as the country's original sin, Obama aimed for a Lincolnesque tone. Lincoln is frequently cited as a model of presidential leadership and invoked as a figure of reconciliation. But few have tried to capture Lincoln's almost mournful tone of parsing painful issues, piece by piece, in reference to timeless principles -- speeches that were meant to be printed and passed around rather than delivered on the stump and posted on YouTube.

"For the African-American community, that path [to a more perfect union] means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past," Obama said. "It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances – for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans. . .

``In the white community, the path to a more perfect union means acknowledging that what ails the African-American community does not just exist in the minds of black people; that the legacy of discrimination - and current incidents of discrimination, while less overt than in the past - are real and must be addressed.''

Obama provided a coda that tied this ongoing struggle to his politics of hope -- suggesting that the benefit of all this hard work will take the form of unified action on priorities such as health care and housing that challenge all Americans.

But this speech will be remembered as the moment that Obama got a little more down and dirty, and grounded his candidacy in serious mechanics of governance. He tried to take apart the engine and get some grease on his hands rather than just pat the hood.

This wasn't the gauzy vision of diversity draped in tapestry metaphors and colored in rainbow hues: It was a nation confronting its sins and overcoming its deeply held fears and prejudices.

"We have a choice in this country . . .," Obama said. "We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy . . . We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card . . .Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time."

For perhaps the first time in the 2008 campaign, Obama presented a big problem as something to be confronted by average people -- the aggrieved white worker, the black person fuming about injustice -- who are part of his own political constituency. There was no corporation or lobbyist or rival politician in the picture.

The question -- for Obama, as well as his legions of hopeful supporters -- is whether those average Americans will give him the answer he wants.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton both say that while they oppose the Iraq war, they promise to offer returning veterans all the help they need.

The Democratic presidential candidates will get a chance to hear directly from eight young veterans, including one from Massachusetts, this week on the fifth anniversary of the beginning of the war, MTV and the Associated Press announced today.

The separate segments with Obama and Clinton are to be taped in Pennsylvania and air for the first time at 6 p.m. Thursday on MTV as part of its "Choose or Lose" effort to mobilize more than 20 million 18-30 year-olds to vote. The eight vets include Max Nitze of Cambridge.

Also, Obama's campaign announced this afternoon that he will make two "major" speeches on Iraq -- one on Wednesday about the war and national security near Fort Bragg in North Carolina, which holds its primary on May 6, and another Thursday about the war and the economy in Charleston, West Va., a state which votes May 13.

Hillary Clinton said this afternoon that while she hasn't seen or read Barack Obama's sweeping speech on race in America, "I'm very glad that he gave it. It's an important topic."

Issues of race and gender have been complicated, both in the Democratic campaign and in the nation's history, she said at a news conference in Philadelphia.

"This is a historic moment for the Democratic Party and for our country," Clinton said, adding that all Americans should celebrate that the Democratic nominee will either be the first woman or first African-American.

Voters, she said, should pick the candidate who can best solve a growing list of worsening problems. "It will take a president ready on day one," she said.

Barack Obama, whose presidential campaign has tried to transcend race, is taking on the issue head-on this morning, trying to quell a controversy over sermons by his former pastor.

In a closely-scrutinized speech in Philadelphia -- the biggest city in the next Democratic nomination battleground and a cradle of American democracy -- Obama started his address by quoting the Constitution: "We the people, in order to form a more perfect union.”

"I chose to run for president at this moment in history because I believe deeply that we cannot solve the challenges of our time unless we solve them together -- unless we perfect our union by understanding that we may have different stories, but we hold common hopes; that we may not look the same and may not have come from the same place, but we all want to move in the same direction -- towards a better future for our children and our grandchildren," Obama, framed by American flags, said on a stage at the National Constitution Center.

"This belief comes from my unyielding faith in the decency and generosity of the American people. But it also comes from my own story," he continued, citing his own life history, born of a white mother from Kansas and a black father from Kenya.

Obama said while he has brought together a multiracial coalition, race has been an issue in the campaign. "At various stages in the campaign, some commentators have deemed me either 'too black' or 'not black enough.' We saw racial tensions bubble to the surface during the week before the South Carolina primary. The press has scoured every single exit poll for the latest evidence of racial polarization, not just in terms of white and black, but black and brown as well," he said. "And yet, it has only been in the last couple of weeks that the discussion of race in this campaign has taken a particularly divisive turn."

Then discussing at length the remarks by the Reverend Jeremiah A. Wright, Obama acknowledges that he was in the pews at Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago to hear some controversial statements -- an admission that seems at odds with previous blanket denials.

"For some, nagging questions remain," Obama conceded. "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 the 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."

Obama then offered his most strongly worded condemnation of Wright's comments. "The remarks that have caused this recent firestorm weren’t simply controversial. They weren’t simply a religious leader’s efforts to speak out against perceived injustice. Instead, they expressed a profoundly distorted view of this country -- a view that sees white racism as endemic, and that elevates what is wrong with America above all that we know is right with America; a view that sees the conflicts in the Middle East as rooted primarily in the actions of stalwart allies like Israel, instead of emanating from the perverse and hateful ideologies of radical Islam.

"As such, Reverend Wright’s comments were not only wrong but divisive, divisive at a time when we need unity; racially charged at a time when we need to come together to solve a set of monumental problems -- two wars, a terrorist threat, a falling economy, a chronic health care crisis and potentially devastating climate change; problems that are neither black or white or Latino or Asian, but rather problems that confront us all."

But Obama also explains why he remained a member of Wright's church, and says that Wright is far more than the remarks that have caused such a firestorm in the past week.

"As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me," Obama said. "....I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can disown my white grandmother -- a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe. These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love."

Obama then goes on to explain anger in the black community, economic and social disparities, resentment among whites, the different views of race relations -- and the choice the country faces.

"This is where we are right now," he said. "It’s a racial stalemate we’ve been stuck in for years. Contrary to the claims of some of my critics, black and white, I have never been so naïve as to believe that we can get beyond our racial divisions in a single election cycle, or with a single candidate -- particularly a candidacy as imperfect as my own. But I have asserted a firm conviction -- a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people -- that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice -- we have no choice -- if we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union."

Obama then calls for racial unity to tackle the economic, education, healthcare and other problems facing the country.

"We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism," he continued. "We can tackle race only as spectacle -- as we did in the OJ trial -- or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina -- or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

"We can do that. But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change."

Instead, he said, Americans can say, "Not this time," and move forward together to address shared needs.

"I would not be running for president if I didn’t believe with all my heart that this is what the vast majority of Americans want for this country," he said. "This union may never be perfect, but generation after generation has shown that it can always be perfected. And today, whenever I find myself feeling doubtful or cynical about this possibility, what gives me the most hope is the next generation -- the young people whose attitudes and beliefs and openness to change have already made history in this election."

Hillary Clinton has shored up her lead in Pennsylvania, the next battleground for the Democratic nomination, according to a new poll.

The Quinnipiac University survey released this morning gives Clinton a 53 percent to 41 percent lead over Barack Obama about five weeks before the April 22 primary. A Quinnipiac poll in late February said Clinton's lead had shrunk to 49 percent to 43 percent.

As in other states, Clinton leads among women, white voters, and older voters, while Obama has an edge among African-American and younger voters and those with college degrees. Pennsylvania, with 158 delegates at stake, is a near must-win for Clinton.

The telephone survey of 1,304 likely Democratic voters was conducted March 10-16 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points.

The latest national poll offers some more good news for presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain and more worrisome numbers for Democrats.

McCain is in a statistical tie with both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, according to the CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released this morning. In hypothetical November match-ups, Obama draws 47 percent to McCain's 46 percent, while Clinton gets 49 percent to McCain's 47 percent. Both those edges are well within the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

The more intriguing finding is that while voters give McCain a sizable edge over both Democrats in how they believe he would handle terrorism and the war in Iraq, they don't give a similar edge to Clinton and Obama over McCain on dealing with the economy.

On terrorism, 75 percent of respondents said McCain would do a good job, compared to 58 percent who said that of Obama and 57 percent for Clinton.

On the economy, which Democrats see as their strong suit, 69 percent of voters said Clinton would do a good job, while 67 percent said that of Obama. But 65 percent said so of McCain, though he has acknowledged he is far better schooled in matters of national security than the US economy.

The poll, conducted March 14-16, did find that voters gave the Democrats an advantage in dealing with healthcare.

SCRANTON, Pa. -- It is hard to imagine a less friendly room than the one Barack Obama entered here Monday night: a tribal gathering of Irish-Catholic women with a dais full of Hillary Clinton supporters in a a place she claims as a hometown.

"He’s going to go right into the heart of Hillary country and the core of her demographic," Lackawanna County Commissioner Corey O'Brien, an Obama supporter, said hours before the bagpipers arrived at the Society of Irish Women’s St. Patrick's Day banquet.

O'Brien's description was based on exit polls and confirmed by the meager, isolated applause that welcomed Obama into the room. But in the august tradition of ethnic dinners, Obama didn’t make the demographic come to him as much as go to the demographic.

"My family story is familiar to Irish-Americans: a distant homeland, a journey across an ocean in search of opportunity, determination to grab hold of hope and the American dream," the half-Kenyan/half-Kansan man wearing the green tie said before reminding his crowd that St. Patrick was a former slave.

"Another reason why the story might be familiar is it turns out I have Irish heritage," Obama went on.

"Of course!" a woman blurted out.

"One of my earliest American ancestors came here from a tiny village in Ireland," Obama said. "It never hurts to be a little Irish when you’re running for the presidency."

He didn’t seem ready to stop at "a little Irish," pointing out that his campaign had produced green signs and lapel stickers that render his last name as "O'Bama." "I also want you to know Bah-RAACCHH is an old Celtic name," he continued. "I hopefully can earn the honor of the apostrophe in 'O'Bama.'"

The Florida Democratic Party said this afternoon it won't pursue a do-over of its contested primary, putting the dispute squarely in the lap of the Democratic National Committee's rules committee next month.

Florida officials had floated the idea last week of a mail-in vote, but questions quickly arose about its logistics and fairness. The consensus from thousands of Democrats is against a revote, Representative Karen L. Thurman, the state party's chairwoman, says in a letter to Democrats.

"A party-run primary or caucus has been ruled out, and it's simply not possible for the state to hold another election, even if the Party were to pay for it," Thurman writes.

Florida, along with Michigan, was penalized by the DNC for holding its primary in January, earlier than party rules allowed.

Hillary Clinton won both primaries, even though the candidates didn't campaign and Obama wasn't even on the ballot in Michigan. She has been furiously trying to get the states' delegates counted as she tries to catch Barack Obama.

UPDATE: "Today’s announcement brings us no closer to counting the votes of the nearly 1.7 million people who voted in January. We hope the Obama campaign shares our belief that Florida’s voters must be counted and cannot be disenfranchised," Clinton spokesman Phil Singer said in a statement.

UPDATE: "We hope that all parties can agree on a fair seating of the Florida delegates so that Florida can participate in the Democratic Convention, and we look forward to working with the Florida Democratic Party and competing vigorously in the state so that Barack Obama can put Florida back into the Democratic column in November," the Obama campaign said in a statement.

A majority of Democrats don't like the idea of superdelegates -- those elected officials, party leaders, and others likely to decide the presidential nominee -- but more also say the superdelegates should vote their conscience, not necessarily follow what voters said in primaries and caucuses.

According to a CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released this afternoon, 50 percent of Democrats said superdelegates are a bad idea, while 42 percent said they are a good idea. Still, 49 percent of Democrats said superdelegates should base their votes on "their view of who would be the best candidate," while 46 percent said superdelegates should decide based on the results of primaries and caucuses, either nationally or in their state or congressional district.

Also, 63 percent of Democrats surveyed said that Florida and Michigan, whose delegates have been taken away because the primaries were held earlier than the Democratic National Committee allowed, should hold new primaries. Another 19 percent said the delegates should be based on the results of the January primaries, which Clinton won, and 15 percent said the delegates from the two states should not be seated at all.

The poll findings appear to support Hillary Clinton's contentions that superdelegates should vote their conscience and that Florida and Michigan should hold do-overs.

But overall, 52 percent of Democrats surveyed prefer Obama and 45 percent support Clinton. The poll was conducted Friday through Sunday and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4.5 percentage points.

This morning, Hillary Clinton gave what her camp billed as a major speech on the Iraq war -- an issue she has been trying to get on the right side of the entire campaign because of her 2002 vote authorizing the invasion.

Tuesday, Barack Obama, her Democratic rival, plans a major address on race and religion -- an issue he is trying to get past because of recent publicity and questions surrounding incendiary remarks made by the former pastor of his Chicago church.

After videos surfaced of sermons by the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr. on topics including the Sept. 11 terror attacks and Clinton, Obama on Friday repudiated the comments and announced that Wright, a long-time friend who baptized his children, had left an advisory role with his campaign.

Today, Obama told reporters in Pennsylvania, "I am going to talking not just about Reverend Wright, but the larger issue of race in this campaign."

UPDATE: His campaign just issued an advisory that the speech on on race, politics, and how we bring our country together at this important moment in our history will be at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia on Tuesday morning.

UPDATE: Obama previews the speech in an interview airing this evening on "The Newshour with Jim Lehrer" on PBS.

He describes race and gender as "powerful forces in our society" and says those issues were bound to come up because he -- seeking to become the nation's first African-American president -- and Hillary Clinton -- trying to become the first female president -- are the last two Democrats in the field.

"But, ultimately, I don't think it's useful," he tells Gwen Ifill, according to a transcript of the interview. "I think we've got to talk about it. I think we've got to process it. But we've got to remind ourselves that what we have in common is far more important than what's different, and that if we're going to solve any of these problems, we've got to come together and bridge our differences in ways that we just have not bridged them before."

Obama said that challenge will "be a major focus" of his speech.

In the interview, Obama also says that the controversy over Wright's remarks have been "a distraction from the core message of our campaign."

Asked about his judgment about Wright and former fund-raiser Tony Rezko, who is on trial on federal corruption charges, Obama seems to acknowledge if he had more experience, he would have handled matters differently.

"All of us have people in our lives who we meet, we get to know, in some cases form friendships with, who end up getting themselves into trouble or say things that we don't agree with," Obama says. "And probably what's true is because I haven't been in Washington as long as Senator Clinton or others, that I have not distanced myself from these people for as long a period as somebody more steeped in Washington politics might have."

Race and gender politics in the Democratic nomination race surfaced last week after 1984 vice presidential nominee Geraldine Ferraro suggested that Obama wouldn't be a contender if he were a white man or a woman of any ethnicity. After nearly two days of controversy, Ferraro stepped down from Clinton's national finance committee.

Hillary Clinton, marking the fifth anniversary of the start of the Iraq war, assailed both her presidential rivals this morning -- Republican nominee-in-waiting John McCain for gladly taking the baton from President Bush and Democrat Barack Obama for not doing more to stop the conflict.

McCain, who is on a fact-finding trip to Iraq, would continue what she described as Bush's failed policies, Clinton said. She also hit McCain for his much-cited comment that US troops could be in Iraq for another 100 years, though McCain was talking about a non-combat role akin to the presence in Korea. McCain argues that Americans would be fine with that, as long as US troops aren't taking casualties.

McCain, for his part, said on CNN that Clinton's proposal to begin withdrawing one or two brigades a month within 60 days of taking office shows that she doesn't understand the situation on the ground and such a withdrawal "means that al Qaeda wins."

UPDATE: The McCain campaign issued a statement in response: "At a time when Senator Clinton knows that American and allied forces are making real progress in Iraq, it is unfortunate that she would look to score political points by mischaracterizing Senator McCain's statement with intellectually dishonest attacks. The differences between Senator McCain's position, that we must win this war, and Senator Clinton's position, withdrawal and de facto surrender on day one, are important enough to have an honest debate over. It would be the height of irresponsibility to stick with campaign promises to the left-wing of the Democratic Party and proceed with withdrawal regardless of what the situation is on the ground in Iraq in January 2009. The point that Senator McCain was making was one about American troop presence versus American combat presence. He was speaking of a post-war scenario, not a hundred year war, when he suggested that the American people could support maintaining a military presence in Iraq should the Iraqi and U.S. governments determine it to be in their mutual interest, just as the U.S. and German, Japanese, and South Korean governments did after conflicts. One would suspect Senator Clinton is aware that American troops have been present peacefully in Germany and Japan for more than six decades. The American people deserve more than blatant mischaracterizations, and we invite Senator Clinton to participate with us in an honest debate."

In what her campaign billed as a major foreign policy speech, Clinton also said that Obama, after making a much-cited antiwar speech in October 2002, did little after arriving in the US Senate -- after the war was well underway -- and did not follow through on his words with action.

"In uncertain times, we can't afford uncertain leadership," Clinton said at George Washington University.

UPDATE: The Obama campaign just posted a web video responding to Clinton's speech, questioning her judgment by showing her speech before she voted to authorize the war and showing her acknowledging she didn't read intelligence reports on Iraq's weapons programs before making that vote.

In the category of it depends on what poll you want to believe, comes this:

A new USA Today/Gallup survey out today suggests that both Democratic presidential hopefuls would defeat Republican John McCain if the election were held today -- but says that Hillary Clinton would fare better than Barack Obama.

Clinton holds a 51 percent to 46 percent edge over McCain -- just outside the poll's margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points. Obama is in a statistical tie with McCain 49 percent to 47 percent, according to the survey, conducted Friday through Sunday. Obama has held the edge over Clinton in most recent hypothetical match-ups.

McCain led Clinton and Obama in the previous USA Today/Gallup survey, completed in late February. A Zogby poll released over the weekend, however, showed McCain still ahead of both Democrats.

Both Democratic contenders jumped today on the latest indicator of economic trouble -- the fire-sale buy-out of venerable investment firm Bear Stearns -- to say that it proves their point that mortgage industry problems are spilling onto Wall Street, and to warn that Main Street is feeling the pain, too.

"The news coming from Wall Street today has confirmed our fears that the financial fallout from the mortgage crisis would spillover into the wider economy," Barack Obama said in a statement issued by his campaign. "Months ago, I went to Wall Street and said that our capital markets could not function without the confidence and trust of the public. I said that Wall Street could not succeed while the rest of America struggled. Now, as the Federal Reserve does its best to bring stability to the market, we must focus on what we can do to restore the public’s confidence in the market and help the millions of Americans who are worried about their jobs, their homes, and their financial future."

Obama also criticized President Bush, saying that "History will not judge President Bush kindly for his failure to act in a way that could’ve prevented or alleviated this economic crisis.

"There have been few administrations so out of touch with the concerns and the struggles of working Americans and so beholden to the lobbyists and special interests who blocked any kind of regulatory oversight of the financial sector," Obama continued in a statement. "Whether it was subprime lending, credit cards, or bankruptcy laws, Washington has allowed these special interests to prevent sensible policy that could have prevented the most serious effects of the current predicament."

Hillary Clinton weighed in as well, saying, “This is a moment of great unique uncertainty in our financial markets. The crisis that began in the subprime mortgage market has spilled over and now poses a broader threat.

"As a senator from New York, I am keenly focused on the impact of these market developments on the lives and livelihoods of thousands of New Yorkers and on the New York economy as a whole," Clinton continued in a statement. "I am also reminded every day as I meet with families and listen to their stories that the effective function of our market isn’t just about Wall Street, it is about Main Street. It’s about the families I meet that are struggling to fend off foreclosures and stay in their homes. It’s about construction workers who used to build houses and are now out of work. It’s about the college student who has good credit but is struggling to get a loan. What is happening on Wall Street may well affect the lives and fortunes of tens of millions of Americans who work hard everyday. They’ve done nothing wrong, but they will be impacted."

Republican John McCain's campaign issued a shorter statement, praising the Federal Reserve for helping shore up the financial sector and broker the sale of Bear Stearns.

"Senator McCain has complete confidence in Chairman Bernanke and the actions of the Federal Reserve, and is committed to ensuring the economy continues to grow – because no government program or policy is a substitute for a good job," senior policy adviser Doug Holtz-Eakin said in a statement. "John McCain understands the federal government’s responsibility to ensure the stability of the US financial system, and is equally committed to protecting the pocketbooks of hardworking American families."

Polls show that the economy has far surpassed the Iraq war as the top concern for voters heading into the general election campaign.

Could the Nader nightmare be happening again to Democrats?

Ralph Nader's just-starting presidential campaign is bragging today about a poll released over the weekend that showed that the consumer activist and political gadfly would get 6 percent of the vote in a three-way race with Republican John McCain (45 percent) and Democrat Hillary Clinton (39 percent) and would get 5 percent in a contest with McCain (44 percent) and Democrat Barack Obama (39 percent).

Nader's support is enough to make a difference, and he takes more voters away from Democrats, according to Zogby International, which conducted the survey on March 13 and 14 (it has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.2 percentage points).

"Nader's presence in the race can potentially turn a lulu of a race into an absolute tizzy," pollster John Zogby said in a statement. "The messages to Democrats are clear -- number one, Nader may win enough support to get into the general election debates. Number two, what could be at risk is support among several key constituencies that the Democratic Party candidate will need to win in November, notably younger voters, independents, and progressives."

Many Democrats still blame Nader for costing Al Gore the 2000 election against George W. Bush -- an accusation that Nader vociferously denies.

Nader said he is running again this year because Clinton and Obama don't offer a clean enough break from business-dominated politics.

"Five or six percent is our floor," his campaign said in an message today seeking donations. "We're movin' on up to challenge the corporate Democrats and corporate Republicans in the general election. On single payer [healthcare], war in the Middle East, union busting, nuclear power, solar energy and a host of other issues that matter to the American people, Nader/Gonzalez are on one side of the political fence, Clinton/Obama/McCain are on the other."

Responding to growing criticism, Senator Barack Obama today issued a forceful repudiation of controversial remarks by the former pastor of his Chicago church, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., whose rhetoric caused renewed turmoil this week for Obama's presidential campaign.

Wright recently retired as pastor of Trinity United Church of Christ, a large, vibrant, mostly black church on Chicago's South Side. But his past remarks have drawn new scrutiny from ABC News and other news media, including his assertions that the United States invited the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and a recent sermon in which he said Senator Hillary Clinton, as a white woman, has it far easier than Obama ever would.

"Barack knows what it means to be a black man living in a country and a culture that is controlled by rich white people," Wright said in a video recording of a sermon posted on YouTube. "Hillary can never know that. Hillary ain't never been called a 'n—–!''' (See video above.)

In a statement posted today on The Huffington Post, a liberal political website, Obama responded by rejecting what he said were Wright's "inflammatory and appalling remarks."

"I categorically denounce any statement that disparages our great country or serves to divide us from our allies," Obama wrote. "I also believe that words that degrade individuals have no place in our public dialogue, whether it's on the campaign stump or in the pulpit. In sum, I reject outright the statements by Rev. Wright that are at issue."

Obama has faced calls to explain his relationship with Wright and renounce previous remarks by the cleric broadcast on ABC and elsewhere.

UPDATE: The Obama campaign said this evening that Wright is no longer part of the campaign's African American Religious Leadership Committee.

By Charlie Savage

The Washington Post reports this morning that the White House overruled the EPA in a dispute over air pollution rules, forcing the agency to adopt a regulation allowing higher smog levels than agency scientists thought was appropriate:

The Environmental Protection Agency weakened one part of its new limits on smog-forming ozone after an unusual last-minute intervention by President Bush, according to documents released by the EPA.

EPA officials initially tried to set a lower seasonal limit on ozone to protect wildlife, parks and farmland, as required under the law. While their proposal was less restrictive than what the EPA's scientific advisers had proposed, Bush overruled EPA officials and on Tuesday ordered the agency to increase the limit, according to the documents.

"It is unprecedented and an unlawful act of political interference for the president personally to override a decision that the Clean Air Act leaves exclusively to EPA's expert scientific judgment," said John Walke, clean-air director for the Natural Resources Defense Council.

This event provides a case study of the effort by the Bush administration to expand presidential power. While most of the attention to this push has focused on national-security issues, it covers the gamut of domestic issues as well. A central pillar has been the so-called Unitary Executive Theory, which undercuts the ability of Congress to regulate the executive branch.

The theory holds that because the Constitution vests the executive (law-executing) power in the president, he gets to delegate it to other executive branch officials as he sees fit. Thus, Congress cannot vest independent decision-making authority about how to execute anti-pollution laws in a subordinate official like the head of the EPA; such a law is unconstitutional and the president is free to ignore it and override the official's decision.

The Unitary Executive Theory, which was an invention of the Meese Justice Department during the Reagan administration, is controversial because the Constitution also explicitly empowers Congress to make rules and regulations for how the executive branch carries out its work. There are also several Supreme Court precedents that are incompatible with the theory. Nevertheless, the Bush administration has embraced the theory, especially in forums where it is very difficult to challenge what the executive branch has done in court.

As the ozone dispute illustrates, the mounting question of whether Congress can regulate the government in a way that limits presidential control can make the difference in the outcome of a huge range of policy disputes. Unfortunately, however, no debate moderator has asked the 2008 presidential candidates about his or her views on the Unitary Executive Theory. A Boston Globe survey of the candidates' views last December captured the views of McCain, Obama, and Clinton on the extent to which they each believed the president is bound to obey laws regulating his or her conduct in national-security matters, but it neglected to ask them directly about the Unitary Executive Theory and domestic issues such as the control of environmental rules.

SPRINGFIELD, Pa. -- Among the local dignitaries saluted prior to John McCain's town-hall meeting here: Robert Asher, a Republican National Committeeman from Pennsylvania -- and a felon convicted on public-corruption charges.

Asher, a local power broker who runs a family candy business in nearby Montgomery County, was convicted in 1986 for his involvement in a scheme to bribe public officials to win a no-bid state contract. Asher had raised money for Rudy Giuliani before his withdrawal from the race in late January, and signed on to McCain's campaign in February.

SPRINGFIELD, Pa. -- John McCain arrived in the heart of an old-guard Republican-machine county with an ironic tribute to the anthems of past Democratic nominees.

In rapid succession: Fleetwood Mac's "Don't Stop," the 1992 Clinton campaign tune with the "thinking about tomorrow" refrain, and Neil Diamond's "America," the pro-immigration theme ("they're coming to America") favored by Mike Dukakis.

The standing-room-only crowd is still waiting for a "Happy Days Are Here Again" sing-along.

Meet me in Pennsylvania.

Hillary Clinton just jumped first, announcing that she has accepted an invitation from ABC for a nationally televised primetime debate in Philadelphia before the April 22 Pennsylvania primary.

UPDATE: Barack Obama has accepted the Philadelphia debate as well, scheduled for April 16. He has also agreed to an April 19 debate in North Carolina, which votes May 6.

Before the Ohio and Texas primaries on March 4 that saved her candidacy, Clinton challenged Obama preceding debates in Austin and Cleveland, saying, "Meet me in Texas" and "Meet me in Ohio."

"Hillary is prepared to show she has real solutions for the problems facing residents of the Keystone State," Clinton's campaign said in a statement.

The top Democrat in Congress forcefully declared today that her "political gut" tells her that there is no way that Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will run together on a so-called dream ticket.

"I do think we will have a dream team," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat and first female speaker, she told reporters on Capitol Hill. "It just won't be those two names."

Pressed to say why she believed that, she replied, "Take it from me, that won't be the ticket."

Pelosi, who has chided both campaigns for attacking each other too aggressively, was asked at the news conference about this week's flare-up on issues of race and gender provoked by Geraldine Ferraro's comment about Obama being where he is partly due to his race. Ferraro stepped down Wednesday from Clinton's national finance committee after the controversy showed no signs of abating after two days.

"Sometimes, in the enthusiasm of all the people you attract to the process, some of the exchange is not at the highest level," Pelosi said. "I think it, by and large, has been and will return to that level."

She added about the comments, "We have to remember how they are perceived by others. And I think that the Clinton campaign moving to -- shall we say -- put some distance, was very important."

Allegheny County Executive Dan Onorato and Pitttsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, two major Western Pennsylvania politicos who had yet to endorse, will come out for Hillary Clinton tomorrow, a campaign source confirms.

It's a rare down day in the presidential campaign, with all three major candidates doing their day jobs in the US Senate.

But while they're not officially on the campaign trail, presidential politics is never really absent.

Republicans are crowing over the fact that the Senate is voting on a one-year moratorium on "earmarks" -- those provisions that members of Congress slip into spending bills that critics call pork-barrel projects. It's a pet issue for GOP-nominee-in-waiting, and Republicans say Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are late to the party by just agreeing this week to cosponsor the legislation.

McCain issued a statement calling on the Democrats to disclose their earmarks.

Obama released his 2005 and 2006 earmark requests, and had previously disclosed last year's, and challenged Clinton to do the same.

"Bringing real change requires changing the way we do business in Washington," campaign communications director Robert Gibbs said in a statement. "If Senator Clinton will not agree to join Senator Obama in releasing her earmark requests, voters should ask why she doesn’t believe they have the right to know she wants to spend their tax dollars."

Meanwhile, Politico is reporting that Senator Wayne Allard, a Colorado Republican, is up to some partisan mischief by submitting an amendment that supposedly funds every proposal from Obama -- a total of $1.4 trillion over five years. It's designed to fail, but to gig Obama for being another tax-and-spend Democrat.

And House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat, weighed in again on the Democratic race, saying forcefully that she does not believe there is any way that Clinton and Obama will run together on a so-called dream ticket.

"I do think we will have a dream team," she told reporters on Capitol Hill. "It just won't be their two names."

MoveOn.org, the influential antiwar group, is holding a contest, urging filmmaker wannabes among Barack Obama backers to create a 30-second TV ad.

The prize: The spot will air nationally and the winner gets a $20,000 gift certificate for a camera and editing package.

The judges include Boston homeboys Ben Affleck and Matt Damon, whose low-budget movie "Good Will Hunting" launched them to stardom. Others include filmmaker Oliver Stone, musician Moby, and civil rights leader Jesse Jackson.

In a web video announcing the contest, dubbed "Obama in 30 seconds," Eli Pariser, MoveOn.org's executive director, says, "Grassroots energy helped propel Barack Obama into victory after victory. And now we need your grassroots creativity to help put Barack Obama over the top."

The group, which has endorsed Obama, held a similar contest in 2004 for ads opposing President Bush. The winner showed children picking up trash and working on assembly lines with the message: "Guess who's going to pay off President Bush's $1 trillion deficit?"

Submissions to the contest website start March 27 and end April 1, with the winner to be announced April 17.

Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea culpa.

An unusually contrite Hillary Clinton apologized Wednesday night to leaders of 200 black community newspapers for any offense caused by her husband's comments comparing Barack Obama's victory in the South Carolina primary to Jesse Jackson's in 1984 and 1988 -- remarks widely criticized as belittling Obama's accomplishments.

Clinton told the National Newspaper Publishers Association that "I certainly do repudiate it and I regret deeply" remarks by Geraldine Ferraro, who caused an uproar by suggesting that Obama would not be where he is in the Democratic presidential race if he were a white man or a woman of any color. Ferraro, the first woman on a major party presidential ticket when she was the 1984 vice presidential nominee, stepped down from Clinton's national finance committee on Wednesday, but not before angrily accusing the Obama campaign of calling her racist.

And Clinton said she was sorry, on behalf of the entire federal government, for the mishandling of Hurricane Katrina. "I've said it publicly, and I say it privately: I apologize, and I am embarrassed that our government so mistreated our fellow citizens ... It was a national disgrace," she said, according to the Associated Press account of the meeting in Washington.

The black community newspapers are influential among African-American voters, a core constituency in the Democratic Party. Clinton enjoyed strong support from black voters in early polls last year, but after Obama won the Iowa caucuses in January and emerged as a serious contender, the vast majority of African-American voters have supported Obama in primaries and caucuses. In Mississippi on Tuesday, more than 90 percent voted for him, according to exit polls.

If the delegate allocation process used by the Democrats doesn't seem to add up, there's a reason -- it doesn't. Alan Wirzbicki in today's Globe writes about a recent party rule that gives additional delegates to states that abstained from moving their primaries up in 2008:

"As the race for the Democratic nomination between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama develops into a delegate-by-delegate scramble, the contest is drawing fresh scrutiny to the party's unorthodox system of allotting delegates, including an obscure provision that gives more sway to jurisdictions that vote later in the process.

Under the rule, which was adopted last year, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, and South Dakota, along with every other state remaining in the primary season, were awarded extra delegates as an inducement not to move their primary dates forward."

In a tight race where every vote counts, these "bonus" delegates could play a role in deciding the nominee. Read the whole story.

For most of day two in the Geraldine Ferraro fracas over remarks she made about Barack Obama, neither side backed down.

But this afternoon, according to NBC News and CNN, Ferraro stepped down from Hillary Clinton's national finance committee.

In a "Dear Hillary" letter obtained by CNN, Ferraro wrote Clinton: "I am stepping down from your finance committee so I can speak for myself and you can continue to speak for yourself about what is at stake in this campaign. The Obama campaign is attacking me to hurt you. I won't let that happen. Thank you for everything you have done and continue to do to make this a better world for my children and grandchildren. You have my deepest admiration and respect. Gerry."

The 1984 vice presidential nominee had apologized again this morning to those who thought it racially insensitive for her to suggest that Barack Obama wouldn't be the Democratic front-runner if he were not black. But she also declared: "It wasn't a racist comment. It was a statement of fact."

On ABC's "Good Morning America," she also bashed the Obama campaign for criticizing her, saying that "every time" someone makes a negative comment about Obama, they are accused of racism.

Tuesday night, she had even stronger words for the Daily Breeze, the newspaper in Torrance, Calif., whose interview with her published Friday started the whole controversy. "Racism works in two different directions," she said. "I really think they're attacking me because I'm white. How's that?"

Obama admonished Ferraro again today, saying that if someone in his campaign had suggested that Hillary Clinton "is where she is only because she is a woman," Clinton would be offended.

"Part of what I think Geraldine Ferraro is doing, and I respect the fact that she was a trailblazer, is to participate in the kind of slice and dice politics that's about race and about gender.... That's what Americans are tired of because they recognize that when we divide ourselves in that way we can't solve problems," Obama said on NBC's "Today" show.

The Obama campaign called on Clinton, who has distanced herself from Ferraro's comments, to remove her from her finance committee. Ferraro said earlier today she would step down from the committee if asked, but would not stop raising money for Clinton.

UPDATE: The Clinton campaign stoked the controversy a little more this afternoon, buttressing Ferraro's comments that Clinton has been treated unfairly as a female candidate by highlighting remarks by an Obama adviser last month.

Retired General Merrill A. "Tony" McPeak told the Los Angeles Times that Obama has "real gravitas" and "doesn't go on television and have crying fits," a reference to Clinton's much-publicized emotional moment on the eve of the New Hampshire primary.

The Obama campaign immediately repudiated the comments, and McPeak quickly said he had "high regard" for Clinton. But the Clinton camp pointed out that he is front and center -- including on a conference call today -- in vouching for Obama's national security credentials.

By Charlie Savage
Globe Staff

WASHINGTON -- Democratic Reps. Bill Delahunt of Massachusetts and Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut said today that they will unveil legislation aimed at blocking President Bush from completing a long-term security agreement with Iraq if the White House does not submit the pact to Congress for an approval vote.

Delahunt has been leading hearings into the proposed agreement to authorize continued combat activities in Iraq for years to come. The negotiations have prompted constitutional controversy because the Bush administration has declared that it will not designate the deal as a treaty or an executive-legislative agreement and so the executive branch can complete the arrangement without congressional consent. For background, see here and here.

Delahunt's and DeLauro's legislation would cut off funds for implementing any agreement "committing or authorizing U.S. forces to engage in combat on behalf of the Government of Iraq" that is not submitted to Congress. The legislation is similar to a bill introduced in the Senate late last year by Sen. Hillary Clinton, Democrat of New York, which she touted in presidential primary debates. Sen. Barack Obama , Democrat of Illinois, later signed onto Clinton's legislation as a cosponsor.

EXETER, N.H. -- Welcome back, John.

New Hampshire gave John McCain his shot at the Republican nomination, and McCain today returned to the state to give thanks

"Please stop before I get a little emotional," McCain said in trying to quiet the sustained applause that greeted him on stage at the Exeter Town Hall.

Fittingly, the homecoming event was a town hall meeting, McCain's favorite setting to engage voters. Joined by Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, McCain gave a brief introductory speech before opening it up for questions.

"This guy may claim he is from Arizona, but he loves these town meetings like he's a New Englander!" Lieberman beamed.

McCain took pains to thank his former rivals for the GOP nomination and expressed confidence about the general election. "We're reuniting our party, and we've got to reenergize our party," he said.

Not everyone was happy to see McCain, though. Protesters from the AFL-CIO, which announced an anti-McCain effort today, gathered in front of the Exeter Town Hall and tried to cast a McCain presidency as a third term for President Bush.

The nation's major labor federation is vowing to shadow presumptive Republican nominee John McCain as part of an effort to tie him to what it sees as the failed economic policies of President Bush.

The AFL-CIO announced today that protestors will follow McCain on the campaign trail, including a town meeting this afternoon in Exeter, N.H.

In addition to the protests, the federation plans to spend its record $53.4 million grassroots mobilization campaign funds to criticizing McCain through workplace leafletting, volunteer door-knocking, telephone calls, e-mail, direct mailings and an anti-McCain website, the Associated Press reported.

"Everywhere John McCain goes in the coming months, union activists will be there to confront him on his economic positions and plans and demand that he speak to working families' concerns," Karen Ackerman, the AFL-CIO's political director, said at a news conference.

The labor federation has not endorsed either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination, but plans to aggressively support whoever eventually wins the nomination.

Republicans immediately hit back.

"The AFL-CIO's campaign against John McCain clearly demonstrates their priorities lie in attack politics as opposed to focusing on American families. Voters looking for something new will find it in John McCain’s campaign to help working families – not the AFL-CIO’s partisan attacks. Considering Senators Obama and Clinton’s frequent denunciations of special interests, they must reject the unions’ campaign against Senator McCain," said Alex Conant, spokesman for the Republican National Committee.

It took Barack Obama two contests -- the Wyoming caucuses on Saturday and yesterday's Mississippi primary -- to regain the handful of delegates he lost to Hillary Clinton when she beat him in Ohio, Rhode Island, and the Texas primary on March 4. Obama's campaign this morning said it now holds a pledged delegate lead of 161.

But as Obama and Clinton look toward Pennsylvania's primary on April 22, their campaigns are increasingly consumed by how to resolve the impasse over Michigan and Florida, whose delegates the Democratic National Committee stripped after the two states held January primaries against party rules.

The Clinton campaign, believing Michigan and Florida are favorable to their candidate -- indeed, it may be her only chance to catch Obama in the delegate race -- want one of two things: for the January results to count, or for there to be a new primary at some later date.

"I don’t see any other solutions that are fair and honor the commitment that two and a half million voters made in the Democratic primaries in those two states," Clinton told the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce today, according to her campaign, adding, "We have a basic obligation to make sure that every vote in America counts."

The Obama campaign says it will not accept the January results, because Obama was not on the ballot in Michigan and did not campaign in Florida. His aides have signaled that they prefer an allocation of the delegates based on some other formula.

On a conference call with reporters this morning, Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, expressed deep reservations about a plan floated in Florida for a vote-by-mail primary. Plouffe said it took Oregon years to perfect a mail-vote system, and it's unlikely Florida could pull off such a contest on such short notice.

Plouffe was noncommittal about what solution they would accept. "We will watch very carefully to see what kind of remedies are floated," he said. Plouffe criticized the Clinton campaign's approach to resolving the dispute as "heads we win, tails you lose."

Plouffe, in a bit of expectations-setting, also downplayed the importance of Pennsylvania, where polls show Clinton with a wide lead. "We don’t cherry pick states," he said. "We view this as a whole body of states and a whole body of delegates."

And he was critical of the Clinton campaign for effectively writing off states such as North and South Carolina for the general election. "What we have to do as a party is have a nominee that puts a large number of states in play," Plouffe said.

By Scott Helman, Globe Staff

Senator Barack Obama notched another victory over Senator Hillary Clinton in today's Mississippi Democratic primary, further demonstrating his appeal in the Deep South but adding fuel to Clinton's argument that his success in the nomination race is built tenuously on states where Democrats face dim prospects in November.

Obama, in one of the most racially polarized contests yet, was handily defeating Clinton 55 percent to 43 percent with about a third of precincts reporting tonight, picking up most of the 33 delegates at stake and expanding his overall delegate lead of more than 100. Clinton and her husband, former president Bill Clinton, campaigned vigorously in Mississippi, but Obama's win was widely expected.

Tellingly, neither candidate was anywhere near Mississippi while voters went to the polls. Both were campaigning in Pennsylvania, whose April 22 primary is the next big prize in their protracted and increasingly bitter battle and where recent polls have shown Clinton leading by between four to 19 percentage points.

Obama's win in Mississippi, together with his 24-percentage-point victory in Wyoming's caucuses on Saturday, are his latest triumphs in smaller states that, if history is any guide, will be irrelevant to Democrats in the general election: Mississippi has not voted for a Democrat since Jimmy Carter in 1976; Lyndon Johnson, in 1964, was the last Democrat to win Wyoming.

Clinton, who has won Democratic strongholds with lots of electoral votes, such as California, New Jersey, and New York, has tried to seize on Obama's victories in so-called red states to argue that he is winning in places that do not really matter, while she is winning ones that do.

"If you cannot win Ohio, you cannot win the presidency," Clinton said last week after she won Ohio, one of the most important swing states in any general election.

But analysts say neither candidate has a clear-cut case in trying to argue that primary results will correlate to what happens in November.

And Obama, to date, has won more traditionally Democratic states than Clinton. Among the states that voted for Democrats in the last two presidential elections -- Senator John F. Kerry in 2004 and then-Vice President Al Gore in 2000 -- he has twice as many victories as Clinton. Obama has also won twice as many traditionally Republican states, which he argues demonstrates his bipartisan appeal and competitiveness in November. Clinton and Obama have roughly split swing states.

One of Obama's top surrogates, Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri, yesterday dismissed Clinton's argument that Obama's track record so far somehow portends problems for him if he faces Senator John McCain in the general election.

"This is really a fallacy. Those Clinton voters will vote for Obama in November," McCaskill told MSNBC. "The key is the independent voter, and that's where Barack Obama has his strength."

Obama, himself, asked earlier this month whether he had to win bigger states such as Texas to prove his electability, told reporters: "I would think at this point, the question is no longer, is it a big enough state, or is it a state with too many black people, or is it a state that's in the Midwest or is a caucus state. We've won states and we've won delegates."

There are only eight states left to vote in the nomination race, starting with Pennsylvania next month and ending with Montana and South Dakota in June. Most of them lean Republican. Only two -- Pennsylvania and Oregon -- voted Democratic in 2000 and 2004; the remaining six all voted for President Bush both years.

Unlike most primary nights, neither Clinton nor Obama had speeches tonight after the Mississippi results.

"What we've tried to do is steadily make sure that in each state we are making the case about the need for change in this country," Obama told CNN tonight. "Obviously the people in Mississippi responded."

"It's just another win in our column," he added. "And we are getting more delegates."

Clinton issued a brief statement from campaign manager Maggie Williams: "We congratulate Senator Obama for his win in Mississippi and thank our supporters and volunteers there for their support, hard work, and long hours. Now we look forward to campaigning in Pennsylvania and around the country as this campaign continues."

Exit polls from Mississippi indicated a striking racial divide. Black voters, who made up roughly half of the electorate, were largely responsible for Obama's victory -- he beat Clinton among blacks by a nine-to-one margin. But Clinton won nearly three in four white voters. Obama fared especially poorly among older whites and did better among younger whites, according to the exit polls, conducted for the Associated Press and television networks.

Voters said Clinton had run the more negative campaign in a race that has grown increasingly heated. Sixty percent said Clinton had attacked her rival unfairly, while 39 percent of voters felt Obama had gone after Clinton unfairly.

Still, more than 60 percent of Democratic voters said they would be content with either Clinton or Obama as the eventual nominee, and a majority said Clinton or Obama should pick the other as a running mate.

Hillary Clinton's campaign issued a terse statement tonight after Barack Obama's win in the Mississippi primary.

"We congratulate Senator Obama for his win in Mississippi and thank our supporters and volunteers there for their support, hard work, and long hours," campaign manager Maggie Williams said in a statement. "Now we look forward to campaigning in Pennsylvania and around the country as this campaign continues."

Barack Obama said his projected victory tonight in Mississippi's Democratic primary shows that voters in another state are responding to his call for change.

"What we've tried to do is steadily make sure that in each state we are making the case about the need for change in this country," Obama told CNN tonight. "Obviously the people in Mississippi responded."

"It's just another win in our column," he said from Chicago. "And we are getting more delegates."

Asked whether the race was getting too negative and could ultimately damage the nominee -- whether it is him or Hillary Clinton -- Obama said the party will eventually unify.

"We've been very measured in how we talk about Senator Clinton," Obama said. "I'm not sure we've been getting that same approach from the Clinton campaign."

Barack Obama reasserted his claim tonight as front-runner in the Democratic presidential race by winning the Mississippi primary, according to projections by Fox News, NBC News,
CNN, and the Associated Press.

Obama also easily won the caucuses in Wyoming on Saturday after Hillary Clinton kept her campaign alive last Tuesday with wins in Ohio, Rhode Island, and Texas.

He is likely to win most of the 33 delegates at stake tonight in Mississippi and extend his lead in delegates, which stood at 106 before today. With 2,025 delegates needed to clinch the nomination, Obama had 1,579 to Clinton's 1,473, according to the Associated Press tally, which includes committed superdelegates.

Black voters, who have overwhelmingly supported Obama in earlier primaries, made up about half the electorate in Mississippi, according to exit polling conducted for the TV networks and the AP.

While Obama dismissed talk of a so-called dream ticket, six in 10 Obama supporters said he should pick Clinton as his vice president if he wins the nomination. Four in 10 of Clinton voters said she should put Obama on the ticket. But while one in five Clinton voters said Obama is more likely than Clinton to beat Republican John McCain in November; only about one in 20 Obama voters said Clinton was more likely than their candidate to defeat McCain.

Both candidates are already pointing toward Pennsylvania, the next big test on April 22 with 158 delegates up for grabs. That primary looms as another potential turning point -- just as Ohio and Texas were. Clinton, who is favored, needs to win to keep her campaign's momentum. Obama has another chance to deal a devastating blow because a Clinton loss would increase pressure on her to drop out for the good of the party.

Mitt Romney is declaring that he would jump at the chance to be vice president if Republican John McCain offered the No. 2 slot.

"I think any Republican leader in this country would be honored to be asked to serve as the vice presidential nominee, myself included," Romney said in an interview to be aired tonight on Fox News Channel.

In his first interview after leaving the GOP race, the former Massachusetts governor also called Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama "chihuahuas" and McCain the "big dog" on national security. Unlike many other Republicans, Romney said he hopes Obama wins the Democratic nomination because his inexperience makes him an easier target for McCain.

During the primary campaign, Romney tussled with McCain, who at one point compared Romney to a pig. But Romney endorsed the Arizona senator after suspending his campaign last month and said last night there are no hard feelings.

Geraldine Ferraro, the former vice presidential nominee, is the latest high-profile person in the corner of the Democratic heavyweights to go off-message.

Ferraro, who backs Hillary Clinton, is being excoriated by Barack Obama's campaign for suggesting that he wouldn't be a contender if he were a white man or a woman of any color.

"He happens to be very lucky who he is," she told a local newspaper in California last week.

This morning on MSNBC, Obama adviser Susan Rice (who caused her candidate some heartache, herself, by saying that neither he nor Clinton is ready to answer the proverbial 3 a.m. phone call in the White House) called the comment "outrageous and offensive" and called on the Clinton camp to repudiate it.

Rice said it was worse than Samantha Power calling Clinton a "monster" -- a comment that forced her resignation as an unpaid foreign policy adviser to Obama on Friday.

The Clinton campaign quickly distanced itself from Ferraro's comment.

UPDATE: "I do not agree with that," Clinton told the Associated Press this afternoon. "It is regrettable that any of our supporters on both sides, because we've both had that experience, say things that kind of veer off into the personal. We ought to keep this on the issues. There are differences between us. There are differences between our approaches on health care, on energy, on our experience, on our results that we've produced for people. That's what this campaign should be about."

UPDATE: Clinton's comments didn't satisy the Obama campaign.

"With Senator Clinton’s refusal to denounce or reject Ms. Ferraro, she has once again proven that her campaign gets to live by its own rules and its own double standard, and will only decry offensive comments when it’s politically advantageous to Senator Clinton. Her refusal to take responsibility for her own supporter’s remarks is exactly the kind of tactic that feeds the American people’s cynicism about politics today and it’s why Barack Obama’s message of change has resonated so strongly in every corner of the country," said Obama spokesman Bill Burton.

UPDATE: Obama, himself, told The (Allentown) Morning Call: "I don't think Geraldine Ferraro's comments have any place in our politics or in the Democratic Party. They are divisive. I think anybody who understands the history of this country knows they are patently absurd. And I would expect that the same way those comments don't have a place in my campaign they shouldn't have a place in Senator Clinton's either."

UPDATE: Maggie Williams, Clinton's campaign manager, just issued a statement that accused Obama's campaign staff of forgetting she described as his pledge in January not to push stories about race.

"We have not. And, we reject these false, personal and politically calculated attacks on the eve of a primary. This campaign should be about the leadership we need for a better future and these attacks serve only to divide the Democratic Party and the American people."

UPDATE: Ferraro stood by her point tonight on Fox News Channel, but said, "I'm sorry people thought it was racist."

Earlier in the campaign, Bill Shaheen, a Clinton campaign co-chairman in New Hampshire, stepped aside after discussing Obama's acknowledged teen-age drug use. And staffers in Iowa were sacked after forwarding emails with false rumors that Obama is a Muslim.

Count the top Democrat in Congress among the skeptics that the so-called "dream ticket" of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will materialize.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Clinton has basically ruled out the possibility by suggesting that Republican John McCain is more ready to be commander-in-chief than Obama.

"I think that ticket either way is impossible," Pelosi told New England Cable News.

Obama, himself, threw cold water Monday on speculation stoked by Clinton and her supporters about a joint ticket. He told supporters in Mississippi that it makes no sense for Clinton to offer the No. 2 slot when he is ahead in delegates, and he declared emphatically that he is not running for vice president.

UPDATE: But in exit polls today, voters in Mississippi appeared far more open to a ticket that includes both Democrats.

Six in 10 Obama voters said he should pick Clinton for vice president if he wins the nomination; four in 10 Clinton voters said she should pick Obama as her running mate if she wins, according to preliminary results of the exit polls conducted for the TV networks and the Associated Press.

Pelosi, a California congresswoman who remains an uncommitted superdelegate, has also chided both Clinton and Obama for the level of negative campaigning in the nomination race.

HARRISBURG, Pa. -- Hillary Clinton may have moved on from Ohio, but she made clear today she does not intend to let up on the criticisms of Barack Obama that helped her win there.

In a midday speech here that was heavy on policy specifics, Clinton ended by attacking Obama directly over recent controversies in which top advisers appeared to disown his positions on potential NAFTA negotiations and troop withdrawal from Iraq. Her raucous crowd in Pennsylvania’s state capital -- many of whom appeared to be unionized state workers taking an extended lunch hour -- were ready with boos when Clinton recounted the scandals surrounding comments attributed to Austan Goolsbee and Samantha Power.

“I got to tell you there’s a big difference between talk and action, but if you’re going to talk you ought to mean what you say so people can count on you,” Clinton said.

The gloves are definitely off today in the Democratic presidential bout.

It's not even lunchtime yet and already:

Barack Obama's campaign sent out a memo questioning Hillary Clinton's claim of foreign policy experience. "When your entire campaign is based upon a claim of experience, it is important that you have evidence to support that claim. Hillary Clinton’s argument that she has passed 'the Commander-in-Chief test' is simply not supported by her record," says the memo from Obama adviser Greg Craig. It goes on to doubt her role in Northern Ireland, the Balkans, Rwanda, and China.

"The Clinton campaign’s argument is nothing more than mere assertion, dramatized in a scary television commercial with a telephone ringing in the middle of the night," the memo concludes, referring to Clinton's TV ad that asked Texas voters who they wanted picking up the phone in the White House at 3 a.m.

The Clinton camp hit back with a memo of its own, arguing that instead of showing his readiness on national security, Obama is lobbing baseless attacks on Clinton and "proving the point that his campaign is about 'just words.' "

"Still reeling from its losses in Ohio and Texas, the Obama campaign has come out swinging, taking aim at Senator Clinton's considerable foreign policy experience with false claims and baseless attacks," the memo says. "After last week’s defeats, the Obama campaign faced a choice: try to convince voters that Senator Obama is ready to take the 3 a.m. phone call in a positive way or try to tear down Senator Clinton's accomplishments."

For her part, Clinton plans to give a speech at a rally in Harrisburg, Pa., this afternoon in which she goes after Obama on energy, trade, and Iraq.

"On the campaign trail, Senator Obama talks about clean energy. But in the Senate, he voted for Dick Cheney’s energy bill loaded with new tax breaks for oil companies," she plans to say, according to excerpts provided by her campaign. "When he faced a tough choice, his support for a clean energy future turned out to be just words.

"It’s like how he talks about fixing NAFTA. But his top economic adviser assured the Canadian government that he wouldn’t really follow through. His position? Just words. Senator Obama promises to withdraw from Iraq within 16 months. But his top foreign policy adviser said he's not really going to rely on that plan. I guess that plan is just words, too.

"We need a president who will solve problems. Who will fight for our families long after the speeches are over and the cameras are gone. That’s the choice in this campaign: Solutions you can rely on -- versus words you can't," Clinton plans to say.

Before she even uttered those words, Obama's campaign responded:

"Proving once again that she will say and do anything to win this election, Senator Clinton today has unleashed a kitchen sink of distorted and discredited attacks that she knows aren't true," campaign spokesman Bill Burton said in a statement. 

"Barack Obama isn't about to be lectured on words from someone who's actions spoke much louder when she voted against renewable fuels and higher CAFE standards until she started running for President, championed NAFTA as good for America until she started running for President, and supported George Bush's disastrous war in Iraq until she started running for President." 

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are marshalling their forces in Pennsylvania for what promises to be one of the most drawn-out, intense single-state campaigns in political history.

The Globe's Sasha Issenberg notes today the two candidates campaigned across 40 states in the prior six weeks -- roughly the same amount of time they'll dedicate just to stumping in Pennsylvania before the state votes April 22. The candidates are already on the move -- Hillary and Bill Clinton are canvassing the state today.

And don't expect the candidates to play nice the whole time. Issenberg notes "the rougher local political culture in Pennsylvania will not restrain the candidates' increasingly confrontational postures, according to local consultants." This shouldn't come as a shock to anyone who has ever attended a Flyers or Eagles game. Read the whole story.

Although tough talk is a part of campaigning for president, the Globe's Peter Canellos warns it is important for a candidate to set a firm chain of command and send a consistent policy message -- a strategy Barack Obama has deviated from recently.

With three advisers speaking out of turn and causing a stir -- Samantha Power, Susan Rice, and Austan Goolsbee -- Canellos writes:

Obama may have inadvertently furthered this problem by sending some of his foreign policy advisers on group tours, trying to showcase the substance and experience of his team. In the process, some of them may have forgotten that only one person should be setting foreign policy for the Obama campaign, and that person is Barack Obama.

Read the rest of the story.

HARRISBURG, Pa. -- Before unleashing a new attack on comparing Barack Obama’s “rhetoric with results” at a midday rally here, Hillary Clinton invited the state house’s Democratic caucus to a private members-only meeting.

Nearly 50 House Democrats were expected to attend, including Clinton backers, undecideds and even some who are leaning towards Obama. Clinton appears to have an edge in among supporters in the chamber, although many members -- who are all up for reelection this fall in a swing state -- remain uncommitted.

“I wouldn’t say she has a problem with African-Americans, but she’ll have to elaborate more on those issues,” said Jewell Williams, a black legislator from Philadelphia who describes himself as a somewhat conflicted Obama supporter but was preparing to attend the meeting with Clinton. “Philadelphia is going to be about race. It’s a race campaign.”

File under: How to tell when your presidential candidate is planning on being the Democratic nominee.

Barack Obama announced today that he has signed on as a cosponsor of a Senate amendment that would impose a one-year moratorium on Congressional earmarks, the secretive and expensive spending measures used by House and Senate members to bring federal dollars to their districts. The moratorium, sponsored by Jim DeMint, a deeply conservative senator from South Carolina, would apply to the fiscal year 2009 appropriations cycle.

In a statement, Obama called the current system "broken" and said he would not be requesting any earmarks for Illinois. He has requested such earmarks in the past but also pushed for more disclosure so the public knows which member is requesting how much federal money and for what.

"We can no longer accept a process that doles out earmarks based on a member of Congress's seniority, rather than the merit of the project," Obama said. "We can no longer accept an earmarks process that has become so complicated to navigate that a municipality or non-profit group has to hire high-priced D.C. lobbyists to do it. And we can no longer accept an earmarks process in which many of the projects being funded fail to address the real needs of our country."

The move seems aimed squarely at a general election audience: Senator John McCain, the GOP nominee, has long blasted the earmark process and vowed to veto any bill that arrived on his desk full of pork.

Senator Barack Obama orders food during an impromptu stop at The Little Dooey restaurant in Columbus, Miss. today. (EMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images)

Barack Obama dropped by The Little Dooey restaurant in Columbus, Miss. today, an off-the-schedule stop during a campaign swing through Mississippi, whose primary he is expected to win tomorrow. After ordering some chicken and brisket for an aide, catfish tenders, hushpuppies, and a few other items, according to a media pool report, Obama took a few questions from reporters on New York Governor Eliot Spitzer, on apparently being on Hillary Clinton's short list for running mate, and on a comment US Representative Steve King made last week that terrorists would be "dancing in the streets" if Obama won the presidency.

On Spitzer's alleged links to a prostitution ring, Obama didn't say much. "I really haven’t seen the details of it, so I don’t know what’s going on," he said. "I’m a little in the dark."

On King, Obama said the Iowa Republican had it "backwards." "The fact that the continuation of a presence in Iraq as Senator McCain has suggested is exactly what, I think, will fan the flames of anti-American sentiment and make it more difficult for us to create a long-term and sustainable peace in the world," he said. "But I have to say that Mr. King and individuals like him thrive on offensive or controversial statements as a way to get in the papers, so I don’t take it too seriously. I would hope Senator McCain would want to distance himself from that kind of inflammatory and offensive remarks.”

Asked why he felt the need to address the vice presidential speculation today, Obama said, "The Clintons have spent all weekend talking about it, so I wanted to make sure there wasn’t any ambiguity about it."

Would he rule out being her running mate? "I am not running for vice president and don't intend to be vice president," he said. "My argument throughout this campaign is that we need to change how business is done in Washington. I don’t think Senator Clinton represents the kind of change that's needed. This has not been an empty exercise. I profoundly believe we have to shift Washington. And I believe I’m the best person to do that job."

By Scott Helman, Globe Staff

Senator Barack Obama today ridiculed recent suggestions by Hillary Clinton and her top supporters that he might make a good running mate as part of a so-called Democratic dream team for the general election.

For starters, Obama said, he has won twice as many states as Clinton, secured the most delegates, and captured a larger share of the overall popular vote to date.

"If I was in second place right now, I'd understand it," he said at a town hall meeting in Mississippi, where 33 delegates are at stake in Tuesday's primary. "But I'm in first place right now."

Obama, arguing that Clinton's campaign was trying to "hoodwink" voters into casting ballots for her, said it made no sense for the New York senator and her backers, after weeks of trying to portray him as unprepared to be commander-in-chief, to suddenly be talking him up for a role that would put him one heartbeat away from the presidency.

"I don't understand. If I'm not ready, how is it that you think that I should be such a great vice president?" Obama asked supporters in Columbus, Miss. "You can't say that he's not ready on day one -- unless he's willing to be your vice president, then he's ready on day one."

Clinton and Obama have both been asked for months -- by voters, by journalists, and by panelists in debates -- whether they would consider their rival as a running mate should they win the nomination. They tended to answer the same way, saying it would be "presumptuous" to discuss it while the race was still raging.

But in the past few weeks, Clinton and her surrogates have begun signaling that they would be open to Obama as a No. 2, the idea being that Obama would bring to the ticket the excitement about his candidacy, and that he would have a chance to apprentice under the more experienced Clinton in the White House.

Campaigning in Mississippi last week, Clinton herself said, "I've had people say, 'Well I wish I could vote for both of you. Well, that might be possible some day. But first I need your vote on Tuesday." Former president Bill Clinton, campaigning in the state over the weekend, said a Clinton-Obama pairing would be "an almost unstoppable force." And Governor Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, an integral Clinton supporter in a state that holds a key primary on April 22, said on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday, "It would be a great ticket."

On a conference call with reporters today, Hillary Clinton's communications director, Howard Wolfson, seemed to suggest to that while Obama was not quite yet vice-presidential material, he might be by the time the Democratic National Convention rolls around in late August.

"Senator Clinton will not choose any candidate who has not, at the time of the choosing, passed the national security threshold, period," Wolfson said. "But we have a long way to go between now and Denver, and it's not something that she is prepared to rule out at this point. But certainly anyone who is chosen as a vice presidential candidate needs to be prepared to be commander-in-chief."

Obama and his campaign bristle at such suggestions, accusing the Clinton campaign of trying to con voters into thinking that a vote for Clinton somehow means a vote for both Democrats.

"They are trying to hoodwink you," Obama said in Mississippi, where he is favored to win. "She is working hard to win the nomination, but I want everybody to be absolutely clear: I'm not running for vice president. I'm running for president of the United States of America. I'm running to be commander-in-chief."

President Bush and the three major candidates who want to be the next president all sent messages of support this afternoon to US troops in Kuawit as part of a MySpace event.

"Operation MySpace" is featuring the videos, along with a concert with Jessica Simpson, the Pussycat Dolls, and others at a base in Kuwait.

Here are their messages:

Bush (click here)

Clinton (click here)

Obama (click here)

McCain (click here)

Mitt Romney is getting talked up again as a possible vice presidential pick for John McCain.

But even as he argues that Romney appears the best choice, conservative columnist Fred Barnes acknowledges there's one big hitch -- the presumptive Republican nominee doesn't appear to like Romney very much.

Romney glowingly endorsed McCain following the former Massachusetts governor's withdrawal from the race after Super Tuesday, but they attacked each other aggressively during the primary campaign.

In an article posted on The Weekly Standard's website, Barnes said McCain's pool of possible VP candidates is not deep. Romney has the advantage of having run a vigorous campaign and of being vetted by the press. "Romney has three other add-ons," Barnes writes, ticking off that Romney is acceptable to social conservatives, does well in debates, and is well versed in economic issues. Romney also has allies in the Bush wing of the Republican Party, Barnes argues.

McCain, who would be 72 if elected, should pick someone younger, but someone with enough experience to go up against either Democrat Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, Barnes says.

"Romney thus appears to have the best ratio of virtues to drawbacks," Barnes concludes. "But there's just one problem: McCain doesn't like him. Just how important compatibility is -- that is something McCain will have to decide."

By Susan Milligan, Globe Staff

WASHINGTON -- An award-winning foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama resigned today after her comments in a Scottish newspaper calling Hillary Clinton a "monster'' were denounced by both presidential campaigns.

Samantha Power, a Harvard professor and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of a book on genocide, apologized for her remarks and said it would be disruptive to Obama's campaign for the Democratic nomination for her to stay on as his unpaid adviser.

"I care passionately -- obviously, too passionately -- about the Obama campaign,'' Power told the Boston Globe. "At the moment I felt I might do damage to the campaign, it was essential for me to remove myself and all the distractions that I had brought'' to the campaign.

Clinton said Obama had done "the right thing'' by accepting Power's resignation. But the episode "raises disturbing questions about what the real planning and policy positions inside the Obama campaign happen to be,'' she told reporters while campaigning in Hattiesburg, Miss.

In an interview conducted Monday and published today, Power told The Scotsman that Clinton "is a monster, too -- that is off the record -- she is stooping to anything'' to win the nomination.

This morning, Power issued an apology for the comments, and the Obama campaign said the candidate decried the description of his rival.

High-level Clinton supporters, however, called for Power to be fired, and Power resigned herself soon after the story broke in US news outlets. "This is the worst kind of politics,'' Representative Gregory Meeks, a New York Democrat and Clinton supporter, told reporters in a conference call.

Clinton spokesman Howard Wolfson noted that Bill Shaheen, Clinton's co-chairman in New Hampshire, was asked to step down after discussing Obama's admitted youthful drug use, and staffers in Iowa were fired after spreading false email rumors that he was Muslim.

Expressing "deep regret'' for the comments, Power said in a statement: "I made inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Senator Clinton and from the spirit, tenor, and purpose of the Obama campaign. And I extend my deepest apologies to Senator Clinton, Senator Obama, and the remarkable team I have worked with over these long 14 months."

Power said in a telephone interview with the Globe that she was in the middle of the Scotsman interview in London when she received an upsetting call about Clinton campaign tactics in Ohio, which the New York senator won Tuesday, along with Texas, to revive her candidacy. Tired after a red-eye flight and exasperated over reports from the field in Ohio, "I overreacted in a way that was unacceptable and deeply embarrassing,'' said Power, who is on leave from her Harvard post.

Greg Craig, a former Clinton administration adviser who is now on Obama's foreign policy team, praised Power's intellect and commitment. "She's an impressive thinker. She's a brilliant writer. She's a tremendous activist and she's a great human being. She has been damaged by this process,'' Craig said.

Power has previously complimented Clinton, telling TV interviewer Charlie Rose that Clinton "would be a great president,'' but that she was working for Obama because she thought he would do a better job in the office. "I have only met her once, and I find her very, very affable and actually very intellectually curious and not ideological,'' Power told Rose last October.

The Clinton campaign speedily sent out a fund-raising appeal attached to the Power remarks. "A small contribution now -- even as little as $5 -- will show the Obama campaign that there is a price to this kind of attack politics," Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe said in an e-mail to potential donors.

The Clinton campaign has used previous controversies to raise money; last year, the campaign used a Washington Post Style section column discussing Clinton's barely-noticeable cleavage' on the Senate floor to raise cash.

The Democratic nomination fight has grown testier since Tuesday's primaries, with Obama's camp raising questions about Clinton's tax returns and her records as first lady -- and Clinton's responding by saying Obama is "imitating Ken Starr," the independent prosecutor who tried to impeach former President Bill Clinton.

Asked the difference between calling someone a "monster'' and comparing someone to Starr, Clinton at first said the media had made the Starr reference. Reminded that it was her spokesman who had done so, Clinton said, "One is an ad hominem attack, and one is a historical reference.''

A key foreign policy adviser to Barack Obama quit today over controversial criticism of about Hillary Clinton.

Samantha Power, a professor at Harvard, resigned from the campaign after comments to a Scottish newspaper disparaging Clinton and assailing her tactics.

"She is a monster, too -- that is off the record -- she is stooping to anything," Power, a Pulitzer Prize winner for her book about America's failure to stop genocide, said in the Scotsman.

Earlier today, Power issued an apology, saying she "deeply regretted" the comments.

"It is wrong for anyone to pursue this campaign in such negative and personal terms," she said in the statement.

But after Clinton supporters called for her to step down, she stepped aside from her unpaid role.

"With deep regret, I am resigning from my role as an advisor to the Obama campaign effective today," she said in a statement. "Last Monday, I made inexcusable remarks that are at marked variance from my oft-stated admiration for Senator Clinton and from the spirit, tenor, and purpose of the Obama campaign. And I extend my deepest apologies to Senator Clinton, Senator Obama, and the remarkable team I have worked with over these long 14 months."

(Watch a report on the dust-up on NBC's "Today" show here.)

UPDATE: Power, in an interview Thursday on BBC during her ill-fated trip to England, talked at length about Obama's plan to withdraw US combat troops from Iraq within 16 months of taking office. She called it a "best-case scenario" and said he would revisit the pledge after taking office.

Power is the second foreign policy adviser to give Obama heartburn.

Earlier this week, Susan Rice, a former Clinton administration official, told a TV interviewer that neither Obama nor Clinton is ready to take the proverbial 3 a.m. international crisis phone call in the White House -- not exactly on message.

Just when you thought the Democratic presidential race couldn't get more bizarre, comes this.

For months, the campaigns and the Democratic National Committee -- not to mention the media -- have penciled June 7 on their calendars for the Puerto Rico caucuses as the last contest of the nomination campaign.

But now Roberto Prats, party chairman in the US territory, tells the Associated Press that the contest has actually been long scheduled for June 1 and attributed erroneous reports that list June 7 as the date to a typing mistake in a document sent to the national party.

Huh?

And, by the way, Prats said today, the state party central committee decided Thursday night to hold a primary instead of a caucus to encourage more voters to participate -- and just perhaps get Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to campaign on the island.

Puerto Rico's primary, with a significant 55 delegates at stake, could end up being far from the end. Montana and South Dakota holds their primaries on June 3, and it's looking increasingly possible that Florida and Michigan could do do-overs in the following week.

John McCain, who numerically clinched the Republican nomination this week, now appears to have the field entirely to himself.

Mike Huckabee withdrew on Tuesday night, after McCain swept the four primaries to reach the 1,191 delegates needed. Now, Ron Paul, the last remaining candidate, is telling supporters that he can't achieve victory "in the conventional sense."

Still, he urged supporters to help him rack up as many delegates as possible in the remaining primaries and caucuses to help further his message of liberty.

"We must remember elections are short-term efforts, revolutions are long-term projects," he said in a lengthy video posted late Thursday on his website.

Paul, who held on to his Texas congressional seat on Tuesday, became an Internet money machine, with his supporters raising far more money for him than several better-known candidates. He also won quite a bit of attention during debates as the only Republican candidate opposed to the Iraq war.

But Paul's campaign failed to translate that success and notoriety into votes, only reaching double digits in a couple of contests.

Still, Paul said in the video, his success "surpassed all my expectations."

"Much good has been accomplished this year," he said.

Laying out the contours of the presidential race to come, Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama bemoaned the latest dire jobs report out this morning, while Republican John McCain focused on the slaying of eight students at a Jerusalem seminary on Thursday.

McCain, whose strength is foreign policy and national security, called the shooting a "heinous massacre" and strongly defended Israel's right to defend itself.

“I strongly condemn this heinous attack against innocent students," he said in a statement issued by his campaign. "No cause justifies wanton murder. This gruesome attack once again makes clear to the world that Israel faces extremists whose cause is not peace but the slaughter of Israelis."

The Clinton and Obama camps, meanwhile, focused on the loss of 63,000 jobs, the most since March 2003.

"The second straight month in a row of job loss is the biggest drop in five years and brings more bad news for an economy showing signs of recession and more heartache and struggle for the Americans I meet every day who are looking for work, can't pay the bills, or are worried that their job will be the next to disappear," Obama's statement said.

"They can't afford John McCain's promise of four more years of the very same failed Bush economic policies that have failed us for the last eight, and they can't afford another politician who promises solutions but won't change the divisive, lobbyist-driven politics in Washington. As president, I'll bring both parties together and take on the money and influence of Washington so we can restore balance to our economy, and I'll create millions of new jobs with good wages by investing in infrastructure and renewable energy."

Clinton's statement didn't mention either McCain or Obama. Instead, it highlighted her policy prescriptions to extend unemployment insurance, help homeowners in the mortgage crisis, and invest in "green-collar" jobs. She also noted that gas prices are rising with record oil prices this week.

"These are painful reminders that we need a president who is ready to be a steward of our economy, starting on day one," Clinton said. "Because behind these statistics, every job lost means there is another family missing a paycheck, another parent worried about providing for their kids, and another family in danger of losing their home."

Just when you thought "NAFTA-gate" -- the flap over reassuring remarks a Barack Obama adviser reportedly made about NAFTA to Canadian officials -- couldn't get more confusing, it just did.

The Globe and Mail, the Canadian daily, published this story yesterday suggesting that someone in the Hillary Clinton orbit told Canadian officials not to fret about the anti-NAFTA rhetoric the Democratic candidates were dispensing liberally on the campaign trail. Canada cares about such things because a change to NAFTA would affect trade between the two countries.

This is exactly what Obama's adviser, Austan Goolsbee, stands accused of doing: Telling Canadian officials in an informal meeting that the anti-NAFTA rhetoric was merely "political positioning," in the words of a government official who wrote up a memo about it. Clinton and her campaign hit Obama hard over this, accusing of Obama of saying one thing about NAFTA publicly and another thing privately.

Team Clinton has categorically denied that anyone from its campaign did the same thing.

A pair of new polls demonstrates the challenge facing John McCain to keep the White House in Republican hands.

An Associated Press-Ipsos survey released this afternoon showed that more people say they are Democrats than said so before the presidential contests began, while the number of Republicans has remained flat. The poll showed 52 percent call themselves Democrats, up from 45 percent in an AP-Ipsos survey in mid-December. Thirty-five percent say they are Republicans, about the same as December's 37 percent.

The poll also showed that the number of independents and moderates satisfied with President Bush and the country's direction has dipped to record or near-record lows. McCain did well among independents in the GOP primaries, and is counting on their support in November.

Yesterday, an ABC News/Washington Post poll showed McCain trailing both potential Democratic nominees. Barack Obama led the Arizona senator 52 percent to 40 percent, and Clinton led him 50 percent to 44 percent in hypothetical matchups.

For all the talk about voters crossing party lines this presidential campaign, not many donors are doing so.

Only 2.5 percent of the individuals who have contributed more than $200 toward the 2008 presidential race are "double givers," having given at least a third of their contributions to each major party, a campaign finance watchdog group reported this afternoon.

And among the remaining major candidates, only a few hundred of their supporters are giving to the other party as well, the Center for Responsive Politics said.

Republican John McCain has collected the most money from members of the party opposite, $1.1 million from 1,200 Democrats, or about 3 percent of the money he has raised from people who are named in his campaign finance reports, according to the center's analysis.

Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton have each collected about 1 percent of their money from donors who otherwise favor Republicans -- $986,000 for him and $875,300 for her. Obama has about 1,800 Republicans on his donor list, while Clinton has 1,200.

(For the center's full website on presidential donor demographics, click here.)

Besides crucial momentum, all-important money is also coming Hillary Clinton's way after her comeback Tuesday, when she won three of four primaries, including the megastates of Ohio and Texas.

UPDATE: Her campaign said today that it raised $4 million online in the 24 hours after the victories -- one of its biggest hauls of the campaign yet.

UPDATE: Barack Obama, however, is still leading the fund-raising battle. His campaign reported today that it brought in a record $55 million during February, compared to about $34 million for Clinton.

Let's get ready to rumble!

Actually, the war of words between the Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns is already ratcheting up today.

Hitting back at Clinton after her attacks helped her revive her presidential hopes with wins in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday, Obama's camp on Wednesday questioned why she hadn't released her income tax returns, asking what she was hiding.

The Clinton camp responded by referring to Tony Rezko, the former Obama fund-raiser on trial on unrelated federal corruption charges.

This morning, it peddled a video of Susan Rice, an Obama foreign policy adviser defending him against a Clinton TV ad in Texas questioning his commander-in-chief readiness with the proverbial red phone ringing in the White House at 3 a.m.
"They're both not ready to have that 3 a.m. phone call," Rice said on MSNBC.

Later today, the Clinton camp sent out a memo to reporters attacking Obama for criticizing Clinton.

"Sen. Obama’s decision to go explicitly negative suggests that he is unable to make an affirmative case for his candidacy beyond ad hominem attacks," the memo said. "....Apparently, the Obama campaign's idea of new politics is to recycle the same old Republican attacks on Senator Clinton that have failed for years. Imitating Ken Starr is not the way to win the Democratic nomination.

That drew this response from Obama spokesman Bill Burton:

“It is absurd that after weeks of badgering the media to 'vet' Senator Obama, the Clinton campaign believes that they should be held to an entirely different standard. We don’t believe that expecting candidates for the presidency to disclose their tax returns somehow constitutes Ken Starr-tactics, but the kind of transparency and accountability that Americans are looking for and that’s been missing in Washington for far too long. And if Senator Clinton doesn't think that the Republicans will ask these very same questions, then she’s not as ready to go toe-to-toe with John McCain as she claims."

And it's still nearly seven weeks until the next big showdown, the Pennsylvania primary on April 22.

Despite his losses on Tuesday, Barack Obama continues to pick up support from superdelegates, narrowing the gap with Hillary Clinton among the group who could decide the Democratic nominee.

The latest is Ian Carleton, chairman of the state Democratic Party in Vermont, the only state Obama won on Tuesday.

"Vermonters overwhelmingly embraced Senator Obama's message of hope and change in our state's primary earlier this week, and so it is with great excitement and optimism that I pledge my support for Barack Obama," Carleton, a Burlington lawyer, said in a statement issued by the Obama campaign.

"Since the very beginning of his campaign I, along with so many Vermonters, have been deeply moved by Senator Obama's commitment to moving beyond the negative partisan rhetoric that has sadly characterized our nation's politics for so long. His leadership and vision for a more productive and decent future is exactly what this nation needs at this moment in history."

Obama leads among pledged delegates -- those decided by primaries and caucuses -- but the Obama and Clinton campaigns agree that neither will reach the magic 2,025 number without the superdelegates, nearly 800 elected officials, party leaders, and others who are free agents and can pick whichever candidate they want. About 270 of them are still uncommitted, according to the Associated Press.

Barack Obama has the cover of Rolling Stone magazine, but Hillary Clinton gets Time.

Both Democratic contenders get rather flattering billing. Rolling Stone declares Obama "A New Hope" and Time calls Clinton "The Fighter."

Which pretty much sums up their core messages at this stage of the nomination fight, which shows no sign of ending soon after Clinton's comeback on Tuesday.

And the demographics of each magazine's readers probably fits each candidate as well -- younger and more upscale for Rolling Stone, more middle-America for Time.

In Rolling Stone's endorsement of Obama, editor and publisher Jann S. Wenner calls him a politician with rare gifts who "can unite a deeply divided nation" and appeals to the "better angels" in Americans.

In one of the articles in Time, Joe Klein reports that one reason for Clinton's resurgence is that "tiny fissures were starting to appear in Obama's shining armor."

It's a lingering issue about presumptive Republican nominee John McCain -- his temper, legendary among some former and current colleagues in the US Senate.

Former GOP presidential candidate Bob Dole came to McCain's defense -- sort of. On CNN's "Larry King Live" on Wednesday night, Dole acknowledged that McCain has a temper, but said that the Arizona senator "can control it" -- as he has during the campaign so far.

"It's not a problem any more," Dole added.

The former Kansas senator, a World War II hero, said he gave McCain some slack because of the torture and deprivations he endured as a prisoner of war during the Vietnam War. "I always sort of rationalized that the poor guy had been locked up," Dole said.

A Globe report in January on McCain's temper included a much-repeated quote from Senator Thad Cochran of Mississippi: "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hot-headed. He loses his temper and he worries me."

Those concerns, at the time, helped lead Cochran to endorse former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. But after Romney dropped out last month, Cochran endorsed McCain, despite any worries.

PHILADELPHIA -- The most complicated family act in American politics has a new attraction: the only child's one-woman show.

"I'm happy to talk about anything," Chelsea Clinton said Wednesday afternoon to a group of several hundred students hustled in the cold in a courtyard at the University of Pennsylvania. "I'd like to have a conversation this evening -- and I'll take as many as I can until the light goes from the sky."

Clinton, who will not speak to the press, has become a master of the town-hall-style meeting. In a breaking voice she credited to a mild sickness, Chelsea showed confidence in addressing policy and her parents' common command for specifics: Chelsea said her mother would replace the lightbulbs in 500,000 federal buildings, extend hate-crimes coverage to include transsexuals, and flatly "disagrees with General Petraeus" on strategy in Iraq.

"Somebody asked me if my mother had a view on the type of plastic used in seatbelts," Clinton recalled from a previous appearance. "I didn’t have an answer to that one."

Indeed, Clinton showed even greater evidence of having inherited her parents' skill in her deft avoidance of difficult questions. When asked where she disagreed with the family’s current candidate, Clinton said the answer was a private matter -- but tantalizingly, for a child raised in a post-ideological household, cast it in ideological terms. "There are some issues I'm more liberal than my mother on and some issues I’m more conservative than my mother on," she said.

Asked to respond to criticisms that her mother's election would prolong a two-decade streak of governance by Bushes and Clintons, Chelsea managed an only child's greatest feat: triangulating between her parents.

"You shouldn’t vote for or against my mom because of my dad," she said.

Karl Rove has been like Darth Vader in the Democratic presidential race -- as in, that's an ad that Karl Rove would like, or that's the kind of attack in Karl Rove's playbook.

But today, Hillary Clinton actually thanked Rove, the former political strategist for President Bush.

Rove is now an analyst for Fox News and while Clinton was being interviewed on "Fox & Friends" about her primary wins Tuesday, he handed a note to the host pointing out that more presidents have been born in October than any other month.

Clinton happily said that, yes, she was born in October. "Thank you, Karl," she said, a big grin on her face. "I mean, the omens are just stacking up. What can I say?"

And Barack Obama's campaign is starting to hit back.

The first issue: Hillary Clinton's tax returns, which she has said she won't release until and when she becomes the Democratic nominee.

"The Clinton campaign today maintained that 'the vetting of Barack Obama has just begun,' " the Obama said in a memo sent to reporters and others. "The truth is, more than a year into this campaign, some very simple vetting of Hillary Clinton has yet to start.

"In the face of her unwillingness to release her tax returns, Hillary Clinton has made the false case in this campaign that she is more electable because she has been fully vetted. When it comes to her personal finances, Senator Clinton’s refusal to release her taxes returns denies the media and the American people the opportunity to even begin that process. Though her campaign has tried to kick the issue down the road, Democratic voters deserve to know, right now, why it is she is hiding the information in her tax returns from last year."

The memo raises questions, including whether the Clintons used any tax shelters to reduce their tax bill, how much in taxes they paid for household help, and how much they gave to charity.

Obama was put on the defensive in the closing days before Tuesday's primaries over a meeting a campaign adviser had with Canadian government officials on the North American Free Trade Agreement and Obama's ties to a former fund-raiser whose federal corruption trial started Monday. Late-deciding voters in both Ohio and Texas went for Clinton.

UPDATED: The Clinton campaign highlighted the fund-raiser in its response, saying that 20 years of Clinton's tax returns and 15 years of financial disclosure statements are already public.

"Faced with many legitimate questions about Senator Obama's long-time relationship with indicted political fixer Tony Rezko, the Obama campaign has chosen to lash out at Senator Clinton," Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson said in a statement. "Instead of making false attacks, we urge Senator Obama to release all relevant financial and other information related to indicted political fixer Tony Rezko."

UPDATE: Terry McAuliffe, Clinton's campaign chairman, just said on MSNBC that she will release the return around the time of the tax filing deadline on April 15 and before the pivotal primary in Pennsylvania on April 22.

A Democratic National Committee spokeswoman brushed off questions today about what to do about Florida and Michigan, states which Hillary Clinton won, but which held contests that weren't fully contested and didn't award any delegates.

Spokeswoman Karen Finney said on MSNBC that the state parties could hold "do-over" votes or submit proposals to the credentials committee for the national convention to get the delegates seated. "Both options are still on the table," she said.

The Florida and Michigan Democratic parties were penalized for holding their primaries before when the DNC allowed. The candidates didn't campaign in the states, and in Michigan, Clinton, but not Barack Obama, was on the ballot.

The Republican parties in Florida and Michigan also lost some of their delegates for holding primaries early. John McCain, however, clinched the nomination Tuesday night, so seating the delegates would be more symbolic.

Clinton has been increasingly lobbying to have her wins rewarded, arguing that Democrats can't afford to disenfranchise two states crucial to the party's hopes in November.

Finney also said that another 10 states are still to vote, suggesting that the nomination could be decided without having to settle the Florida and Michigan question. "We certainly want to let voters have their say," she said.

UPDATE: Republican Governor Charlie Crist of Florida and Democratic Governor Jennifer Granholm of Michigan issued a joint statement this afternoon calling on their respective parties to seat the states' delegates at the national conventions.

"Every vote should count," Crist said at a press conference.

But the governors didn't specify how that should be done. Crist endorsed John McCain just before the Florida primary, giving him a big boost. Granholm is supporting Clinton.

Pennsylvania's Democratic chairman this afternoon compared the campaign whirlwind about to hit his state to the dog catching up to a milk truck.

Pennsylvania's primary on April 22, with 158 delegates, is the biggest left on the nomination calendar and appears even more crucial after Hillary Clinton won the primaries in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday and reinvigorated her campaign.

T.J. Rooney said on MSNBC that it's exciting for Keystone State Democrats to have a voice in the race.

He also said that the state favors Hillary Clinton because of its demographics -- lots of blue-collar voters like Ohio -- and because only registered Democrats can vote -- Barack Obama has consistently fared better among independents and Republicans.

"Pennsylvania sets up very well for Senator Clinton," he said.

Polls last week, however, showed Obama narrowing Clinton's lead to between 4 and 6 percentage points.

Hillary Clinton wasn't the only presidential candidate fighting for their political life in Tuesday's primaries in Ohio and Texas.

Both Democrat Dennis Kucinich and Republican Ron Paul survived challenges for their congressional seats in which opponents argued that they were ignoring their constituents to seek the presidency.

Kucinich, who dropped out of the nomination race to focus on his House seat, bested four foes in his Cleveland district. He still faces a Republican in November to win re-election.

Paul, who focused on his House campaign in recent weeks, easily won his race in Texas and faces no Democratic opposition in November.

John McCain went to the White House today for lunch with President Bush -- and for his formal blessing.

The Arizona senator, who hopes to succeed him in the White House, mathematically clinched the Republican nomination by sweeping Tuesday's primaries.

UPDATED: Bush said he was proud to support McCain, calling him a man with both "determination to defeat the enemy" and a "big heart" who cares about the less fortunate.

The president said that McCain showed "incredible courage and perseverance" to survive, come back, and secure the nomination. "That's exactly what we need as president," Bush said.

McCain said he was "honored and humbled" to receive the endorsement from someone for whom he said he holds "great admiration." He also said he wants Bush to campaign with him as much as possible, and Bush said he will help raise money and appear as much as he wants.

McCain said he received congratulatory calls Tuesday night from Democrats Barack Obama Hillary Clinton and pledged a "respectful campaign."

Asked about voters' thirst for change, Bush replied, "Every candidate's got to say change." But he said there's one thing that's essential not to change: the fight against terrorism. "There's still an enemy that lurks," Bush said.

The president also deflected questions about whether his unpopularity could hurt McCain's candidacy.

"They're not going to be voting for me," he said. "It's not about me. I've done my bit."

Still, McCain faces a delicate dance.

He has tied himself to key Bush administration policy, including on the Iraq war and on extending tax cuts. But both the Democratic contenders are already warning that a McCain presidency would be equivalent to a third Bush term, when polls show that voters want change.

A Democratic group is already launching a TV ad campaign -- independent from the candidates -- that says that McCain would be the "McSame." The ad shows McCain in a thumbs-up pose, but then puts the head of Bush on the body, and the heads of Bush and McCain alternate as the narrator says they hold the same position on Iraq, the economy, healthcare, and energy policy.

"Tell John McCain we need a new direction," the announcer concludes. Watch the ad below:

One of the telling themes out of Tuesday's primaries is that Hillary Clinton appeared to rebuild her core coalition -- working-class voters, whites and Hispanics, and, perhaps above all, women.

EMILY's List, a political action committee that helps female candidates and is supporting Clinton, just put out an analysis today that suggests that women increased their share of the Democratic electorate in all four states that voted Tuesday.

In the key state of Ohio, women made up 59 percent of primary voters, up 7 percentage points from 2004. In the other big prize, Texas, women comprised 57 percent of primary voters, an increase of 4 percentage points from four years ago, according to the analysis of exit polling data. She defeated Barack Obama among women, with bigger margins among white women, according to the exit polls conducted for the television networks and the Associated Press.

"Once again women made up the backbone of Hillary Clinton's support in her critical victories in Texas, Ohio, and Rhode Island," Ellen R. Malcolm, president of EMILY's List, said in a statement. "Women have been Sen. Clinton’s most consistent and committed backers from the beginning and they will see her through to the end and victory."

Her campaign thrown a lifeline by voters in Ohio and Texas, Hillary Clinton made the rounds of the morning TV shows to claim momentum.

His winning streak stopped in its tracks, Barack Obama went on the same shows to emphasize he's still ahead in delegates.

The contours of the Democratic nomination race ahead are emerging after Tuesday's primaries changed the dynamics, yet again.

While Obama has won more states, Clinton argues that she has won many of the big states -- California, New Jersey, and New York, as well as Ohio and Texas -- that a Democrat must win to wrest the White House in November.

Obama called that cherry-picking, and his campaign argues it will be nearly impossible for Clinton to catch up in pledged delegates. According to the Associated Press tally, Obama had a total of 1,477 delegates, including superdelegates, while Clinton had 1,391 delegates. It takes 2,025 to win the nomination.

Clinton sought again to claim she will be a stronger candidate on national security against presumptive Republican nominee John McCain -- an argument made most vividly in the 3 a.m.-and-your-children-are-sleeping TV ad that apparently had impact on late-deciding voters in Texas.

Obama's campaign is hinting that it will start responding with more criticism of Clinton.

Perhaps the most intriguing tidbit came when Clinton was asked on CBS's "The Early Show" whether she and Obama should run together -- the so-called dream ticket that some Democrats want. "That may be where this is headed, but of course we have to decide who is on the top of ticket," she replied. "I think the people of Ohio very clearly said that it should be me."

By Scott Helman and Susan Milligan, Globe Staff

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Senator Hillary Clinton breathed new life into her presidential bid last night with key victories in the Ohio and Texas primaries, ending Barack Obama's month-long run of momentum and adding yet another twist to the historic contest for the Democratic nomination.

Clinton, who also won in Rhode Island, brought her campaign back from the brink: She had not won a contest since Super Tuesday, and was facing increasing pressure to consider dropping out of the race. Last night she told relieved supporters in Columbus, Ohio, that the victories proved that voters wanted the contest to go on.

"The people of Ohio have said it loudly and clearly," she said. "We're going on, we're going strong, and we're going all the way."

Her backers chanted jubilantly, "Yes she will!"

"For everyone across the country and in Ohio who has been counted out, but refused to be knocked out, for everyone who stumbled but who stood right back up, for everyone who works hard and never gives up, this one's for you," Clinton said.

In Ohio, Clinton led 55 percent to 43 percent with nearly 90 percent of precincts reporting by early this morning. In Texas, she led 51 percent to 47 percent with more than three-fourths of precincts reporting.

The Texas primary was only one part of the vote there yesterday. Two-thirds of the state's delegates will be awarded based on the outcome of that vote, but the other third will be allocated based on the results of caucuses that Texas Democrats held after the polls closed last night. Those results were still be tallied early this morning.

Obama, meanwhile, picked up another win, handily beating Clinton in yesterday’s Vermont primary.

Clinton's triumphs alter the dynamics of a race after Obama had won 11 straight contests. But it was not immediately apparent what her victory will mean for deciding an eventual nominee.

Her campaign a couple weeks ago predicted it would be ahead in the delegate race by this morning, a goal it has not come close to reaching. What seemed evident last night, given the close contests and the way Democrats allocate delegates proportionally was that the results would not significantly change Obama's current overall delegate lead of more than 100.

"No matter what happens tonight, we have nearly the same delegate lead as we did this morning," Obama told supporters in San Antonio last night. "And we are on our way to winning this nomination."

Amid the uncertainty in the Democratic race, the Republicans yesterday finally removed any doubt about who their nominee will be: Senator John McCain of Arizona, a 71-year-old war hero and long-time Washington fixture, officially sealed the GOP nomination by handily beating former governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas in all four states.

Obama, who has often been mocked by both Clinton and McCain as a politician capable only of giving nice speeches, used his Texas address last night to push back.

"John McCain and Hillary Clinton have echoed each other, dismissing this call for change as eloquent but empty, speeches not solutions," Obama said. "And yet they know, or they should know, that it's a call that did not begin with my words."

It is the voters -- those without healthcare, those struggling in the economy, and those facing foreclosure on their homes -- who are the ones asserting that they want to write a "new chapter in the American story," he said.

"You can call it many things, but you can't call it empty," Obama said.

Obama and Clinton entered yesterday’s contests with distinctly different objectives. Obama was looking for a knockout punch, hoping a win in Ohio or Texas might force Clinton to pull out of the race. Clinton, who for weeks has counted on the two states to put her back into contention, was looking for a comeback in a fierce nomination battle that has already raged through 40 states, awarded more than 2,600 delegates, and gone through two full months of voting.

Now, the race moves to Wyoming, which holds caucuses Saturday, and Mississippi, which holds a primary Tuesday. The Clinton campaign is already downplaying its prospects in the two states, and instead pointing toward Pennsylvania, which holds a primary April 22 and is the biggest state still to vote.

A total of 611 pledged delegates — those won from caucuses or primaries — are still to be divvied up before the national convention in late August. By any measure, Clinton needs to win the remaining contests by dauntingly large margins to catch Obama in the race for pledged delegates, which his campaign argues should determine the nominee.

Obama is also closing the gap with Clinton among superdelegates, the 796 elected officials, party leaders, and others who could hold the balance of power because neither is expected to reach the 2,025 needed without them.

Hillary Clinton has been projected the winner in the Texas primary, enhancing her comeback in the Democratic race.

The victory would give her three of the four contests today and could give her a big boost in momentum for the fight ahead.

By Peter S. Canellos, Globe Staff

WASHINGTON — Barack Obama woke up yesterday morning with hopes of vanquishing his last remaining rival and claiming the Democratic presidential nomination. He ended the day with two stubborn opponents: Hillary Clinton — vowing to continue her campaign after big victories in Rhode Island and Ohio — and a long-delayed but growing media backlash against his candidacy.

The second one may be more threatening than the first.

Despite breaking Obama’s string of 11 victories, Clinton is likely to gain only a modest boost in delegates and will have a hard time erasing his lead in delegates. And the Democratic party leaders who make up the party’s ‘‘superdelegates’’ will feel pressure to validate the will of the people, meaning that Obama remains the front-runner for the nomination.

But for the first time in his improbable rise, Obama himself became the main issue in the campaign — and the voters’ response wasn’t encouraging.

Obama had built up a 75,000-vote lead in early voting in Texas, only to see Clinton erase it with a strong comeback in the last few days; exit polls showed that late-deciding voters chose her over him by a 2-1 ratio.

A last-minute Clinton TV ad questioning Obama’s ability to maintain national security may have helped her; so too did his own mishandling of a controversy over his aide’s alleged comments to Canadian officials suggesting Obama wasn’t serious about renegotiating the North American Free Trade Agreement.

Clinton, in what may be her first memorable phrase of the long campaign, accused Obama of giving voters the old ‘‘wink-wink’’ — promising something he didn’t intend to deliver. And Obama suddenly was on the defensive.

''It seems clear that Clinton had the better of the last few days of the campaign,’’ said Dante Scala, political scientist a political science professor at the University of New Hampshire. As a result, he said, Clinton is unlikely to face as much pressure to withdraw from the race, setting up another potential showdown in Pennsylvania on April 22.

The long wait for Pennsylvania will give both campaigns a chance to rearm themselves with money and issues. But compared to previous chapters in this drawn-out epic of an election, Obama election year, Obama will almost certainly be receiving greater scrutiny than Clinton.

For two months, the Illinois senator dominated the national zeitgeist with his ‘‘yes, we can’’ message of hope and change, a phenomenon celebrated in YouTube videos and T-shirts. But his recent return to earth coincided with the settling of the TV writers’ writer’s strike and the reemergence of late-night comedy shows as a political force.

Comics are quick to impose a story line and make it stick: Their jokes spring from common knowledge about the candidates — John McCain’s age, Clinton’s marital troubles, Mike Huckabee’s frequent professions of faith.

‘‘Saturday Night Live,’’ the granddaddy of all political comedy shows, chose to build its Obama narrative around the idea that reporters were completely in his thrall. And its skits — on both Feb. 23 and March 1 — presented Obama as an amiable guy inflated to hero status by a worshipful media.

Clinton, by contrast, was presented as annoying but indefatigable — a scrappy underdog whose complaints of unfairness got laughed off by the media. As if to drive home the point, comedienne Tina Fey used the Feb. 23 ‘‘Weekend Update’’ segment to deliver a thinly veiled exhortation to young women to quit Obama and get with the Hillary bandwagon.

‘‘In less than a minute, the SNL skit crystallized Hillary’s complaints [about unfair media treatment] and upgraded them from mere media inside baseball to the conventional wisdom,’’ said Matthew Felling, the former media analyst for CBS.com.

Clinton was quick to seize on the skit as proof of her point — mentioning it in last week’s debate in Ohio and then flying to New York for a long cameo on the show last Saturday.

The SNL appearance, followed by a stint on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on Monday night, seemed to clear some of the gloom from around Clinton; her poll numbers began improving late last week.

Still, her wins in Ohio and Rhode Island and her battle for Texas only put her where the polls had had her a few weeks earlier, before Obama’s campaign blanketed the states with ads and staffers.

Rhode Island and Ohio were her turf, and she held it. She can feel relieved to be going on to Pennsylvania, but Obama remains the main focus of the race.

If he can handle it.

By Scott Helman and Susan Milligan, Globe Staff

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Senator Hillary Clinton breathed new life into her presidential bid tonight by claiming a key victory in the Ohio Democratic primary, ending Barack Obama's month-long run of momentum and adding yet another twist to the historic contest for the nomination.

Clinton's win in Ohio as well as in Rhode Island brought her campaign back from the brink: She had not won a contest since Super Tuesday, and was facing increasing pressure to consider dropping out of the race. Tonight she told relieved, raucous supporters in Columbus, Ohio, that the victories proved that voters wanted the contest to go on.

"The people of Ohio have said it loudly and clearly," she said. "We're going on, we're going strong, and we're going all the way."

"Yes she will!" her backers chanted jubilantly.

"For everyone across the country and in Ohio who has been counted out, but refused to be knocked out, for everyone who stumbled but who stood right back up, for everyone who works hard and never gives up, this one's for you," Clinton said.

The other closely watched contest tonight, a primary and caucus in Texas, remained unresolved as the battle between Clinton and Obama went down to the wire. Obama, meanwhile, picked up another win, too, handily beating Clinton in the Vermont primary.

Clinton's triumph in Ohio -- she led 57 percent to 41 percent with nearly two-thirds of precincts reporting -- alters the dynamics of a race in which Obama had won 11 straight contests. But it was not immediately apparent what her victory will mean for deciding an eventual nominee.

Her campaign a couple weeks ago predicted it would be ahead in the delegate race by this morning, a goal it has not come close to reaching. What seemed evident last night, given the close contests and the way Democrats allocate delegates proportionally was that the results would not significantly change Obama's current overall delegate lead of more than 100.

"No matter what happens tonight, we have nearly the same delegate lead as we did this morning," Obama told supporters in San Antonio tonight. "And we are on our way to winning this nomination."

Amid the uncertainty in the Democratic race, the Republicans finally removed any doubt about who their nominee will be: Senator John McCain of Arizona, a 71-year-old war hero and long-time Washington fixture, officially sealed the GOP nomination by handily beating former governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas in all four states.

Obama and Clinton entered today’s contests with distinctly different objectives. Obama was looking for a knockout punch, hoping a win in Ohio or Texas might force Clinton to pull out of the race.

Clinton, who for weeks has counted on Texas and Ohio to put her back into contention, was looking for a comeback in a fierce nomination battle that has already raged through 40 states, awarded more than 2,600 delegates, and gone through two full months of voting.

Now, the race moves to Wyoming, which holds caucuses Saturday, and Mississippi, which holds a primary Tuesday. The Clinton campaign is already downplaying its prospects in the two states, and instead pointing toward Pennsylvania, which holds a primary April 22 and is the biggest state still to vote.

A total of 611 pledged delegates — those won from caucuses or primaries — are still to be divvied up before the national convention in late August. By any measure, Clinton needs to win the remaining contests by dauntingly large margins to catch Obama in the race for pledged delegates, which his campaign asserts should determine the nominee.

Obama is also closing the gap with Clinton among superdelegates, the 796 elected officials, party leaders, and others who could hold the balance of power because neither is expected to reach the 2,025 needed without them.

In Ohio, where the two candidates tangled over trade and the right prescriptions for the mortgage crisis, 61 percent of voters surveyed in exit polls said the economy was the most important issue — the highest percentage of any of the 25 states where exit polls have been conducted for the TV networks and the Associated Press. Eight in 10 Ohio voters also said international trade takes more jobs from the state than it creates.

Obama seemed to close the gap with Clinton in the Buckeye State over the past two weeks, but in the end it was not enough to overcome Clinton's continued strength with white working-class voters, her longtime base. She got a big boost from Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, who helped her shore up votes in the rural, poor southeastern part of the state from where he hails.

Ohio exit polls also suggested a deep racial divide: White voters chose Clinton 65 percent to 33 percent, while black voters went for Obama 86 percent to 14 percent. Clinton also fared better among lower-income voters and voters who belong to union households — despite Obama’s string of endorsements from powerful labor groups.

In Texas, exit polls suggested that Obama was swamping Clinton among African-American voters, but that Clinton was leading 2 to 1 among Latinos -- trends that have played out in other states. Two-thirds of the delegates in Texas will be awarded based on the results of the primary; the other third are allocated based on the results of caucuses that Texas Democrats held after the polls closed last night.

There were scattered instances of voting issues in both states. Ballot shortages and bad weather in Ohio forced election officials to extend voting hours in some precincts there. In Texas, there were widespread reports of confusion and disorganization as caucus sites were overwhelmed by huge turnout. Clinton operatives accused Obama supporters of improperly seizing control over several caucus locations.

Barack Obama, his winning streak stopped in Rhode Island and Texas, congratulated Hillary Clinton for a "hard-fought" camapign in both states.

"We are in the middle of a very close election," he told supporters in an outdoor rally in San Antonio. But, he added, "No matter what happens tonight we have have the same delegate lead this morning and we are on the way to winning this nomination."

An ebullient Hillary Clinton, handed a lifeline by voters in Ohio and Rhode Island tonight, declared that her presidential bid is alive and well and "going all the way" to the nomination.

"Thank you, Ohio," she told raucous supporters in Columbus, Ohio, taking the stage to confetti flying through the air.

"For everyone across the country and in Ohio who has been counted out, but refused to be knocked out, for everyone who stumbled but who stood right back up, for everyone who works hard and never gives up, this one's for you."

She called Ohio a bellwether state and said that no Democrat who has won the presidency has done so without winning the Ohio primary first.

"Yes, she can," supporters chanted.

She is still hoping for another big win tonight in Texas, where she and Barack Obama are still neck-and-neck tonight.

By Sasha Issenberg, Globe staff

DALLAS — John McCain formally clinched the Republican nomination — and took charge of the party’s national campaign machine — as four states, including two of the nation’s largest, all went into his column.

Former governor Mike Huckabee of Arkansas dropped out of the race and pledged his support to McCain after the outcome became clear.

McCain won primaries in Ohio, Texas, Rhode Island, and Vermont by overwhelming margins, according to projections by news organizations.

The senator from Arizona entered the day with 1,014 elected delegates, according to an estimate released today by the Associated Press. The wins in the four primaries raised his total well above the 1,191 needed to win the nomination.

‘‘It’s a very humbling experience,’’ McCain said after the scope of his victory became clear. ‘‘I do not underestimate the significance nor the size of the challenge.’’ He was heading to Washington to visit the White House and accept a show of support from President Bush.

‘‘The big battle’s to come,’’ McCain said of the general election. He said he had no plan to resign from the Senate to campaign, but planned to consider such a move.

‘‘Thank you Texas, Ohio, Vermont, and Rhode Island,’’ McCain told supporters at his victory celebration in Dallas. ‘‘I am very grateful for the broad support you have given me.’’

He declared that he had won enough delegates to ‘‘claim with confidence, humility, and a great deal of responsibility that I will be the nominee.’’

In his concession speech, Huckabee said he called McCain to congratulate him and offer his support for a united party.

Huckabee said he was proud that he and McCain ran civil and honorable campaigns. ‘‘It’s been one we will always be able to say we ran with honor,’’ he told supporters in Irving, Texas.

Huckabee had said repeatedly that he would remain in the race until McCain had earned enough delegates required to win the nomination when the party calls a roll of states at its September convention in St. Paul.

Before today’s primaries, McCain led handily in polls in all four states and was expected to claim a large share of the 256 delegates awarded between them. Media surveys of the total delegate count have differed throughout the campaign, however, leaving it unclear whether a clear consensus about McCain’s standing would emerge after the day’s ballots had been counted.

Huckabee’s concession ended an increasingly quixotic challenge. Despite continued evidence of disenchantment toward McCain among some Republican activists, Huckabee was unable to present himself as a viable alternative to conservative voters. He was far behind in the delegate race, with a total of 257.

Huckabee, who dared McCain to debate before Tuesday's vote and was largely ignored by his rival, had done little to draw distinctions between their candidacies in recent days.

McCain campaign workers prepared a banner with the magic number of delegates — 1,191 — for his victory celebration in Dallas.

For McCain, who declared after winning Wisconsin’s primary two weeks ago that ‘‘I will be our party’s nominee for president,’’ formally securing the necessary delegates will have important benefits beyond the symbolic as he begins to structure a campaign for the general election.

As the presumptive nominee, McCain aides said this weekend, McCain he can begin coordinating his political efforts with the White House and the Republican National Committee, which serves as the party’ permanent apparatus in Washington.

The aides said that they expect Mike Duncan, a longtime party operative, to remain in place as the national party chairman.

At a press conference On Monday in Phoenix, McCain said that once when he cleared the delegate threshold he would begin his search for a running mate by examining the methods used by prior nominees. ‘‘We’re looking right now at the processes that have been used,’’ he said. ‘‘We’ll try to select a process and move forward with it.’’

McCain formally launched his campaign in April and his climb to the nomination marks a stunning comeback. He initially lagged in polls of prospective Republican candidates and was behind in fund-raising.

By last July, his campaign had virtually exhausted the $25 million it had raised, leading to the layoffs of dozens of campaign staffers and prompting several aides to leave. McCain accepted the resignations of two of his top campaign officials and named a third to manage the faltering campaign.

The campaign reported in July that it had spent more than it raised from April through June.
In January, McCain won the New Hampshire primary after losing the Iowa caucus to Huckabee. He then won in South Carolina and Florida, and picked up the endorsement of Rudy Giuliani, who dropped out the race in January.

Representative Ron Paul of Texas technically remains in the Republican race, but it is mathematically impossible for him to become the nominee.

McCain is making his second bid for the Republican presidential nomination. He lost to George W. Bush in 2000.

Hillary Clinton was projected the winner tonight of the make-or-break Ohio primary, breathing new life into her campaign and possibly extending the Democratic nomination battle through at least Pennsylvania on April 22.

But without also winning Texas -- the other big-delegate state voting tonight -- she could still face calls from party leaders to leave the field.

And Clinton still trails Barack Obama in pledged delegates and faces steep mathematical odds to catch up in the remaining contests. According to the Associated Press tally, Obama led in total delegates heading into today's contests 1,386 to 1,276, with only 611 delegates to be awarded in contests to come.

Clinton and Obama split the other contests tonight, with Clinton declared the winner in Rhode Island and Obama the victor in Vermont.

Clinton and Obama aggressively contested Ohio, which has lost more than 200,000 jobs since 2007 and where the economy and trade were key issues.

The candidates bashed each other over the North American Free Trade Agreement, with Obama sending out a flier highlighting Clinton's past support and with Clinton questioning a meeting that Obama's economic adviser had last month with Canadian government officials on the treaty.

According to exit polls, Clinton led 54 percent to 45 percent among union households, and 50 percent to 49 percent among non-union households in Ohio. Also, Clinton and Obama did well among their core constituencies -- white women and blue-collar voters for Clinton and young, African-American, and college-educated voters for Obama, according to the exit polls done for the TV networks and the Associated Press.

While Obama closed a double-digit lead in the polls for Clinton in recent weeks, she appeared to rebound in the closing days with more pointed attacks on his credibility and readiness for the White House.

By Brian C. Mooney, Globe Staff

PROVIDENCE — Hillary Clinton’s 11-state losing streak ended in Rhode Island as the smallest state became a big battleground in the Democratic presidential contest.

In the last two weeks, the Ocean State took on greater significance as Clinton sought to halt the momentum of Barack Obama toward the nomination. Both campaigns poured resources into the state, and hundreds of volunteers, many from Massachusetts, went door-to-door in heavy rain as part of an all-out organizational struggle to get supporters to the polls.

Rhode Island was supposed to be a lock for Clinton, who had the backing of much of the state’s Democratic establishment, but Obama's campaign heavily outspent Clinton on television and radio ads in the waning days.

Half an hour after the polls closed, the Associated Press declared Clinton the winner. She had a 19-point lead with 82 percent of the precincts reporting. At stake were the Ocean State’s 21 pledged delegates.

In the other New England primary today, Obama trounced Clinton in Vermont, apparently winning at least nine of the 15 delegates.

There was a genuine sense of excitement in Rhode Island, which has not played a significant role in a presidential nominating contest in recent memory, and election officials were predicting turnout could break a record, at least in the Democratic contest, for a primary in the state.

With more resources and attention focused on delegate-heavy primaries in Texas and Ohio today, both campaigns, in a matter of weeks, nevertheless produced sophisticated ground operations in Rhode Island that identified supporters by telephone and then pulled them out today to vote.

The Clinton campaign, fighting for its life after a string of 11 consecutive defeats, pulled out the most stops in Rhode Island on primary day. In the morning, Senator Clinton did a live television interview via satellite with a local TV station; Bill Clinton did an interview on local radio; and daughter, Chelsea Clinton, made a lunchtime stop at a popular Cranston restaurant and then delivered pizza and rallied supporters at the state headquarters near downtown Providence early in the afternoon.

‘‘Thank you for believing in my mom,’’ she said to about 80 cheering volunteers.

Clinton’s primary day ground game was bolstered by at least 70 experienced hands from the political organization of Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, whose chief operative, Michael Kineavy, was at Clinton’s headquarters. Those who are city workers took a vacation day, Kineavy said, and about 60 were on the streets around Providence knocking on doors.

Also campaigning on Clinton’s behalf last weekend were several Massachusetts legislators and former Boston mayor Raymond L. Flynn, who was appointed US ambassador to the Vatican by President Clinton in 1993. Senator John F. Kerry campaigned in Rhode Island for Obama over the weekend, Caleb Weaver, spokesman for Obama’s campaign in the state, said.

On primary day, the rival headquarters in Providence reflected the contrasts and the core constituencies of the candidates. The median age of volunteers in Clinton’s headquarters was perhaps 20 years older than those in Obama’s.

At Clinton headquarters, across Interstate 95 from downtown, 90-year-old Thelma Goldstein of Falmouth, Mass., a self-described ‘‘devout Democrat’’ who cast her first presidential vote for Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940, sat at a table with her friends Rebecca Moffitt and Norma Rae Wachs, both 69 and also from Falmouth.

Today was Goldstein’s fifth or sixth trip to Rhode Island to help out; it was Moffitt’s third and Wachs’s second. Nearby, a pair of elderly Catholic nuns made phone calls to voters.
Goldstein recalled how she was up at 3:30 a.m. today writing a letter to The Washington Post, extolling the virtues of Clinton.

‘‘I called her a champ,’’ Goldstein said. The Falmouth women are not new to this game: They were part of a group of 50 Cape Cod women who took a bus to New Hampshire to help Clinton before the first primary in January.

At Obama headquarters, in a downtown corner storefront, huge glass windows feature hand-painted versions of the campaign’s logo — a sun rising over the horizon. Inside, most of the 50 or so volunteers appeared to be in their 20s.

Nathan Landers, a senior at Brown University, prepared to leave with Ellen Frith, an interfaith chaplain from Somerville, Mass., more than twice his age, to knock on doors in North Providence. The campaign had provided him with a printout of voters on certain streets identified as Obama supporters.

Landers, from Healdsburg, Calif., north of San Francisco, said he researched the records of Obama and Clinton before volunteering for Obama and came down on the side of Obama’s judgment over Clinton’s experience.

He said he had spent an average of about eight hours a week helping the Obama campaign in the past month.

‘‘It’s not a problem; my grades haven’t suffered,’’ he said.

At the polling station inside the Colony House apartments for the elderly in the Elmwood section of Providence, 16 people were lined up, waiting to vote at 2:30 p.m. as the rain became heavier outside.

‘‘Who’d have thought Little Rhody would be getting involved in such important matters,’’ said Mike Mabray, as he left the poll.

‘‘Usually, Rhode Island is ignored.’’

By Scott Helman and Susan Milligan, Globe Staff

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- The pitched battle between Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for Ohio and Texas is going down to the wire tonight after polls closed in both states, with each candidate anxiously awaiting the results that could determine the course of their historic contest for the nomination.

Obama picked up his 12th straight win by handily beating Clinton in the Vermont primary, while Clinton held on in Rhode Island to win that state's primary, finally bringing Obama's streak to an end. But all eyes tonight are on the excruciatingly close races in Ohio and Texas, two delegate-rich states that promised to either revive Clinton's flagging campaign, solidify Obama's grip on the nomination, or produce a muddled result.

Amid the uncertainty in the Democratic race, the Republicans finally removed any doubt about who their nominee will be: Senator John McCain of Arizona, a 71-year-old war hero and long-time Washington fixture, officially sealed the GOP nomination by handily beating former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee in all four states.

Early exit polls showed Obama swamping Clinton among African-American voters in Texas but Clinton leading 2-1 among Latinos, trends that have played out in other states. Two-thirds of the delegates in Texas will be awarded based on the results of the primary; the other third are allocated based on the results of caucuses that Texas Democrats held after the polls closed.

In Ohio, where the two candidates have tangled over trade and the right prescriptions for the mortgage crisis, 61 percent of voters surveyed said the economy was the most important issue -- the highest percentage of any of the 25 states where exit polls have been conducted for the TV networks and the Associated Press. Eight in 10 Ohio voters also said international trade takes more jobs from the state than it creates.

The Ohio exit polls also suggested a deep racial divide: White voters chose Clinton 61 percent to 38 percent, while black voters went for Obama 89 percent to 11 percent. Clinton also fared better among lower-income voters and voters who belong to union households -- despite Obama's string of endorsements from powerful labor groups.

There were scattered instances of voting issues in both states. Ballot shortages and bad weather in Ohio forced election officials to extend voting hours in some precincts there. And in Texas, Clinton operatives accused Obama supporters of improperly seizing control over several caucus locations.

Obama and Clinton entered today's contests with distinctly different objectives. Obama, having built an overall delegate lead of more than 100, was looking for a knockout punch, hoping a win in Ohio or Texas might force Clinton to pull out of the race.

Clinton, who for weeks has counted on Texas and Ohio to get back into contention, was looking for a comeback in a fierce nomination battle that has already raged through 40 states, awarded more than 2,600 delegates, and gone through two full months of voting.

Now, the race moves to Wyoming, which holds caucuses Saturday, and Mississippi, which holds a primary Tuesday. The Clinton campaign is already downplaying its prospects in the two states, and instead pointing toward Pennsylvania, which holds a primary April 22 and is the biggest state still to vote.

A total of 611 pledged delegates -- those won from caucuses or primaries -- are still to be divvied up before the national convention in late August. By any measure, Clinton needs to win the remaining contests by dauntingly large margins to catch Obama in the race for pledged delegates, which his campaign asserts should determine the nominee. Obama is also closing the gap with Clinton among superdelegates, the 796 elected officials, party leaders, and others who could hold the balance of power since neither is expected to reach the 2,025 needed without them.

Today's contests capped a frenzied, and at times bitter, two weeks of campaigning by the two Democrats, who have traded pointed attacks on the stump, in TV ads, at debates, and through campaign literature. Clinton has sought to portray Obama as untrustworthy on national security and trade, while Obama sharpened his criticism of Clinton's judgment and candor.

Before the polls closed, Obama and Clinton, knowing that the interpretation of today's results would be paramount, each sought to frame the race to their advantage.

Clinton, buoyed by what she believes have been successful attacks on Obama's national security credentials, told reporters that her campaign was "just really hitting its stride," and she dismissed the notion that she would need to drop out of the race if she lost either Ohio or Texas.

"We're going to go through this today and see how we do," she said, asserting that today's votes were merely a chapter in a "long process" of vying for the nomination.

Obama, speaking to reporters aboard his campaign plane on the way from Houston to San Antonio, expressed cautious optimism about his lead in the race and he said he was looking ahead to Wyoming, Mississippi, and beyond.

"What my head tells me is that we've got a very sizable delegate lead and it's going to be hard to overcome," he said. "But look, she is a tenacious and determined candidate, so we're just going to make sure we work as hard as we can for as long as it takes."

Obama charged that Clinton had run a "pretty negative campaign over the last couple weeks," but he said it was a healthy experience for him and his campaign, and he downplayed concerns among some Democrats that a prolonged primary battle will only benefit McCain.

"There's going to be such a sharp contrast with John McCain," Obama said, that Democrats will unite behind whoever wins.

Hillary Clinton has pulled out a narrow, but key, win in Rhode Island, breaking Barack Obama's winning streak that stretched to 12 with his win in Vermont tonight.

Rhode Island, which will award 21 delegates, was long thought to be Clinton territory, where she had the support of most of the Democratic establishment. But Obama closed in the polls and held a big rally in Providence on Saturday.

Exit polling showed that more than half of voters said the economy was the most important issue facing the country, far more than those who picked the war in Iraq or healthcare.

About three-quarters of voters in the Democratic primary say they are worried about their family's financial situation over the next year, according to the exit poll conducted for the TV networks and the Associated Press.

By Bryan Bender, Globe Staff

WASHINGTON -- "Politics, war, and beer."

That’s how Paul Meagher describes the Hawk & Dove pub just steps from the US Capitol.

And it was business as usual tonight as lawyers, students, congressional staffers and political junkies young and old packed the hot and stuffy Capitol Hill watering hole for a drought and a burger and to watch the results of the Democratic primaries in Ohio, Texas, Vermont, and Rhode Island.

"This has always been a political bar,” said Meagher, 64, the general manager. “Our biggest nights are election nights. Sometimes TV reporters can’t get in. Barack Obama held his first Washington fund-raiser here back in March 2004.”

The Hawk & Dove was established at the height of the Vietnam War in 1967 and prides itself on its four-decade history of heated and often drunken political debate that originally pitted the “hawks” – generally older supporters of the war in Vietnam – on one side of the bar and war opponents -- or the "doves" -- on the other.

Flashing a sarcastic grin, Meagher said he couldn’t help but see parallels between the situation overseas today and when he first sidled up to the bar after he was discharged from the military during the Vietnam War.

“Believe it or not we were fighting a land war in Asia.”

Tonight, however, the battle lines were drawn differently in the nation’s capital’s oldest Irish bar – before that a taffy factory, a blacksmith shop, Washington’s first gasoline filling station and, according to lore, even home to a “floating craps game.”

A large crowd of Obama supporters filled one of the back rooms in the bar while Hillary Clinton supporters were peppered throughout.

“Democrats have a big tent,” said Meagher. “And we have a lot of different bars.”

John McCain clinched the Republican presidential nomination tonight after strong showings in today's primaries.

He has been projected the winner in Rhode Island and Texas, following on his earlier projected wins in Vermont and Ohio. That will give him enough delegates to reach the magic 1,191 number.

"Thank you Texas, Ohio, Vermont, and Rhode Island," McCain told supporters in a Dallas ballroom with red, white, and blue balloons, confetti machines, and a huge banner with "1,191."
"I am very grateful for the broad support you have given me."

He declared he had won enough delegates to "claim with confidence, humility and a great deal of responsiblity that I will be the nominee."

Heading into today's four primaries with 256 delegates at stake, McCain was 117 shy of the magic number, according to an Associated Press tally.

Mike Huckabee, far behind with 257 delegates before today, dropped out of the race tonight, saying he called McCain to congratulate him and offer his support for a united party.

Huckabee said he was proud that he and McCain ran civil and honorable campaigns. "It's been one we will always be able to say we ran with honor," the former Arkansas governor told supporters in Irving, Texas.

The Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama campaigns are tussling not just over the contests in Ohio and Texas -- but also how the vote is being conducted.

The Clinton camp is accusing Obama supporters of intimidating its supporters at caucus sites in Texas, where the caucuses will determine about one-third of the 193 delegates up for grabs. The issue is that because the Democratic party didn't have enough staffers to run all the caucus sites, whoever showed up first and obtained the packet was in charge. Clinton supporters are complaining that Obama backers took the packets before the caucus sites officially opened.

In Ohio, the Obama campaign is seeking to keep polling places open past the appointed hour because of weather problems and polling places running out of ballots. A judge has ordered precincts to stay open until 9 p.m. in Sandusky and Cuyahoga counties near Cleveland, but the Obama campaign is seeking a similar order in Franklin County, home to the state capital of Columbus.

John McCain has been projected the winner in Ohio, getting closer and closer to clinching the Republican nomination.

There were 85 delegates at stake in the Buckeye State. Heading into today's four contests, McCain was 117 shy of the magic number of 1,191 needed to clinch the nomination, according to an Associated Press tally.

McCain's camp appeared ready to celebrate tonight. His ballroom in Dallas where he will give his primary night speech is decorated with red, white, and blue balloons, confetti machines, and a huge banner with "1,191."

On the Democratic side, the race between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama was too close to call.

Barack Obama has been projected the winner in Vermont, where an expected overwhelming victory is likely to give him the vast majority of the 15 delegates at stake.

At least for a half hour -- until the polls close in the toss-up state of Ohio -- it extends Obama's winning streak in the Democratic nomination race to 12 contests.

His early opposition to the Iraq war -- in contrast to Hillary Clinton's 2002 vote to authorize the conflict -- played well in Vermont, where most voters are against the war.

John McCain was projected the winner among Republicans, and since it is a winner-take-all state, all 17 delegates up for grabs.

The first batch of exit polling shows that Barack Obama is swamping Hillary Clinton among African-American voters in Texas today, while Hillary Clinton is leading 2-1 among Latinos in the key state.

In Ohio, 61 percent of voters surveyed said the economy was the most important issue -- the highest percentage of any of the 25 states so far where the exit polls have been conducted for the TV networks and the Associated Press. Also, eight in 10 said international trade takes more jobs from the state than it creates.

Ohio has lost more than 200,000 jobs since 2007. The candidates bashed each other over the North American Free Trade Agreement, with Obama sending out a flier highlighting Clinton's past support and with Clinton questioning a meeting that Obama's economic adviser had last month with Canadian government officials on the treaty.

Democratic National Committee chief Howard Dean said this afternoon that while he would like a nominee soon and wants to avoid a brokered convention, he does not believe the nomination battle is hurting the party's prospects.

"Would like a nominee? Yes," Dean said on MSNBC. But, he said, "it's up to the voters."

Dean disputed reports that in a meeting last week with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, they discussed how to end the primary campaign.

"The tone of the meeting was how we keep this party together as we go forward," Dean said.

Asked whether Clinton's attacks on Obama plays into the hands of likely Republican John McCain, Dean said the primary campaign is a "tea party" compared to what will happen in the general election.

The former Vermont governor expressed confidence, saying the party has "two very strong candidates" and far more enthusiasm, evidenced by the far higher turnouts on the Democratic side.

Barack and Michelle Obama speak to reporters on the campaign plane en route to San Antonio. (Globe photo)

SAN ANTONIO -- Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, ambled back to chat with reporters on the plane from Houston to San Antonio a little while ago and offered their perspective on the state of the race, the barbed attacks from rival Hillary Clinton, and the media's treatment of the candidates.

"What my head tells me is that we've got a very sizable delegate lead and it's going to be hard to overcome," said Obama, predicting tight contests in Ohio and Texas today. "But look, she is a tenacious and determined candidate, so we're just going to make sure we work as hard as we can for as long as it takes."

Obama said Clinton had run a "pretty negative campaign over the last couple weeks." But he said it was a healthy experience for him and his campaign.

"My theory is that withstanding some of the attacks that have been coming our way over the last couple weeks will just make us stronger," he said. "It's like training camp if I end up being the nominee."

He also suggested, seeming to refer to some tough stories about his campaign in recent days, that Clinton's "spin" about media bias in his favor had worked. "I am a little surprised that all the complaining about the refs has worked as well as it has," he said. "But it is what it is. I don't want to change the tone of our campaign because that's how I ultimately think we'll be able to govern."

The campaign's internal tracking, meanwhile, showed good signs for Obama in Texas today, at least as of noon: Turnout appeared higher than they projected in dense African-American neighborhoods, areas home to many students, and in cities they felt good about, such as Austin, Dallas, and Houston. Voting in heavily Latino districts, meanwhile, appeared lower than projected, aides said.

Conservative radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh continues to make news in the presidential race -- and mostly on the Democratic side.

He is urging his Texas listeners to cross over to the Democratic primary today and vote for Hillary Clinton, arguing that keeping her candidacy alive against Barack Obama helps Republicans. "We need Barack Obama bloodied up politically," he said on Fox News on Friday.

Limbaugh -- unintentionally, he says -- might have done some bloodying of Obama himself. On his Monday show, he laughed when a caller said their daughter thought Obama looked like Curious George, the children's book character.

"Don't make me laugh," Limbaugh said, chuckling. "I can't laugh."

He later apologized to Obama after, he said, staffers told him that Curious George is a monkey.

"I never heard of Curious George," he told listeners, according to a transcript on Limbaugh's website. He went on to say that when he was growing up, he watched Yogi Bear and the Jetsons instead.

He said the caller had been "fired." "We're not going to put up with this on this program," Limbaugh told listeners. "We're not going to tolerate this kind of stuff."

But then another caller said she didn't believe Limbaugh didn't know of Curious George. "I just think that's really a shame," the caller said.

"The real shame here is that you have such prejudice," replied Limbaugh, who earlier in the campaign railed against likely Republican nominee John McCain and for Mitt Romney.

Senator Patrick Leahy of Vermont is the latest prominent politician from New England to take to the airwaves as a messenger for Barack Obama.

Leahy said this afternoon on MSNBC that by the time the voting is over tonight, Obama will still hold a significant lead in delegates no matter what happens. Obama is expected to easily win today in Vermont and grab the lion's share of the 15 delegates at stake.

If Hillary Clinton only wins one or two of the four states voting today, she should strongly consider whether to withdraw and return to the Senate, Leahy said in an interview from Capitol Hill.

Clinton, he said, should be thinking, "I can do a great deal of good for my state, New York. I can do a great deal of good for my country."

Leahy argued that the longer the nomination race goes on, the bigger the danger that it will hurt Democratic hopes of retaking the White House in November. Given that Obama has won 11 straight contests before today, Leahy said, "If the shoe was on the other foot, I think you'd hear the Clinton campaign saying, 'Get out of the race for the good of the party' "

Flush with cash and savvy about the web, Barack Obama's campaign bought large banner ads on 26 local media websites in Ohio and Texas that blare the message: "Vote for Barack Obama."

Now, some in the journalism community are questioning the propriety of the TV, radio, and newspaper sites featuring the multimedia ads for one political candidate on the eve of crucial contests in the two big states.

Bill Mitchell writes in a column on the website of The Poynter Institute that the ad, which runs with a small disclaimer that it is a paid political advertisement, is striking for its "prominence and interactivity."

Website visitors who click on the ad see and hear Obama and there's also a feature to find the nearest polling place. It appears on the homepages of newspaper websites, including that of the Akron Beacon Journal.

Mitchell raises a series of questions, which he sent to editors and news directors at several of the sites. Among them: How they decided to accept the ad, and whether that call would have been different if it had attacked Clinton? How much risk is there that readers might interpret the ad as a tacit endorsement? Would the decision have been different if the economic climate were different?

Full disclosure: A smaller Obama banner ad appears at the top of the Globe's politics webpage.

By Susan Milligan, Globe Staff

HOUSTON -- An upbeat Hillary Clinton started campaigning early today on what she called another chapter in "a long process'' to winning the nomination -- and one that might not hinge on winning both Texas and Ohio today.

"I feel very good about today,'' Clinton told reporters after shaking hands with supporters at an elementary school serving as a polling place in East Houston. And while both Texas and Ohio are "really important,'' Clinton said, she dismissed the idea that she should get out of the race if she loses one of the delegate-rich states to Barack Obama, who leads among pledged delegates.

Her campaign "is just really hitting its stride,'' she said.

The Clinton campaign is bouyed by late polls showing the New York senator gaining in both states. But since hundreds of thousands of people voted early in Texas, neither campaign knows how relevant those polls are today. "Let's wait and find out what the voters have actually decided,'' she said before heading off for last-minute campaigning in Dallas.

Clinton staffers are clearly more confident about winning Ohio than Texas; the senator is set to spend election night in Columbus, while Obama plans to hold his campaign party in San Antonio. And Clinton refers more often to Ohio when assessing her chances.

"You don't get to the White House as a Democrat without winning Ohio. And we're going to put Texas in play,'' she said.

Clinton hopes to press ahead to the April 22 primary in Pennsylvania, but the campaign appears discouraged about her chances in Mississippi and Wyoming, which hold contests before then. Clinton staffers are in both Wyoming and Mississippi, but "I think those two states are likely to favor Senator Obama more than us,'' said Clinton communications director Howard Wolfson.

Barack Obama talks with young presenters Tuesday at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. (Globe photo)

HOUSTON -- Yee-haw!

Well, not quite. Barack Obama visited the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo this morning, but he did not, unfortunately, hop on a bronco. In fact, he didn’t touch the animals. He touched a lot of farm equipment, though.

He toured antique tractors, built-from-scratch trailers, and other exhibitions. Many of the presenters were high-schoolers from the Future Farmers of America and 4-H. His presence drew quite a stir as farmers, ranchers, and cattle-raisers whipped out cell phones and cameras to capture the spectacle.

“I’m a big Obama fan,” said Dylan Speer, an 18-year-old from Abilene, Texas who was showing a utility trailer, built to haul feed, shrubs, and the like. Speer can’t vote for him today, though. “I registered about three days too late,” he said.

“I think it’s pretty cool that he’s down here,” said Walter Richardson, a 17-year-old from Boyd, Texas who was showing a 16-foot bumper pull trailer. “To me, he seems like a pretty rounded guy.”

William Glass, an 18-year-old from Gonzales, Texas, gave Obama a tour of his green-and-yellow John Deere Model B tractor from 1945, even showing him pictures of the vehicle in action. “This thing ready to go?” Obama asked. Glass said afterward he was too busy to vote today. Is Obama going to get his vote this fall, perhaps? “I don’t know,” he said.

At one point, Obama tried on black-and-yellow John Deere baseball cap before grabbing the cell phone of Justin Vincent, a high-schooler from Onalaska, Texas. Obama left a message on Vincent’s parents’ answering machine. “He said, ‘Hey, this is Barack Obama. I’m trying to figure out who I’m talking to,’’’ Vincent said. After it was suggested that it might be a message to keep, Vincent’s friends allowed that they were Republicans. “Delete it,” one of them said.

Obama then stopped by the booth of the Lil’ Dobbers, young farmers-to-be from the Limestone County, Texas 4-H. He held court for a while.

“Do you work on a ranch or farm?” he asked.
“Yes, sir,” they said.
“You guys wanna be farmers?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I gotta admit,” Obama said. “I’m sort of a city slicker.”

UPDATE: Aboard the campaign plane from Houston to San Antonio, Obama explained why he stood clear of the steers this morning: He wasn't dressed for it. "The last time I went to a livestock operation I started holding the rope of a bull and leading him along," he said. "Even though he looked really clean, turns out they have a lot of stuff on 'em. So I got it all over my shirt. You gotta have some work clothes if you're going to do some work."

If this whole presidential thing doesn't pan out, maybe Hillary Clinton has a future as late-night comedienne. Or maybe not.

After a cameo appearance during the opening sketch on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" over the weekend, in which Burlington-born Boston College alum Amy Poehler impersonated her cackle, Clinton appeared Monday night on the Indecision 2008 segment of the "Daily Show" on Comedy Central.

Host Jon Stewart asked Clinton why, when the election is largely about judgment, she took time out the night before her political life is at stake in Ohio and Texas to be made fun of on national TV.

"As a host, I'm delighted," Stewart said, "as a citizen, frightened."

"It is pretty pathetic," replied Clinton, laughing along with the studio audience while appearing via satellite from Austin, Texas.

From there, her appearance devolved into rather un-funny paraphrases of her stump speeches. She did win applause when she vowed to be the champion for all Americans, saying, "What a novel idea."

Heading into make-or-break Tuesday for Hillary Clinton, Democrats across the country tend to agree with many of her most prominent supporters:

If she loses both Ohio and Texas today, it's time to give up the nomination fight. But if she wins either -- and the late polls suggest she is surging in both toss-up contests -- she should fight on.

Barack Obama, however, is still favored as the nominee by a 50 percent to 43 percent margin among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, according to an ABC News/Washington Post poll out today.

In the survey, 67 percent of respondents said Clinton should stay in the race even if she loses either Ohio or Texas. Nearly half of Obama supporters agree with that thinking, while 91 percent of Clinton backers do.

Only 45 percent, however, said she should keep her bid going if she loses both. Only 25 percent of Obama backers believe that, and 69 percent of Clinton supporters do.

In the poll, Clinton was also Democrats' most popular choice for vice president should Obama win the nomination. She had the support of 36 percent, compared to 11 percent for John Edwards, 3 percent for Bill Richardson, 1 percent for Al Gore, and 1 percent for Joe Biden.

The survey was conducted from Thursday through Sunday and has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points among Democrats.

HOUSTON -- "Wait! We got a little more work to do!"

And with that Michelle Obama tried good-naturedly to halt a chant of "first lady" greeting her on stage here tonight. Not that she didn't like the sound of it.

The Obamas held their customary late-night election eve rally at a Houston convention center, firing up 6,000 people to vote and to get their friends, relatives, neighbors, colleagues, dog-walkers, dentists -- whoever -- to come with them.

"We're on the brink of something special here in Texas and all across the country," Barack Obama told the crowd. "We gotta work in these last few hours."

So he asked supporters not just to bring people to the polls and the caucuses tomorrow night but to make calls and volunteer in other ways. They need any margin they can get -- polls show a neck-and-neck contest here between Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Obama, knowing a win in Texas could tip the momentum permanently to his campaign, spent all day here today and set his primary night rally for San Antonio. He urged supporters to demonstrate that his candidacy is no mere "flash in the pan."

"We have to earn this election," he said.

By Susan Milligan, Globe staff

AUSTIN -- It would be too easy to conclude that the Clinton campaign was a little ticked off -- or maybe a less polite phrase to that effect -- at the media, given the filing center conditions the traveling press was offered Monday evening.

The New York senator made her ire at the media clear early in the day, telling reporters she wasn't so sure they were being as hard on her rival, Barack Obama, as they were on her. ``I'm only asking you to look at both of us and ask the same tough questions,'' Clinton told the traveling press corps as she began her last, very full day of campaigning before today's primary elections.

Message heard. But was it really necessary to stick the media in a room with urinals?

When the campaign arrived in Austin Monday night, reporters were schlepped to the ``filing center,'' usually a meeting room or classroom where journalists can fire up their computers and finish their stories. News organizations pay for such services, which often include food and wireless Internet.

But at the Burger Activity Center, the press was set up in what appeared to be a boy's locker room or bathroom, with work tables set up next to a wall of urinals.

``Are they kidding?'' a reporter asked, moving to the side of the small room furthest from the urinals. One senior writer, needing to use the facilities, stepped into the not-so-private bathroom stall just steps away from several typing journalists.

The Clinton campaign staff was mortified and apologetic. ``I'm so sorry -- I LOVE you guys!'' said the traveling press coordinator, Jamie Smith, who is normally exceptionally efficient at dealing with the logistical needs of the traveling press corps. Apparently, the locker room was the only room available at the Burger Activity Center -- and the campaign had no idea it doubled as a boy's bathroom, she said.

Most celebrity endorsers just issue a statement or show up at a rally.

But if you're Jack Nicholson, you create your own ad for Hillary Clinton, interspersing scenes from some of your most famous movie roles with praise for Clinton, and put it on YouTube, where it has been viewed more than 1 million times since its release Friday.

After Nicholson's character in "Five Easy Pieces" says, "Ok, I'll make it as easy for you as I can," text appears on the screen: "We need Hillary Clinton as our next President."

The ad also features clips from, among other flicks, "Batman" and "Chinatown." And it ends with a scene from "A Few Good Men," where Nicholson's hard-bitten Marine colonel declares, "There's nothing on this earth sexier -- believe me gentleman -- than a woman that you have to salute in the morning."

CARROLLTON, Texas -- Is it possible to be a hip scold? Barack Obama gave it a good shot today.

Speaking to high-schoolers and their parents outside Dallas this afternoon, Obama tried to identify with the youth but teach them some lessons at the same time.

"I don't want to preach, but too many of our young men end up being irresponsible, having babies and then never knowing those children," Obama said. "And that leaves a lot of people feeling hopeless. You've got responsibilities that have to be met. So we have to be better parents. We have to nurture our children. We have to spend more time with them."

Obama told the crowd that while he listens to hip-hop artist Jay-Z, he also deplores the damaging messages sent by some modern hip-hop.

"I'll listen to Jay-Z once in a while and some other stuff, but I have to say that so much of the culture glorifies bling, and, you know violence, and is disrespectful to women," he said. "And we've got to counteract some of those cultural influences." His comments brought a hearty applause.

Obama said he wanted young people "to feel like they can have impact." "You will fill the world with hope and fill yourselves with hope," he said. He might have added, How about starting by helping elect me the next president of the United States?

Barack Obama's supporters are rushing to his defense after reports of a meeting between the campaign's senior economic adviser and Canadian government officials over trade.

The adviser, Austan Goolsbee, has disputed an account of the meeting in which he supposedly told the officials that Obama was railing against the North American Free Trade Agreement on the campaign trail for political reason, but wasn't really as critical of it.

"Noting anxiety among many US domestic audiences about the US economic outlook, Goolsbee candidly acknowledged the protectionist sentiment that has emerged, particularly in the Midwest, during the primary campaign. He cautioned that this messaging should not be taken out of context and should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans," one Canadian official in the meeting wrote in a memo obtained by the Associated Press.

UPDATE: The Canadian embassy in Washington, D.C., just issued a statement that appears to disavow the memo.

"In the recent report produced by the Consulate General in Chicago, there was no intention to convey, in any way, that Senator Obama and his campaign team were taking a different position in public from views expressed in private, including about NAFTA. We deeply regret any inference that may have been drawn to that effect.

"The people of the United States are in the process of choosing a new President and are fortunate to have strong and impressive candidates from both political parties," the statement continued. "Canada will not interfere in this electoral process. We look forward, however, to working with the choice of the American people in further building an unparalleled relationship with a close friend and partner."

UPDATE: The memo became an issue in the Canadian parliament today, with the opposition leader accusing the ruling party of interfering in the Democratic primary and the prime minister expressing regret over the episode.

Still, Hillary Clinton's campaign, calling the issue "NAFTA-gate," is accusing Obama of misleading voters in Ohio, where trade is a crucial issue for Tuesday's primary.

Ohio Governor Ted Strickland said at a rally this morning with Clinton in Toledo that Obama's vow to renegotiate NAFTA and be tough on trade is "just political rhetoric." "Well, we people in Ohio believe that you ought to say what you mean and you ought to mean what you say," Strickland said.

The Change to Win labor federation issued a statement saying, "Our unions decided to endorse Senator Barack Obama because of his strong stand on the issue of fair trade. In all of our discussions with him, it became clear that Senator Obama is the strongest candidate to protect America's workers and the environment through a new trade policy.

"We are disappointed that the Clinton campaign has decided to peddle a memo from a low-level bureaucrat of an anti-worker Canadian administration that is in complete contradiction to the actual positions of Senator Obama," the statement continued. "Our members should remember that it was the Clinton Administration that was the driving force behind the passage of NAFTA in 1993 and its aggressive campaign for NAFTA is a big reason the Democrats lost the House in 1994."

With all the love being shown Barack Obama these days, an influential voice for evangelicals says it's time to stop hating Hillary Clinton.

"From all sides of the political spectrum, evangelicals respond with a surprising amount of disgust upon hearing Hillary's name," says an editorial posted today by Christianity Today magazine. "....We seem to simply enjoy hating Hillary."

While Clinton holds some objectionable policy positions, such as favoring abortion rights, and her public persona strikes many as "uppity and unapproachable," too many evangelicals have used cheap shots to join in the Hillary-bashing, the editorial says.

"Evangelicals, knowing that turning candidates into verbal punching bags will never create real community, are called to talk about political figures in ways starkly different from the pundits and hate-marketers," the magazine's editors say. "....While pundits see candidates as punching bags, evangelicals are supposed to see candidates as, well, people."

"We may," the editorial concludes, "haltingly come to realize that the most bold and courageous thing we could each do this election season, no matter who we vote for, is this: Love Hillary."

The latest round of polls out today suggest that Hillary Clinton might have some momentum heading into Tuesday's crucial contests in Ohio and Texas.

The Ohio surveys, which were all completed Sunday, indicate that Barack Obama is no longer closing the gap and that Clinton might have rebuilt a double-digit lead. For instance, a SurveyUSA survey of 873 likely voters gives her a 54 percent to 44 percent edge. Meanwhile, a Public Policy Polling survey gives Clinton a 9-percentage-point lead.

The Texas polls, also finished Sunday, suggest that Clinton is catching Obama after he overtook her in recent weeks. The SurveyUSA survey of 840 likely voters gives Obama a 49 percent to 48 percent edge, well within the margin of error. The Public Policy Polling survey says Clinton now leads in Texas.

Hillary Clinton is all about the economy in Ohio and all about national security in Texas -- at least on the airwaves.

In one new TV ad on the eve of the make-or-break contests, Clinton uses Barack Obama's acknowledgment during last week's MSNBC debate that he hadn't held an oversight hearing on the Afghanistan conflict as chairman of a Senate subcommittee because he has been running for president.

"Hillary Clinton will never be too busy to defend our national security," the narrator intones.

Texas, where defense is a big industry and a robust military a priority, is also where Clinton is airing the ad that shows sleeping children and asks voters who they want in the White House to answer the 3 a.m. crisis call.

UPDATE: Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, in a conference call organized by the Obama campaign, said this afternoon that the Clinton ads are disingenous and the kind one would expect Republicans to be running, not Democrats.

"This is really grasping at straws," said Kerry, who also appeared on CNN on Sunday to defend Obama against the 3 a.m. ad.

Representative Chet Edwards of Texas chimed in on the conference call, calling the spots "the kind of TV commercials that Karl Rove would be proud of."

Edwards said Texas voters will reject what he called the "politics of fearmongering and politics of diversion."

In Clinton's new TV spot in Ohio, which is reeling from manufacturing job losses, workers talk about the need for new leadership. "It's time the American worker had a partner in the White House," Clinton says in the ad.

Mike Huckabee, looking for the miracle he likes to talk about, urged conservatives in Texas today to rally behind him and keep him alive for the Republican nomination.

"It ain't over 'til Texas says it's over," he told supporters at Southern Methodist University.

But the math facing the former Arkansas governor is foreboding.

John McCain is within fewer than 200 delegates of the 1,191 he needs to clinch the nomination, and holds commanding leads in polls in Texas and the three other states voting Tuesday. Huckabee has less than 250 delegates, according to an Associated Press count.

Hillary Clinton wields more power than her two US Senate colleagues running for president, according to a new ranking.

The New York senator ranks ninth, one spot ahead of likely Republican nominee John McCain and two spots higher than Democratic rival Barack Obama, according to the website Congress.org.

Both Clinton and Obama, however, rank behind their state's other senator. Richard Durbin of Illinois is third, and Charles Schumer of New York is fourth.

Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, the 2004 Democratic nominee, ranks 12th, while the Bay State's senior senator, Edward M. Kennedy ranks second, just behind Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

Senator John F. Kerry says Hillary Clinton's much-remarked-upon 3 a.m. phone call TV ad is a deceptive "fear tactic" because she's never faced such a crisis.

And when she has faced war-or-peace decisions in the US Senate, she not only whiffed on Iraq, but she also flubbed on Iran, the 2004 Democratic nominee argued.

"The fact is that she had a red phone moment, as Barack Obama said," Kerry said on CNN's "Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer" on Sunday. "Her red phone moment was on the war in Iraq, and she chose the Bush course, the wrong course.

"She had a red phone moment in Iran," Kerry continued, referring to a resolution last year that declared the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist group. "When Senator Dodd, Senator Biden, Senator Obama, myself opposed the policy, she chose the Bush policy on Iran. She had a red phone moment.

"The fact is that Barack Obama comes to this race with more experience than George Bush, Ronald Reagan, or Bill Clinton had in foreign policy at the national level. And the fact is that he has proven that it's his judgment that is correct. That's what the American people are voting for, and I believe they will see clearly that's a scare tactic. And in fact, it raises an issue which falls, in my judgment, in Barack Obama's favor."

Kerry also tried a little humor to deflect the ad, which features sleeping children and a ringing phone and asks who voters want answering the phone in the White House for a middle-of-the-night crisis.

"You know, most of the time I think people are going to hear that phone ringing, and they're going to rush to answer the phone and not see the ad," he said.

The campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are signaling where they believe they have the best chance to win by the sites picked for what they hope will be victory rallies Tuesday night.

Clinton plans her primary-night event in Columbus, the capital of Ohio, where polls show her hanging on to a narrow lead, though Obama is closing.

Obama is holding his in San Antonio in Texas, where polls show him with a narrow lead. Obama is also holding his three election-eve events today in Texas.

Clinton is holding a rally this morning in Toledo, Ohio, before two events in Texas.

Some of her highest-profile supporters have acknowledged that she must win both Ohio and Texas to stay in the race, but her campaign late last week sent the message that she would go on if she just won one.

CHICAGO -- With a crucial vote in Ohio tomorrow hanging in the balance, a row over comments Barack Obama's top economic adviser made about Obama's recent rhetoric on the controversial North American Free Trade Agreement is back in the news today. At issue is whether, despite Obama's harsh words for NAFTA, his adviser had privately assured Canadian officials that it was politics, not an indication of future policy. The Clinton campaign continues to push this story hard, believing it shows duplicity by Obama's campaign.

Here's today's development, as reported by the Associated Press:

SAN ANTONIO, Texas (AP) -- Barack Obama's senior economic policy adviser said Sunday that Canadian government officials wrote an inaccurate portrayal of his private discussion on the campaign's trade policy in a memo obtained by The Associated Press.

The memo is the first documentation to emerge publicly out of the meeting between the adviser, Austan Goolsbee, and officials with the Canadian consulate in Chicago, but Goolsbee said it misinterprets what he told them. The memo was written by Joseph DeMora, who works for the consulate and attended the meeting.

Goolsbee disputed a section that read: "Noting anxiety among many U.S. domestic audiences about the U.S. economic outlook, Goolsbee candidly acknowledged the protectionist sentiment that has emerged, particularly in the Midwest, during the primary campaign. He cautioned that this messaging should not be taken out of context and should be viewed as more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans."

"This thing about `it's more about political positioning than a clear articulation of policy plans,' that's this guy's language," Goolsbee said of DeMora. "He's not quoting me.

"I certainly did not use that phrase in any way," Goolsbee said.

The meeting was first reported last week by Canadian television network CTV, which cited unnamed sources as saying that Goolsbee assured the Canadians that Obama's tough talk on the North American Free Trade Agreement is just campaign rhetoric not to be taken seriously. The Obama campaign and the Canadian embassy denied there was any inconsistency between what the candidate was saying publicly and what advisers were saying privately.

By Susan Milligan, Globe Staff

ABOARD THE CLINTON CAMPAIGN PLANE -- So maybe Barack Obama is edging up in Ohio and even leading in some polls in Texas. And OK, Senate colleagues John Kerry and Dick Durbin suggested the time may be coming for her to get out of the race. And yes, New Mexico Governor and former Clinton administration cabinet secretary Bill Richardson went on national television and said the person with more delegates after Tuesday's primaries -- a delegate race Obama now leads -- should be the nominee.

What, Hillary Clinton worry?

``I have to say that I've had a great day in Ohio,'' Clinton told reporters as she headed from her fifth campaign event late Sunday night in Cleveland to go to Toledo, where she planned to meet and greet shift workers at a Chrysler plant before dawn. ``I've had a wonderful time campaigning and feel good about where we are.''

The Democratic contender said she was not disturbed by the excruciatingly close and protracted Democratic primary, which she said was ``great for the party and great for the country.'' And nor is she surprised to see that Texas and Ohio have become such critical states in the nominating process.

``I am never surprised by anything in politics,'' the New York senator said, drinking from an undisclosed beverage contained in a red plastic cup.

Clinton also ferried her friends and supporters, actors Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen, who flanked the senator as she spoke in the aisle of the plane.

So how does Danson feel abut his friend, comedic actor and writer Larry David, endorsing Obama? Danson was asked.

``I'm out of that show!'' Danson said with jocular ferocity. ``I'm never going to do it again.''

Clinton added: ``so let;s all curb our enthusiasm,'' a reference to the title of David's HBO comedy show.

SEDONA, Ariz. -- The apron hanging outside the kitchen with the faux presidential logo said "Hail to the Chef," but John McCain admitted on Sunday that his culinary expertise was limited to the art of grilling.

Presiding over two large gas grills on the deck of his creekside cabin near here, McCain prepared pork ribs and chicken for Senator Lindsey Graham, Utah Governor Jon Huntsman, and former senator Phil Gramm, along with a few dozen reporters and staff. The dignitaries had come to McCain’s desert redoubt for a weekend confab featuring some of the likely Republican nominee’s most loyal senatorial and gubernatorial backers.

After leading a short tour of his property with a firm grasp on his grill tongs throughout, McCain shared his recipe for both ribs and chicken: a dry rub with a Hog’s Breath seasoning that is equal parts garlic, salt and pepper; bone side down on the grill; finished with repeated douses of lemon juice to keep the meat from drying out.

Despite his fondness for hosting backyard barbeques, McCain said he had little interest in cooking indoors. Grilling is “a social occasion,” McCain said as he flipped a rack of ribs. “You have people standing around, and you can shoot the breeze.”

By Amy Farnsworth, Globe Correspondent

It's the second week since the end of the writer's strike, and Saturday Night Live is back with more political parodies just in time for the upcoming Tuesday primaries. Last night in a SNL political sketch, cast members playing NBC journalists Tim Russert and Brian Williams poked fun at Hillary Clinton, feeding Barack Obama answers at a debate and urging Clinton to stop talking about health care.

After the debate skit, the real Senator Clinton stopped by the set for an editorial response. She joked with SNL cast member Amy Poehler, who has been impersonating Clinton on the show. "Oh the campaign is going very well, very, very well. Why what have you heard?" Clinton said, also commenting on their matching outfits and earrings.

Clinton also used the guest appearance to joke about the upcoming primaries. "I am just so happy to be back in New York even for a few hours," she said. "Tonight I just want to relax, have fun, not worry about the campaign."

"So no politics?" Poehler asked.

"No politics... but I would like to take this opportunity to say to all Americans, be they from the great state of Ohio or Texas, Rhode Island or Vermont, Pennsylvania or any of the other states.. live from New York it's Saturday night!"

Clinton is the second candidate to appear on SNL since the writers' strike. Last week, Mike Huckabee made a cameo appearance during the parody newscast Weekend Update.

With far more money to spend and with some polls suggesting his lead is shrinking, Barack Obama is bombarding Texas with four new TV ads that highlight some of his key arguments and that try to insulate him against Hillary Clinton's attacks on his national security credentials.

One shows parts of a recent campaign speech in which he promises to protect the country, keep the military strong, and care for veterans when they return. "We have a solemn obligation to honor those who have served on our behalf," Obama says.

In a second spot, former Air Force chief Merrill A. McPeak vouches for Obama on defense, pointing to his early opposition to the Iraq war.

A third spot emphasizes Obama's appeal to independents and Republicans, who have helped fuel his 11-contest winning streak and who his supporters say would help him win in November, and alludes to the fierce partisan wars during the Clinton administration.

And in the last ad, Obama speaks directly to voters. "We need a new direction," he says. "On Tuesday, help change Washington."

By Susan Milligan, Globe Staff

DALLAS -- Facing a close and critical battle in Texas for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton stepped up her criticism of rival Barack Obama today, saying the Illinois senator does not have the national security credentials to take on likely GOP nominee John McCain in the general election.

"My opponent gets a little unhappy when I talk about national security. He says that talkin' about the realities of the job of being commander in chief, like these 3 a.m. phone calls that come out of the blue, is somehow fear-mongering,'' Clinton said, often dropping her g's as she addressed boisterous rallies in Fort Worth and Dallas. "I gotta tell you, I don't think people in Texas scare all that easily.''

The New York senator -- who Friday began airing an ad in Texas showing peacefully sleeping children, and asking voters whom they would like answering the White House phone during a late-night crisis -- accused Obama of refusing to engage with her on national security issues.

"If Senator McCain, as it appears likely, is the Republican nominee this is going to be a campaign about national security,'' Clinton said. "If Senator Obama doesn't want to debate me about national security, how is he going to debate Senator McCain?''

Obama responded to Clinton's ad with one of his own today, using Clinton's own language against her. "When that call gets answered, shouldn't the president be the one -- the only one -- who had judgment and courage to oppose the Iraq war from the start?'' the Obama ad asks.

Earlier today, Clinton was even more pointed in her criticism of her opponent, who has made his early opposition to the Iraq war a defining difference between the two Democratic contenders.

"I think you'll be able to imagine many things Senator McCain will be able to say. He’s never been the president, but he will put forth his lifetime of experience. I will put forth my lifetime of experience. Senator Obama will put forth a speech he made in 2002,'' Clinton told reporters on her plane en route to Fort Worth from San Antonio.

With polls showing Clinton and Obama virtually tied in the Lone Star State, Clinton has been underscoring her experience and domestic policy plans, dismissing Obama as a candidate who can make speeches but not deliver.

"I'm not asking you to take a leap of faith,'' Clinton implored before a state fairgrounds audience in Dallas. "I'm asking you to look at what I've already done.''

Obama spokesman Bill Burton said Clinton's vote to authorize the Iraq war showed a lack of judgment. "Senator Clinton is right when she says she's been tested on national security, but it's a test she has resoundingly failed," Burton said.

By Lisa Wangsness, Globe Staff

PROVIDENCE -- Barack Obama found himself today in the same Rhode Island College gymnasium where Clinton spoke last weekend -- and gave her a taste of her own medicine.

Last Sunday, Clinton addressed several thousand people, where she spoke sarcastically about Obama’s themes of hope and bipartisanship, saying she knew better than to think that "The sky will open, the light will come down, celestial choirs will be singing, and everyone will know we should do the right thing, and the world will be perfect."

Today, addressing a crowd of more than 5,000 -- not including about 5,000 more who were turned away for lack of space, Obama referred to those remarks.

"She was here, right? And she was saying, 'Oh, you know, he thinks that the clouds will part, and he's so naïve, and he thinks he can wave a magic wand,' " he said, as the crowd laughed.

He said she had also mocked his supporters.

"They say, 'Oh, they just like him because he talks good, they're just infatuated.' Well, let me tell you something, I bet there are a lot of people here who have been through hard times," he said, as the crowd cheered. "Hope is not wide-eyed optimism…. Hope is believing and then working and fighting for things."

The boisterous crowd cheered after virtually every line Obama uttered. One person fainted -- an occurrence that has become routine for Obama, who told the crowd to drink some juice. "If we can open some of the doors, it might cool things off a little bit," he said calmly.

While Clinton has long been expected to carry Rhode Island in Tuesday's primary, over the last week, the race has grown closer. A recent Brown University poll shows Obama within 8 percentage points of Clinton.

Hillary Clinton announced a handful of endorsements today, and while two actresses are probably the best known, the other two supporters are likely more consequential.

Clinton said that Melanie Griffith of "Working Girl" and many other movies is backing her candidacy, along with Eva Longoria of "Desperate Housewives" fame.

Less glamorous is El Paso Mayor John Cook, but his support coul