A hospital in Ohio is disputing a story often told on the stump by Hillary Clinton, in which a woman was allegedly refused care over an inability to tender $100, and later died of complications from a stillbirth.

The hospital maintains that the woman in question was in the care of an obstetrics practice affiliated with them when she died, and had never been refused service. They also say that the Clinton campaign never contacted them to check on the story. "We implore the Clinton campaign to immediately desist from repeating this story," said the hospital's CEO.

Clinton spokesman Mo Elleithee said the campaign verifies the anecdotes that they are told. "In this case, we did try but were not able to fully vet it," Elleithee said. "If the hospital claims it did not happen that way, we respect that."

The Colombian government has terminated its contract with chief Clinton strategist Mark Penn's lobbying firm, after he apologized for personally meeting with their ambassador on Monday to discuss strategy for a free-trade deal that Hillary Clinton publicly opposes.

Apparently the Colombians did not take kindly to Penn calling the meeting "an error in judgment." From their statement: "The Colombian government considers this a lack of respect to Colombians, and finds this response unacceptable."

Here are some nuggets that have been ferreted out of Bill and Hillary's 2000-2006 tax returns, which were released yesterday:

* Their $10 million in charitable contributions all went to a family foundation run by the Clintons, and it has given away roughly half the money they sank into it.

* Some folks are wondering what Bill Clinton did to earn $15 million from billionaire Ron Burkle's Yucaipa Companies.

* But Clinton spokesperson Jay Carson isn't saying whether Bill did any work for Dubai, whose ruler is a Yucaipa investor.

* Many of the wealthy donors who bankrolled both Clintons' White House bids frequently pop up in the returns, suggesting lots of cross-over between the political and private sector realms the Clintons move in.

* The returns show that the Clintons' combined income increased by an astonishing 50 times in the first year after Bill left office, highlighting the money-making opportunities awaiting presidents after they leave office.

* Bill's advance on his autobiography was higher than previously thought, checking in at $15 million.

* Here's what the Clintons made last year:

Sen. Clinton's salary $150,200

Sen. Clinton's book royalties $152,864

President Clinton's pension $186,600

President Clinton's book income $4,434,446

President Clinton's speeches $10,145,000

Partnership income $2,750,000

Adviser income from InfoUSA $400,000

Income from savings accounts $485,000

Investment income from Blind Trust $3,515,000

That partnership income apparently comes from Burkle again.

* And finally, Hillary says that the returns show that Bill made all that cash "doing what he loves doing most -- talking to people."

When Congressman Rob Andrews (D-NJ) announced two days ago that he'd be challenging incumbent Sen. Frank Lautenberg in the Democratic primary, a lot of readers from outside the state were probably ready to dismiss it as a non-starter — Lautenberg is a four-term Senator, after all, and it's only two months from now to the primary.

But the reality is, this could be a very serious challenge. Lautenberg is 84 years old, with many polls showing that voters think he's too old for the job. On top of that, New Jersey politicians are almost never truly popular, and Lautenberg isn't the exception.

The ambitious pol Andrews has a few things going for him: Relative youth, a lack of any statewide unpopularity, and the support of the South Jersey party organization — whose power is growing and whose zeal to defeat the North Jersey establishment, which has ruled the state since forever, is as feverish as it's ever been.

Read more »

More news late on a Friday afternoon: In the wake of reports today that the Michigan revote is really, truly, unequivocally dead, the Obama campaign is now calling for a 50-50 split of the delegation.

Here's the statement from Obama campaign manager David Plouffe:

“Senator Obama firmly believes that the Michigan delegation should be seated in Denver. A 50/50 split of the delegates is an eminently fair solution, especially since originally Senator Clinton herself said the Michigan primary wouldn't 'count for anything.' It's now up to the Clinton campaign: they can agree to a fair resolution or they can continue trying to score political points and change the rules. It's time to move forward. Senator Clinton should accept an equitable solution that allows Michigan to participate fully in the convention."

From the Hillary campaign's perspective, of course, this is like nullifying the vote completely and not seating the delegation at all.

Late on a Friday afternoon, in the dead-news zone, the Clintons release seven years of tax returns, from 2000-2006.

In that period, the Clintons racked up a total gross income of nearly $110 million, and an after-tax one of $57 million.

Much of that is Bill's speech income of over $50 million, and his book income, which checks in at nearly $30 million.

From Clinton spokesperson Jay Carson's statement:

The Clintons have now made public thirty years of tax returns, a record matched by few people in public service. None of Hillary Clinton's presidential opponents have revealed anything close to this amount of personal financial information.

What the Clintons' tax returns show is that they paid more than $33,000,000 in federal taxes and donated more than $10,000,000 to charities over the past eight years. They paid taxes and made charitable contributions at a higher rate than taxpayers at their income level.

The returns themselves are here.

This should get the Edwards endorsement tea-leaf readers going.

I just got off the phone with former John Edwards adviser Joe Trippi, and he says that Edwards would commend and support Hillary's idea for a cabinet-level poverty czar, which she proposed during a speech today.

"That would absolutely be something Edwards would welcome," Trippi says. "As someone close to him, a cabinet level position on poverty is something he would support 100 percent."

"Edwards pushed both [Obama and Hillary] to focus on poverty," Trippi adds. "She's done something to be commended for."

It's really, finally, definitely official now. The Michigan re-vote is dead, with the state Democratic Party releasing the following statement:

The Michigan Democratic Party has carefully reviewed several proposals for a Party-run primary or caucus as a means of resolving the dispute over the seating of the Michigan delegation to the 2008 Democratic National Convention. We have concluded that it is not practical to conduct such a primary or caucus. We will continue to work with the Working Group, the DNC and the candidates to resolve this matter in a manner which is respectful of the views of Democrats in Michigan, and which is fair to those who voted in the January 15th Democratic primary.

Next stop: The credentials committee.

Late Update: Howard Dean and Sen. Carl Levin, plus some other major Michigan Dem names, have released this statement:

"We are united in our commitment to doing everything we can to ensure that a Michigan delegation is seated in Denver this summer. We also know that any solution needs to be acceptable to both Democratic presidential campaigns. While there may be differences of opinion in how we get there, we will continue to work together to ensure that a Michigan delegation is seated and that the logistics are in place for a Michigan delegation in Denver. We have every expectation that we will succeed in that endeavor, and then go on to win in November."

Late Late Update: Jason Horowitz of The New York Observer reports that Dean got an earful from a roomful of Hillary donors upset that he hasn't done more to resolve the Florida and Michigan standoffs.

Top Clinton strategist Mark Penn has apologized for meeting on Monday with the Colombian ambassador, as part of his lobbying work for a trade deal that Hillary publicly opposes:

"The meeting was an error in judgment that will not be repeated and I am sorry for it. The senator's well known opposition to this trade deal is clear and was not discussed."

Meanwhile, Ben Smith reports that the Change To Win labor federation, which has endorsed Barack Obama, is calling upon Hillary to fire Penn.

This is worth a watch: John McCain journeyed to Memphis today to speak about Martin Luther King's assassination 40 years ago and apologized for voting in 1983 against making MLK day a holiday. And it didn't go all that well...

We couldn't help but notice McCain's evocation of King's forgiveness in asking to be forgiven for voting against...the King holiday.

It strikes us as a bit absurd, but hey, in the spirit of this holiday, let's forgive McCain for this one. At least he went there.

An Obama campaign aide confirms to me that "almost all" the $40 million raised last month is for use in the primary.

No such estimate from the Hillary campaign yet, and neither campaign has given out an official primary-general breakdown -- expect them when they file in two weeks.

Either way, this reminds us again what a tremendous financial advantage Obama has heading into the race's final stretch.

In Indiana this morning, Obama gave a speech marking the 40th anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

One interesting bit: Obama brought up his recent speech on race relations, and drew an implicit link between King's lofty goals and his own call for a bigger politics...

Part of the problem is that for a long time, we’ve had a politics that’s been too small for the scale of the challenges we face. This is something I spoke about a few weeks ago in a speech I gave in Philadelphia. And what I said was that instead of having a politics that lives up to Dr. King’s call for unity, we’ve had a politics that’s used race to drive us apart, when all this does is feed the forces of division and distraction, and stop us from solving our problems.

That is why the great need of this hour is much the same as it was when Dr. King delivered his sermon in Memphis.

Obama also emphasized an oft-overlooked aspect of King's legacy -- his battle for economic justice -- and put it in the context of our present problems. Full text of speech after the jump.

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New numbers from the Morning Call find Hillary leading Obama in Pennsylvania by 11 points, 49%-38%.

That lead is down three points from mid-February. Since then, Obama barnstormed the state by bus and unleashed a Pennsylvania ad blitz, which the Call estimates is costing the Obama campaign $325,000 per day, as compared to Hillary's $120,000 per day.

The Obama campaign had some trouble when former foreign policy adviser Samantha Power suggested that Obama's campaign promises on Iraq might not fully guide his actions as president, and now it looks like another one of his foreign policy advisers has similarly strayed off the campaign's message about ending the war:

WASHINGTON — A key adviser to Senator Obama’s campaign is recommending in a confidential paper that America keep between 60,000 and 80,000 troops in Iraq as of late 2010, a plan at odds with the public pledge of the Illinois senator to withdraw combat forces from Iraq within 16 months of taking office.

The paper, obtained by The New York Sun, was written by Colin Kahl for the center-left Center for a New American Security. In “Stay on Success: A Policy of Conditional Engagement,” Mr. Kahl writes that through negotiations with the Iraqi government “the U.S. should aim to transition to a sustainable over-watch posture (of perhaps 60,000–80,000 forces) by the end of 2010 (although the specific timelines should be the byproduct of negotiations and conditions on the ground).”

Both the Obama campaign and Kahl, who is day-to-day coordinator of Obama's working group on Iraq, say his views expressed here are not those of the campaign in any way. Obviously, candidates surround themselves with multiple advisers with a range of views about stuff, and can't be responsible for all of them.

It's unclear right now whether the Hillary camp will try to make an issue of this today.

John McCain is now returning contributions totaling $3 million that were raised for the general election, in preparation for opting into the public finance system — a sign that he will not be attempting to privately raise the millions he would need to go up against the Democratic nominee, but which he has had trouble getting on his own.

Instead, the man known for campaign finance reform is asking his contributors to write checks to a new fund — a fund set up to help him pay legal fees and other expenses in his dealings with the public finance system.

It turns out the Democratic campaigns are still squabbling over how they'll debate in North Carolina.

Yesterday we reported that Hillary Clinton had accepted a debate for North Carolina, with a different date from the one originally proposed.

The Obama camp now says they have not yet agreed to the new date of April 27 — after the Pennsylvania primary, which Hillary is currently expected to win — as opposed to their original proposed date of April 19, before the Pennsylvania primary.

Hillary kicked off her appearance yesterday on The Tonight Show with a joke about the Bosnia gaffe that has caused her a lot of trouble in the polls lately: "I was worried I wasn't going to make it. I was pinned down by sniper fire at the Burbank airport."

After getting the joke out of the way, she then explained the gaffe as having been a case of faulty memory due to her grueling campaign schedule.

Here's a YouTube of her appearance:

In what could become Hillary Clinton's own version of the NAFTA-Gate controversy that caused Barack Obama so much trouble a month ago, top Clinton strategist Mark Penn reportedly met on Monday with the Colombian ambassador to discuss a bilateral free-trade deal — something his candidate has publicly opposed.

In a case study on the dangers of wearing too many hats, Penn's attendance was in his capacity as the head of his lobbying firm Burson-Marsteller Worldwide. Expect the Obama camp to hit Clinton for this on at least two angles: Hypocrisy on trade, and having as her top strategist a lobbyist for a foreign government.

A new Research 2000 poll of Indiana shows the primary here, perhaps the last true toss-up race of the campaign, to be a dead heat: Clinton 49%, Obama 46.

From the internals: Obama is winning voters age 18-29 by a 63%-36% margin, while Clinton is ahead 60%-34% in the 60+ demographic. Meanwhile, Obama is winning the black vote by a lopsided 81%-16%

The new poll of Pennsylvania from Strategic Vision (R) shows a race that has rapidly tightened in the last three weeks, from a landslide Hillary Clinton lead to only a moderately-sized one:

Clinton 49% (-7)
Obama 41% (+3)

The general election match-ups show that Barack Obama still has a lot of ground to make up here, though, should he ultimately win the Democratic nomination:

McCain (R) 47%, Obama (D) 42%
Clinton (D) 47%, McCain (R) 41%

It would hardly be surprising if the Clinton camp doesn't tout this poll in making their case that they remain the more electable option for the Democrats.

A new CBS/New York Times poll shows Barack Obama continuing to narrowly lead Hillary Clinton among Democratic primary voters nationwide, with no changes at all since last month: Obama 46%, Clinton 43%.

And for the general election match-ups:

Obama (D) 47% (-1)
McCain (R) 42% (-1)

Clinton (D) 48% (+2)
McCain (R) 43% (-1)

A key finding of the poll: 58% of whites say Jeremiah Wright's statements have had no effect on their opinion of Barack Obama, compared to 41% of whites who say they now think less of him. It we assume that many of those 41% were probably McCain voters to begin with, it would appear that the Wright controversy hasn't hurt Obama too badly — at least for now.

Barack Obama has a new Spanish-language TV ad in the Philadelphia market, focusing on issues like education and children's health care:

Latinos have been one of Obama's weakest demographic groups throughout this primary season, and he's also had problems breaking through against Hillary Clinton among working-class voters. Now that he has as big a financial advantage over Hillary Clinton as he does, expect him to saturate the state with ads over the next 19 days, in order to improve the situation with those demographics.

The translated English script is available after the jump.

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A spokesperson for Bill Richardson is adamantly denying what top Hillary confidantes told Mark Halperin and me this morning.

The spokesperson says that the New Mexico governor never...

(a) Promised not to endorse Obama; or

(b) Questioned Obama's chances in the general election.

"The Governor never promised that he wouldn’t endorse Obama," Richardson spokesperson Pahl Shipley emails me. “The Governor has never questioned Senator Obama’s electability. He believes Barack Obama is the right person to lead this country and he will be America’s next President."

So there you have it.

As the race heads into the fourth quarter, top Hillary advisers and supporters are wrestling with a big question:

Is it really politically feasible for her to continue to try to woo super-delegates in the event of a loss in both the pledged delegate count and the popular vote?

Some Hillary advisers and supporters now appear to be concluding that the answer is No. Without a popular vote victory to offset Obama's expected victory among pledged delegates, they say, it will be difficult indeed to make a case to super-dels that they should support her.

One Hillary adviser confirmed to me that he believes that if she falls short in the popular vote, it will become very tough to continue making the case to super-delegates that they should decide their choice based on electability alone, though this adviser said that an unexpectedly big string of victories could conceivably shift the dynamic somewhat.

Says another adviser: "It's much harder to make the case to super delegates without the popular vote. You have to give the super-delegates something to work with. You have to give them political cover to support her in opposition to what the pledged delegates represent."

Hillary spokesperson Howard Wolfson would only say: "The popular vote is an important metric that automatic delegates will look at in making their decisions."

Read more »

A new InsiderAdvantage poll of Pennsylvania shows this primary down to a dead heat: Clinton 45%, Obama 43%. The poll gives some measure of corroboration to yesterday's Public Policy Polling (D) survey, which put Obama nominally ahead by two.

From the internals: Clinton leads only 49%-40% among whites, while Obama is ahead 56%-29% with black voters. Clinton is ahead 49%-38% with women, while Obama is ahead 47%-41% with men.

During an interview on CNBC, New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine not only said it would be very tough to for Hillary Clinton to get super-delegate support if she loses the national popular vote — he himself is "reserving the right" to switch his own vote if she doesn't come out on top in that metric:

Corzine has been one of Hillary's biggest supporters, leading almost the whole party in his state to back her, so even this small bit of doubt from him could mean serious trouble ahead — though obviously, Corzine expressed his confidence she would win the popular vote, counting both Michigan and Florida.

Get ready for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to debate in North Carolina. The Hillary campaign just announced via press release that she's accepted an invitation to debate in the state on April 27, on CBS.

Obama had previously challenged her to a North Carolina CBS debate, at the same time as he accepted her challenge to meet in Philadelphia, but apparently it was held up until the proposed meeting could be rescheduled. The new date would put the debate after the Pennsylvania primary, with Hillary likely to have just won a big contest and be heading into the debate with some momentum.

We were reluctant to post on this earlier without official confirmation, but now we have it: A spokesperson for Jimmy Carter confirms that he made some very kind remarks about Barack Obama, and all but announced his support for the Illinois Senator.

Carter was asked about the primaries at a press conference during his tour of Nigeria, picked up by the Nigerian paper This Day, and here's what he said:

"We are very interested in the primaries. Don’t forget that Obama won in my state of Georgia. My town which is home to 625 people is for Obama, my children and their spouses are pro-Obama. My grandchildren are also pro-Obama. As a super-delegate, I would not disclose who I am rooting for but I leave you to make that guess."

Hillary Clinton has her first ad up in North Carolina, in which she speaks directly to the camera to promote a new Web site called NCAskeMe.com, at which she'll take voters' questions:

The ad seems to serve two purposes. By stressing that "these are not typical times," it plays into her theme that she's the serious, issue-oriented candidate the country needs to solve its problems. And by promising that this isn't a typical ad, and opening herself up to questions from the public, she also seems to be trying to project the sort of free-wheeling style that Obama has all but mastered on the trail.

Here's an interesting peek at some of what was going on behind the scenes in Chicago during the controversy over Jeremiah Wright, the pastor at Obama's Trinity church.

I'm told that top Obama adviser David Axelrod privately tried to help Trinity with its raging public relations problem by asking one of Chicago's top P.R. firms to go in and help the church deal with its P.R. mess.

Axelrod confirms to me that amid the controversy, Trinity put out word that it was overwhelmed by media calls and in need of help. Axelrod confirms that he called Jim Terman, the president of Jasculca-Terman and Associates, a major Chicago P.R. outfit that specializes in doing crisis P.R. management for corporations and large institutions.

"I called Jim Terman and asked if they were interested in helping out and they followed up with the church," Axelrod emails, adding that his involvement ended there.

Terman himself confirmed that Axelrod had asked him to help Trinity -- and confirmed that his firm was currently doing pro bono work on the beleagured church's behalf.

"Trinity is a well respected institution in this town, though you wouldn't believe it from the national press," Terman said, adding that he has known Axelrod for 25 years. "David was interested in helping the church -- the guy he's working for happens to be a member of the church."

It's unclear whether Axelrod was operating partly out of worry about how the controversy was impacting Obama -- after all, the church was the first to sound the call for help. But this is nonetheless noteworthy -- a glimpse at a previously-unseen aspect of the Obama camp's efforts to deal with the whole situation.

Barack Obama is on the air in Pennsylvania with this spot about plant closings, an apparent play for blue-collar voters:

The ad has already run in Indiana, too. Its low-key pitch, a sharp departure from the stirring oratory in most of his other ads, seems to be part of a pattern of Obama refocusing himself on bread-and-butter issues in order to appeal to working-class voters in the remaining states.

On a conference call with reporters this morning, Hillary spokesperson Howard Wolfson was asked whether it's the Hillary campaign's official position that Obama can't win a general election against McCain, as Hillary is reported to have privately argued to Bill Richardson.

Wolfson's answer:

"No."

For some time now, the Hillary camp has been in a bind on this front. As her odds grow longer, it becomes necessary to sound the alarm about Obama's chances in a general election ever more loudly, to the point where the argument risks straying over the line into an assertion that he can't win at all.

Simply put, the campaign is struggling to strike a difficult balancing act: How to sow serious and enduring doubts about Obama's electability while simultaneously maintaining loyalty to the larger Democratic cause? Life ain't easy sometimes.

Late Update: I've changed the above hed in response to a very technical, though not illegitimate, objection a few of you made to the original.

Late Late Update: Here's the audio from the call:

Here are Obama's March fundraising numbers, just out from the campaign:

Total Raised in March: More than $40 million

Contributors in March: More than 442,000

First-Time Contributors in March: More than 218,000

Average Contribution: $96

Total Contributors to Date: More than 1,276,000

This morning, Mark Halperin quoted a Clinton "associate" saying that Bill Richardson privately had confided to the Clintons that he thought Obama couldn't win a general election.

Now I've got more. A top Hillary adviser confirms this, telling me:

"Bill Richardson repeatedly promised he would not endorse Obama -- and the reason he gave was that Obama wasn't ready -- he couldn't be elected."

After the news broke yesterday that Bill Clinton grew angry in a meeting with California super-delegates, and asserted that Richardson had promised five times not to endorse Obama, a Richardson spokesperson denied that Richardson ever promised Hillary any endorsement.

But that isn't what is being reported. Rather, what's being reported is that Richardson promised he wouldn't endorse Obama. Shipley didn't return my call asking for comment on that.

Now a top Hillary adviser has asserted to me that this happened, and claims that Richardson said the reason for this was that he didn't think Obama could win.

We'll be reporting this out more today.

Time magazine's Karen Tumulty interviews prominent Hillary backer and Fox News fan Ed Rendell of Pennsylvania, and finds him in a particularly feisty mood about the press' coverage of Hillary and Obama...

In a recent appearance on Fox News -- not exactly considered friendly territory for the Democrats -- he congratulated the network for having done "the fairest job [and] remained the most objective of all the cable networks." In an interview with me, the governor was again in media-critic mode. "It took Saturday Night Live to bring some fairness to this election," Rendell said, referring to the show's now famous skit lampooning the media's crush on Obama. "It's stunning. Does Keith Olbermann get checks from the Obama campaign?"

Relatedly, is it just me, or has the tone of MSNBC and NBC towards Hillary changed of late? I reported here recently that top Hillary advisers had lodged repeated behind-the-scenes complaints about Chris Matthews, and the Hillary campaign publicly went to war with MSNBC over the network's protracted and palpable hostility towards her and its rather generous coverage of Obama.

Is the pressure working? The other day, NBC's Andrea Mitchell ran a soft-focus piece on Hillary's girl-hood, and there's been a more Hillary-friendly feel on the network in recent days. It certainly feels like the network's trying to make nice with Camp Hillary now.

Democrats are facing what could prove a major difficulty in the general election: During the fall campaign, John McCain might have not one, but two sons serving in Iraq.

For the Democrats, that possibility could make it much more difficult to hit McCain on Iraq policy. And while McCain himself has avoided mentioning it in his speeches, at least for now, you can bet his surrogates will be more than happy to bring it up every time the Dems hit him on the war.

In an interesting statistic from North Carolina, the number of registered Republicans has actually gone down by about 6,700 this in this Southern state — while over 165,000 new voters have joined the rolls from the Democratic campaigns' registration drives.

While it's not a guarantee that the state could go Democratic for president, it could still be a good measure of overall partisan enthusiasm. If more voters are switching from the Republicans to being Democrats or independents, it could be a hint to down-ticket campaigns about which voters to target in order to retain Democratic seats and go after Republican ones.

The GOP may be on the verge of losing what should have been a safe seat in Louisana. An internal Republican poll in advance of one of the upcoming special elections in the state reportedly shows that former state Rep. Woody Jenkins, who is expected to win the Republican primary runoff this Saturday, is losing by three points to expected Democratic nominee Don Cazayoux.

The district went to President Bush by a 19-point margin in 2004, so this would be a particularly juicy pickup for national Dems.

After reports that Hillary Clinton told Richardson that Barack Obama can't win, one Clinton source now says just the opposite happened — that it was Richardson who said Obama can't win, and now he's lying about it after he endorsed Obama, anyway.

One unnamed Clinton associate told Mark Halperin: "Bill Richardson is clearly embarrassed that he broke his promise to them. He should come out and tell the truth and admit that he told both Clintons that Obama wasn’t ready and can’t win."

John McCain's campaign has rolled out a rebuttal ad to Hillary Clinton's 3 a.m. economic crisis ad, which singled out McCain instead of Barack Obama. No media buys have been announced yet for the ad, which charges that both Hillary and Obama would answer economic troubles by raising your taxes, but here it is:

The ad is an awful lot like Barack Obama's original rebuttal to Hillary's 3 a.m. ad in Ohio and Texas, using mostly the same footage and the same introduction to then parody her — and in his case, it wasn't too successful.

The Democrats now have a divisive Senate primary on their hands in New Jersey, with Congressman Rob Andrews announcing that he is challenging incumbent Frank Lautenberg in the June primary.

Andrews' big issue will probably be Lautenberg's age — the Senator is 84 years old, and polls have shown opposition to him getting another term because of it. On the other hand, expect Lautenberg to hit Andrews for his 2002 vote to authorize the Iraq War, and to have the whole might of the New Jersey Democratic machinery at his back.

By the way, this primary could be the biggest challenge Lautenberg faces this year — as we laid out last week, the Republican candidates aren't exactly an impressive bunch. So whoever wins, this might still be a safe Democratic seat anyway.

Here's a case study in the problems that the Republicans have been having recruiting House candidates: The man they thought would be a top get for an open Dem-held seat decided that not only is he not running, but also that for now he's not even becoming a Republican.

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It's 3 A.M. And the phone's ringing in the White House.

Again.

On a conference call with reporters just now, the Hillary campaign unveiled a new ad for Pennsylvania featuring another ringing phone, only this time the emergency in question concerns the economy, and the target of the ad isn't Obama, but McCain...

What would happen if the economic red phone and the national security red phone both rang at the same time? Who would be better equipped to handle that?

Seriously, though the original 3 A.M. ad came under some criticism, the Hillary campaign is not only sticking with this approach, but they're also claiming that one goal of the current ad is to remind Pennsylvanians of the last one.

"It will remind people of the previous ad they've heard about," Hillary chief strategist Mark Penn said on the call.

Also on the call, Hillary advisers acknowledged that they expect to be outspent two-to-one in the state. "We will not have the resources that Senator Obama has," said Hillary spokesperson Howard Wolfson, adding that they also expect to be badly outgunned in Indiana and North Carolina.

Late Update: Here's some audio of the whole Clinton campaign conference call. Enjoy.

Everyone's been talking today about Karl Rove's big interview with GQ magazine, but I wanted to highlight this bit, in which Hillary's red phone ad earns praise from the master of fearmongering himself.

Asked about the ad, Rove says...

It was a gutsy, dangerous move. She figured out that she had to do something to raise the issue of: Is he fit to be president? And this was a way to do it. I happened to be in Texas a week before the ad popped, and all of her surrogates were hitting him pretty hard on the thinness of his experience. They were pretty brutal. And this ad sort of fed into that.

We don't imagine that Hillary ad guru Mandy Grunwald will be putting this one on her resume anytime soon. On second thought, maybe she will -- it's a high honor, after all.

Separately, Jonathan Martin ferrets out this key passage in the interview, in which Rove previews the coming GOP attack on Obama's patriotism:

There are Democrats, particularly blue-collar Democrats, who defect to McCain because they see McCain as a patriotic figure and they see Obama as an elitist who's looking down his nose at 'em. Which he is. That comment where he said, you know, "After 9/11, I didn't wear a flag lapel pin because true patriotism consists of speaking out on the issues, not wearing a flag lapel pin"? Well, to a lot of ordinary people, putting that flag lapel pin on is true patriotism. It's a statement of their patriotic love of the country. And for him to sit there and dismiss it as he did...

As we've noted here before, should Obama be the nominee, we're going to see a GOP assault very similar to what hit Gore and Kerry -- Obama thinks he's better than you ordinary Joes, and he thinks patriotism is for rubes. Get ready.

The Obama camp has now taken a direct shot at the Hillary campaign over our story yesterday reporting that Jeremiah Wright is a topic in discussions between senior Hillary adviser Harold Ickes and the uncommitted super-dels the Clinton camp is wooing.

Asked about our piece on a campaign conference call moments ago, an Obama surrogate, Congressman George Miller, said it was "very unfortunate" and suggested it wouldn't work.

"If they want to work the low road they're welcome to it," Miller said. "But I don't think that will turn people in their favor."

Relatedly, stay tuned for a TPMtv episode all about the Ickes story. We'll have one up at TPM in a couple hours.

Late Update: Here's the audio of Miller on the phone call:

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), one of Barack Obama's top surrogates, has responded to our story that we reported yesterday — that Clinton strategist Harold Ickes has been discussing the Jeremiah Wright controversy with uncommitted super-delegates.

"Harold Ickes can try whatever he'd like to try by way of tactics to win the super-delegates," Durbin told the Huffington Post. "But I believe that most of them feel as I do, that Barack Obama has handled this is a responsible way and in a way we would like to see from the president."

Durbin also argued that Obama's big speech on race relations had enabled him to rebound from the Wright controversy: "What has happened since [Obama's] Philadelphia speech is that the ground lost initially has been regained."

I've just obtained a copy of a new and rather voluminous fundraising letter that the Obama campaign sent out in Maryland, attacking Hillary for dirty politics and suggesting that she embraces President Bush's opposition to negotiating with hostile foreign leaders.

The letter says that Obama's pledged del lead is so big that she "has to win double-digit blowouts in every remaining state" to catch up. It repeats the Obama camp's frequent assertion that Hillary's campaign "will literally do and say anything to win this nomination." And there's also this...

Barack is now facing a two-front battle against Senators Clinton and McCain. Both are reading from the same political playbook as they attack Barack on foreign policy. They have both dismissed his call for renewed diplomacy as "naive" while mistakenly standing behind George Bush's policy of non-engagement that just isn't working.

Hillary's disagreement with Obama isn't over whether their administrations would conduct "renewed diplomacy" with foreign governments. Rather, it's over Obama's assertion that he would meet with the leaders themselves in his first year without precondition. That's what she attacked as "naive."

The fundraising letter also has lots of charts trying to demonstrate why Obama's basically got the race locked up. It's worth a look; you can view the whole thing after the jump.

Late Update: A commenter below notes that Obama assented when asked whether he "would be willing" to meet with hostile foreign leaders in his first year without precondition, and didn't say that he "would" do this. Fine -- I stand corrected. He "would be willing" to do this.

Nonetheless, the nature of the disagreement between Hillary and Obama on this precise question is as I characterized it above.

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DNC chair Howard Dean just met with a bunch of Dem members of Congress from Florida, as well as state chair Karen Thurman, in an effort to demonstrate seriousness of purpose with regard to getting the delegation sat.

No huge developments, but DNC spokesperson Stacie Paxton tells me that he assured the assembled polls that he's bent on getting Florida seated, but that it has to be done in a way both campaigns will agree with.

Asked if any specific ideas on how to do this were discussed, Paxton said no, adding that the DNC "needed to start by getting everyone in the room first, then we'll figure out details."

The DNC and the Florida will be issuing a joint statement soon. The meeting comes on the same day that The New York Times did a big piece reporting that Dems are worried that Dean won't be able to navigate all the competing interests in a way that will finally solve the Florida and Michigan conundrums.

Late Update: I forgot to add that Dean told the pols that hotel rooms have been booked for the delegates.

This morning's Public Policy Polling (D) survey of Pennsylvania gives Barack Obama a narrow lead in the Democratic primary, a huge change from the previous poll two weeks ago:

Obama 45% (+15)
Clinton 43% (-13)

On the one hand, this is a huge outlier — polls over the last two days from SurveyUSA, Rasmussen and Quinnipiac have Clinton ahead by 6-12 points. On the other hand, PPP has had a pretty good track record this cycle, so maybe they're ahead of the curve on this one.

In an endorsement of the Clinton campaign's position on super-delegates, Howard Dean affirmed that supers do not have to follow either the pledged delegates or the aggregate popular vote in making their decisions.

"They should use whatever yardstick they want," Dean said. "That's what the rules provide for."

The Clinton campaign will in all likelihood have to rely on supers to get the nomination, with Barack Obama widely expected to get a majority of pledged delegates — and they'll need to have people reminded that the rules provide for this in order to maintain their legitimacy.

This morning's Quinnipiac polls show Hillary Clinton running nine points ahead of Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary, not significantly down from her lead two weeks ago:

Clinton 50% (-3)
Obama 41% (+0)

Meanwhile, Clinton is running stronger than Obama for the general election in Pennsylvania and two other big swing states — due to more solid support from white voters — which the Clinton campaign will be sure to use in arguing that they're more electable:

Florida
Clinton (D) 44%, McCain (R) 42%
McCain (R) 46%, Obama (D) 37%

Ohio
Clinton (D) 48%, McCain (R) 39%
Obama (D) 43%, McCain (R) 42%

Pennsylvania
Clinton (D) 48%, McCain (R) 40%
Obama (D) 43%, McCain (R) 39%

Barack Obama has picked up a big endorsement in Indiana: Former Congressman Lee Hamilton, who represented the state from 1965 to 1999.

Besides his roots in the Indiana primary, Hamilton's support could also lend credibility to Obama on foreign policy and national security, as he was vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission and co-chairman of the Iraq Study Group.

In a sign that he has a lot of ground to make up in the money race, John McCain still lags way behind both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in donations from employees of industries where Republican usually have an advantage.

There are a few obvious reasons for this: McCain's fundraising operation as a whole was pretty lackluster throughout the primary season, the two Democrats both built large fundraising machines to tap into both small and large donors, and even top executives have shifted more of their donations to the Democrats in anticipation of a Dem victory.

A new Rasmussen poll of Washington State shows that they're in for a very close gubernatorial race this year between first-term Democratic Governor Christine Gregoire and her 2004 Republican opponent Dino Rossi:

Gregoire (D) 47%
Rossi (R) 46%

Gregoire won the 2004 race by a final certified margin of only 129 votes, after intense legal wrangling over recounts.

Barack Obama appears to have had another big fundraising month in March, reportedly taking in over $30 million.

While it's less than Obama's $55 million month in February, it still represents a haul of over $1 million per day — and he'll be able to point a lot of that money at ads in Pennsylvania, Indiana and North Carolina.

A source in the Hillary Clinton campaign told Time that she will have taken in roughly $20 million for the month.

It's not yet known how much of each candidate's total can be used for the primary campaign.

The American Federation of Teachers is on the air in Pennsylvania, running this independent radio ad for Hillary Clinton:

The ad buy will run through the day before the primary, and cost just under $330,000. For her part, Hillary has been needing the outside help — thanks to his big advantage in cash on hand for the primary, he's been outspending her five to one on Pennsylvania TV ads.

Howard Dean's call for super-delegates to declare their preferences by July 1 has just gotten a very high-profile endorsement: Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

"I like that — July 1 or before," Reid told Roll Call. When asked what he would do to encourage the plan, Reid answered simply: "I just did it."

Reid told the Las Vegas Review-Journal last week that he'd been talking to Dean about how to avoid a bloody convention fight — begging the question as to whether he'd already agreed with Dean in private that this would be a good way to go.

A new SurveyUSA poll of Indiana, the first public poll of the state since mid-February, gives Hillary Clinton the lead: Clinton 52%, Obama 43%. A Hillary win here — perhaps the only state left that doesn't look like obviously favorable turf to one candidate or the other — could give her a strong footing to keep going forward with the campaign.

From the internals: Clinton leads 57%-40% with women, and is ahead 48%-46% among men. She leads 56%-37% among voters age 50 or above, and has a one-point lead among voters under 50. Among whites, it's Hillary 58%-37%, and Obama wins 79%-21% with black voters.

In an interview with me this morning, senior Hillary adviser Harold Ickes confirmed that Reverend Jeremiah Wright is a key topic in discussions with uncommitted super-delegates over whether Obama is electable in a general election.

The comments from Ickes, who is Hillary's chief delegate hunter, are to my knowledge the first on-the-record confirmation from a Hillary adviser that the Wright controversy is a subject in conversations between the Hillary campaign and the super-delegates her advisers are trying to win over to Hillary's side.

In the wide-ranging interview, Ickes also:

* Said that it was possible that Hillary forces on the convention credentials committee could bring a so-called "minority report" to a full convention vote, though he also said that this is something Hillary doesn't want to happen

* Confirmed that the Hillary campaign could still try to woo super-dels even if she lost the popular vote, with Michigan and Florida counted

* Said that there was no risk of Hillary's efforts "tearing the party apart," described the current campaign as "genteel," and dismissed those worrying about the damage the campaign could do to the party as "hand-wringers"

"Look what the Republicans did to a genuine war hero," Ickes said, in a reference to John Kerry.

"Super delegates have to take into account the strengths and weakness of both candidates and decide who would make the strongest candidate against what will undoubtedly be ferocious Republican attacks," Ickes continued. "I've had super delegates tell me that the Wright issue is a real issue for them."

In a reference to Wright's controversial views, Ickes continued: "Nobody thinks that Barack Obama harbors those thoughts. But that's not the issue. The issue is what Republicans [will do with them]...I think they're going to give him a very tough time."

Asked whether he was specifically bringing up Wright to super-delegates, Ickes said: "I've said what I've said...I tell people that they need to look at what they think Republicans may use against him. Wright comes up in the conversations."

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Yesterday we brought attention to a possible flaw in Gallup's tracking poll, a so-called "day of the week" effect.

Now Gallup has responded to Mark Blumenthal, who first raised the subject — and they lay out a pretty good case that no such effect exists.

Giving the average figures for all the daily samples taken in 2008 — which the public normally doesn't get to see — the numbers show no significant differences for the candidates depending on the day of the week:

Gallup acknowledges one possible quirk, but even then it doesn't look like much: "Clinton has had some good Mondays in March, basically every other one, but even with that her Monday average is only 3 points higher than her overall March average."

A new Gallup poll sheds some much-needed light on what Dems think of a so-called "dream ticket," showing that there's much higher support for Barack Obama as Hillary's running mate than for the other way around.

If Clinton were to win the nomination, Democrats would like Obama as the vice president by a 58%-41% margin, compared to only 42% support and 55% opposition to Clinton being Obama's VP candidate.

The underlying dynamic appears to be that a lot of Clinton supporters like Obama, with 53% favoring him as her vice president. But Obama supporters don't particularly like Clinton — only 29% of Obama voters would want Hillary as his running mate.

Hillary appears to have adopted a concerted strategy of telling local media in states that will vote after Pennsylvania that Obama and his supporters are opposed to allowing those states' residents to vote.

Here's Hillary making that case in an interview with a local TV station in North Carolina...

Hillary made similar comments to a Montana station, too, and to one in Indiana. These comments appear to be targeted towards local media; she hasn't to my knowledge gone this far in her speeches or in her comments to the national political press.

While it's true that Obama surrogates have called for her to drop out, the farthest that any Obama campaign official has gone is to say that Hillary almost certainly can't win the contest and that there should be a "sober" evaluation of her chances. And Obama himself has explicitly said she has a right to continue campaigning.

That Hillary is now pushing this line suggests that her advisers believe Obama surrogates erred in giving her an opening to galvanize her supporters and play the feisty underdog -- something the Obama campaign may recognize, too, judging by its efforts to rapidly dial back the calls for her to leave the race.

This morning's SurveyUSA poll of Pennsylvania give Hillary Clinton a 12-point lead in the Democratic primary — statistically significant, but narrower than her lead from three weeks ago:

Clinton 53% (-2)
Obama 41% (+5)

From the internals: Clinton leads 62%-34% among women, and Obama is ahead 50%-43% with men. Also, Clinton previously led 53%-41% among voters under the age of 50, but is now only ahead 49%-47% in that demographic.

Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO), who is supporting Hillary Clinton, went seriously off-message in an interview with Canadian public radio.

"If I had to make a prediction right now, I'd say Barack Obama is going to be the next president," Cleaver said. "I will be stunned if he's not the next president of the United States."

Nancy Pelosi weighed in on the ongoing super-delegate controversy, in an interview aired today on Good Morning America. When asked about the angry letter that she received from some high-profile Clinton supporters about her objections to super-delegates appearing to override the voters, Pelosi affirmed that supers do indeed have the right to vote their conscience:

Pelosi also encouraged the campaign to keep going, not joining in on any calls for Hillary Clinton to drop out: "I think that for all that I have said about respecting the will of the people that the inference to be drawn from that is that we have to continue the election in terms of hearing from the people."

Barack Obama has shifted gears rhetorically going into the Pennsylvania primary, away from a lot of the big-crowd speeches and towards smaller venues and talking to voters up close about their problems and his own background — something he hasn't done too much of since the January contests.

Franklin & Marshall College professor G. Terry Madonna, an expert on Pennsylvania politics, said it owes a lot to what the state's voters want to see in their politicians: "If you're an unemployed steelworker, a former coal miner, you want to know about job training, who pays your health care."

A new Rasmussen poll of Pennsylvania gives Hillary Clinton only a five-point lead in the Democratic primary. Here are the numbers, compared to last week:

Clinton 47% (-2)
Obama 42% (+3)

The poll also shows that 47% of respondents have followed Hillary's Bosnia-Misstatement story very closely, and another 27% have followed it somewhat closely.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-OK), chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee, finally has some good news to announce: The committee's $19 million in debt inherited from the 2006 cycle has been fully paid off.

The NRSC still lags way behind the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, though — the NRCC had only $5.1 million on hand at the end of the February, compared to the DCCC's $38 million. But in a cycle that has seen a whole lot of GOP retirements, plus a scandal involving past embezzlement from the committee, any good news is good enough.

A lot of pundits rely on the Gallup poll as the standard national tracking poll — but Mark Blumenthal has noticed an interesting quirk in its results. It turns out that the poll has a definite "day-of-the-week" effect: Hillary Clinton has consistently done better in samples from the middle of the week, while Barack Obama has benefitted from samples late in the week or on weekends.

The quirk, says Blumenthal, suggests that the poll may not be a reliable indicator of day-to-day movement — even though pundits have been spinning whole theories based on these volatile micro-shifts.

We're going to check in with Gallup about this, and keep you posted.

Here it is: The Election Central Idiot's Guide To The Credentials Committee.

The other day Hillary said in an interview that if the Florida and Michigan voting standoffs don't get resolved by the campaigns, this will be resolved one way or another at the Democratic National Convention in August -- by the credentials committee.

Her comments caused a big stir, and since then there's been a great deal of confusion out there over how the process will work, with some of you readers wondering whether Hillary could amass a majority on the committee and swing the decision her way.

So, after talking to the Democratic National Committee about this, here's the deal on how the credentials committee works.

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The first poll of the Kentucky Democratic primary confirms everyone's suspicion that this state is set to go to Hillary Clinton in a big way. The numbers from SurveyUSA: Clinton 58%, Obama 29%.

The Kentucky primary will be held on May 20 — the same day as the primary in Oregon, where Obama is expected to win.

We often hear that Barack Obama is the more electable Democrat in this election. But one high-profile Republican, NRCC chair Tom Cole, begs to differ:

"I happen to think Hillary Clinton is a stronger candidate in the end ... You couldn't raise money against Obama right away like you could with Clinton, that's true, and so maybe by the time you were able to raise money it wouldn't matter. But he's ideologically well to the left of Hillary Clinton, for all his rhetorical gifts, and I also think he's got a national-security deficit. I think she's a plausible commander in chief, and I don't think he is. It may not matter. But those two areas are where we would fight the election, and with McCain, I think we contrast with him very well."

We also often hear, of course, that Hillary would do more damage to down-ticket Dem Congressional candidates. So it's plausible that Cole, who oversees House GOP candidates, has a reason for saying this. But it's worth thinking about.

Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), a former Edwards supporter who is now neutral, has floated a new plan for seating delegates from Michigan. Under his proposal, Hillary Clinton would get 47 delegates, Barack Obama 36, and the remaining 73 delegates would be doled out on the basis of the national popular vote — thus seating the delegation with only a very small impact on the delegate math.

The plan is similar to one offered in Florida by two state legislators there — but if their proposal's lack of traction is any guide, Stupak's plan probably doesn't have too bright a future.

The Obama campaign may be denying reports that they have seven House Dems in North Carolina locked up for a future endorsement, but one Rep. backing Obama -- G.K. Butterfield -- promises somewhat mysteriously that more endorsements are coming, possibly as soon as tomorrow.

“There have been substantial discussions between the Obama campaign and the other six [Dems]," Butterfield tells the Raleigh News and Observer.

"More than one is seriously considering making a public release this week in support of Senator Obama — more than one but less than six,” Butterfield continues.

Butterfield does say -- as does the Obama campaign -- that reports that all seven will come out for Obama are "not true."

But despite all the confusion, something appears to be afoot -- and any significant break in Obama's direction in North Carolina is a big deal, since Hillary needs to win the state or at least make it close if she hopes to continue the race through May and into June.

Here's another sign that the Obama campaign is dialing back the calls for Hillary to leave the race: On a conference call with reporters just now, Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, who has now endorsed Obama, firmly asserted that Hillary has "every right" to stay in the race.

"I believe that Senator Clinton has every right to continue her campaign," Klobuchar said, adding: "I don't agree with those who have said things to the contrary."

Klobuchar also broke with the claim, voiced by many Dems of late, that a drawn-out contest could harm the party, asserting that she had no doubt that the two leading Democrats would do the right thing for Dems overall.

This of course could be more a reflection of Klobuchar's stated respect for Hillary than of her actual views on whether the race should continue. But Obama himself said over the weekend that Hillary should not drop out, and one wonders whether we'll now see a drop-off in calls for her to exit.

Late Update: We're going to start posting audio of the full conferences here for your enjoyment. Here's today's Obama call with Klobuchar: