A planned mega-fundraiser for the GOP, featuring President Bush and John McCain, has now been scaled back in the face of a daunting problem: Too few people actually wanted to buy tickets.

According to the Phoenix Business Journal, fundraiser set for this Tuesday in the city's convention center failed to sell enough tickets, leading to fears that the anti-Bush protesters might end up outnumbering actual attendees.

The new plan is for the Bush-McCain fundraising effort, which will benefit both the McCain campaign and the RNC, to be held in private residences in the Phoenix area away from media coverage.

You really have to watch this ad from Rep. Rob Andrews (D-NJ), the main primary challenger to Dem Senator Frank Lautenberg.

Andrews is running way behind in the polls, and now has an ad that is a very hard-hitting -- and perhaps desperate -- play for women voters. The message: Lautenberg ridiculed a female candidate's age.

The ad says that during Lautenberg's first campaign in 1982, he used "not so veiled language" to say "it's okay for a man to make fun of a woman's age," accusing Lautenberg of sexism in his race against GOP Congresswoman Millicent Fenwick:

Asked to cite a specific example of Lautenberg attacking Fenwick's gender, Andrews campaign manager Michael Murphy told Election Central, "I would not be able to say that he said, 'This person is incompetent to serve because she's a woman.'"

However, Murphy said of Lautenberg's age-based attacks used in that campaign: "It's virtually impossible, in projecting that message, to divorce that message from the fact that Millicent Fenwick was a woman."

The Obama campaign is criticizing Hillary for invoking the assassination of RFK while explaining why she's staying in the presidential race.

Her comments came during that Argus Leader editorial board meeting that we posted on below. Here's what she said...

...which prompted this statement from Obama campaign spokesperson Bill Burton...

"Senator Clinton's statement before the Argus Leader editorial board was unfortunate and has no place in this campaign."

...and here's Hillary's subsequent clarification of her remarks...

Another prominent Hillary supporter amplifies the growing Hillary-as-veep drumbeat:

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a Clinton booster, told The Post, "I am one that believes that if it works out that Senator Obama is the nominee, the strongest ticket would be Senator Clinton as vice president. No question in my mind....

"The weight of the states he carried versus the states she carried. It's different. And, therefore, if you combine them both, you've got the best electoral path."

Feinstein said she promotes an Obama-Clinton ticket with everyone she talks to.

This one's key, because someone like Feinstein has the capacity to be influential among super-dels. And any campaign to make Hillary veep would likely target the super-dels in hopes that they in turn would pressure the Obama camp to take her.

Separately, one uncommitted super-del is now also calling on Obama to do this. Senator Tom Carper of Delaware also told the Post: "I'll encourage [Obama] to ask, and if he does, for her to say yes."

During a meeting with the editorial board of the Argus Leader, Hillary appeared to accuse the Obama campaign of being behind the story CNN aired today reporting that there are "talks" between the two campaigns about her getting out of the race and possibly becoming veep.

"That's flatly untrue -- flatly, completely untrue," Hillary said when asked about "reports" of such talks. The edit board meeting is being aired live, and is still underway.

"No discussions at all," Hillary continued. "It is not anything I'm entertaining. It is nothing I've planned. It is nothing I'm prepared to engage in."

Both campaigns denied the story earlier today.

A bit later, Hillary added: "This is part of an ongoing effort to end this before it's over."

Later still, Hillary brought the hammer down: "I would look to the camp of my opponent for the source of those stories," she said.

So much for a non-aggression pact as the race draws to a close.

Late Update: It should be pointed out that the CNN story actually is explicitly sourced to people in Clinton's inner circle. What's more, Hillary's top finance chair today pushed the idea of her as veep.

Late Late Update: Here's video...

Democrats look like they may have a very good shot at capturing a major Republican-held Senate seat in a red state -- that of first-term Sen. Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina.

And to top it off, the latest piece of evidence is a new poll done by a Republican firm.

The survey, by state-level conservative think-tank the Civitas Institute, finds that Dole is barely leading her Dem challenger, state Senator Kay Hagan, at 45%-43% -- a statistical dead heat.

Other polling has shown this to be a close race, as well. With the Senate GOP being badly under-funded compared to the Dems, it can't be good for them that they're now having to play on defense in practically every part of the country.

In a few moments, Hillary will sit down for an interview with the editorial board of the Argus Leader in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

You can watch her meeting live by clicking right here.

If you're so inclined.

Barack Obama's call for negotiations with hostile foreign leaders has been hammered particularly hard by John McCain among Florida's Cuban community, a politically powerful demographic in the important swing state.

Now Obama is set to rebut McCain's attacks in a speech to the Cuban American National Foundation, scheduled to begin at 12:30 p.m., in which he's going to offer a vigorous defense of his position and actually try to win them over.

"Now I know what the easy thing is to do for American politicians," Obama will say, according to prepared excerpts. "Every four years, they come down to Miami, they talk tough, they go back to Washington, and nothing changes in Cuba. That's what John McCain did the other day. He joined the parade of politicians who make the same empty promises year after year, decade after decade."

"Instead of offering a strategy for change, he chose to distort my position, embrace George Bush's, and continue a policy that's done nothing to advance freedom for the Cuban people."

CNN reported this morning that there are some kind of "talks" taking place between the Obama and Clinton campaigns about the possibility that she might leave the race and become veep.

The network claimed that the Clinton camp was pushing three "scenarios" it was envisioning for the future.

Well, I've just spoken to both campaigns about this. And their denials couldn't be more adamant.

Here's what Hillary spokesperson Howard Wolfson sent me:

1) There have been no discussions with the Obama campaign

2) The only scenario being discussed by this campaign is Senator Clinton's nomination as President

3) The report is 100% false

And here is what Obama spokesperson Bill Burton said:

This is something that I agree with Howard on 100%.

If I didn't know better, I'd say those sound like denials...

In a move that could foreshadow a public push from the Hillary forces to get Barack Obama to invite her on the ticket, Hillary's top campaign fundraising official said in an interview that there's a "risk" that Hillary's political and financial supporters won't get behind Obama in time for him to win in November if she's passed over for the veep slot.

The fundraiser, businessman Hassan Nemazee, is Hillary's leading finance chair and one of the most influential money men in the party. He's the first prominent Hillary campaign official to raise the possiblity of an Obama loss should she not be invited on the ticket, and his comments suggests that this argument could emerge as central to any Clinton camp push to make her veep.

"There's a desire on the part of the party to come together under any circumstances, and Hillary and her supporters will do everything in their power to help Obama win, should he become the nominee, whether or not she's on the ticket," Nemazee said to me this morning.

"But there's a risk that if she isn't invited on the ticket, Hillary's political and financial supporters may not feel compelled to be as integrated and involved in the Obama campaign in order to provide the maximum support that he'll need to prevail in November."

"We have to recognize that we're talking about the month of June, versus a normal process that historically would have begun in the month of March," Nemazee said. "Time is not your friend. A dream ticket would be the best way to ensure both unity and full and active support, financially and politically, for the ticket to be in the strongest position to win in the fall."

Nemazee went on, "It goes without saying that this argument is predicated on the fact that the single most important aspect of Senator Obama's decision is who is able to serve as president in a moment's notice should that need arise. And it is clear that Hillary Clinton fills that role."

Nemazee's comments -- the farthest any Hillary campaign official has gone in this direction to date -- come after The New York Times reported this morning that "friends" of Bill Clinton say he's informally floated the possibility of her in the veep slot.

More on this soon.

After a relative lull in super-del movement yesterday, Obama has picked up some new momentum this morning with two new endorsements -- including a defection from Hillary Clinton's column.

The two new supporters are Congressmen Jim Costa and Dennis Cardoza, both of California. Cardoza used to be a Hillary backer.

According to the Obama camp's numbers, he only needs 59 more delegates to clinch the nomination, not counting Michigan and Florida.

The score thus far today: Obama +2, Clinton -1. According to DemConWatch, Obama has 1,964 delegates to Clinton's 1,780.

Republicans may now have a tough time on their hands defending a Senate seat in, of all places, Mississippi.

The new Research 2000 poll, commissioned by Daily Kos: Appointed Sen. Roger Wicker (R) 46%, former Gov. Ronnie Musgrove (D) 42%. Margin of error: ±4%.

Mississippi would normally be considered beyond reach for the Democrats, but a lot of doubt has been cast upon that normal assumption by the recent special election win in Wicker's former House district. And the general circumstances of this year, with Wicker's recent appointment to the seat and an under-funded national Senate GOP organization, could open up new opportunities for the Dems.

In the wake of John McCain's public rejection of John Hagee's endorsement, a prize he had sought for some time up until the Texas primary, we here at TPM have assembled a timeline documenting their political relationship from 2007 to the present.

Check it out here.

Besides the usual Republican attacks on Al Franken's policy positions and overall goofy comedic personality, the contents of his old comedy routines have now been declared fair game by the Minnesota GOP. The state party has now put out a scathing attack on Franken, specifically citing graphic sexual humor in a piece he once wrote.

The state party's press release specifically cites a piece Franken wrote for Playboy in 2000, entitled "Porn-O-Rama," about a visit to a fictional sex institute.

The press release resents the idea that the subject matter at hand can be declared funny: "We believe there is a pattern in your writings and words that seem to suggest you believe you can continue to represent women as playthings and objects and then scurry behind the defense that it is simply 'comedy' or 'satire.'"

In a sign that Democrats are now circling the wagons around Barack Obama as the party's nominee, Joe Biden has written a guest column in the Wall St. Journal rebutting an earlier piece by Joe Lieberman, which attacked Obama's credibility on national security. Biden has not formally endorsed a candidate in the race, but his public defense of Obama is telling.

"Sen. Obama is right that the U.S. should be willing to engage Iran on its nuclear program without 'preconditions' - i.e. without insisting that Iran first freeze the program, which is the very subject of any negotiations," Biden writes. "He has been clear that he would not become personally involved until the necessary preparations had been made and unless he was convinced his engagement would advance our interests."

John McCain's campaign has released his medical records, from the last eight years, in an effort to deal with unease about the candidate's age. The documents show the candidate is in very good overall health.

Regarding his past experiences with melanoma, probably the single biggest concern, McCain's dermatologist said: "We don't have a crystal ball, but we have no way to say anything at the present time would preclude him from running for office."

The Republicans are out of luck in the open House seat of Rep. Vito Fossella (R-NY). Their favored candidate, Staten Island District Attorney Dan Donovan, has now opted against running. The GOP's attention will now turn to state Sen. Andrew Lanza and county clerk Stephen Fiala, both lesser candidates.

Had Donovan run, he would have been heavily favored to win the seat, which was the only New York City district to vote for President Bush in 2004.

His decision is part of a pattern the NRCC has had to deal with in candidate recruitment: If the downsides of defeat aren't bad enough, victory brings the "reward" of serving in what is expected to be a powerless minority. It's difficult, to say the least, to get up-and-coming local Republicans to sign on to something like that.

John McCain has now publicly rejected the support of yet another powerful right-wing preacher, Rod Parsley of Ohio, after rejecting the endorsement of John Hagee earlier today.

McCain said of Parsley, a self-proclaimed "Christocrat" who has declared that America was founded with the mission of destroying Islam: "I believe there is no place for that kind of dialogue in America, and I believe that even though he endorsed me, and I didn't endorse him, the fact is that I repudiate such talk, and I reject his endorsement."

Parsley is in many ways a different case from Hagee, who at the end of the day can only deliver votes in what is already the safe Republican state of Texas. Parsley controls an evangelical vote operation that was pivotal in President Bush's 2004 Ohio victory. If Parsley were to view this as anything more than a pro forma rejection for the sake of appearances, it could have very real consequences down the road.

In a sign that Obama is shifting more aggressively into general election mode, the Illinois Senator will undertake a tour of three purple states -- New Mexico, Nevada, and Colorado -- on the first three days of next week, I've learned from a senior Obama campaign aide.

Obama will visit the Las Cruces area on Monday, the Las Vegas area on Tuesday, and and the Denver area on Wednesday, the Obama aide confirms.

The tour will draw attention to three states that Camp Obama has argued he can run well in this fall -- an assertion that's key to deflecting Hillary's case to super-delegates that she's more electable in a general election.

More to the point, it will continue to broadcast the signal -- as have his visits to other general election states -- that the Obama camp views the primary as effectively over and that his showdown with McCain has begun in earnest.

Earlier today, John McCain responded to Obama's criticism of him for not supporting Jim Webb's 21st Century G.I. bill by saying: I served in the military; you didn't.

Here's Obama's response:

"I am proud to stand with Senator Webb and a bipartisan coalition to give our veterans the support and opportunity they deserve. It's disappointing that Senator McCain and his campaign used this issue to launch yet another lengthy personal, political attack instead of debating an honest policy difference. He should know that this is not about John McCain or Barack Obama -- it's about giving our veterans a real chance to afford four years of college without harming retention. Senator Webb's bipartisan bill will do this, and the bill that John McCain supports would not. These endless diatribes and schoolyard taunts from the McCain campaign do nothing to advance the debate about what matters to the American people."

This is about the people impacted by our policy decisions, "not about John McCain or Barack Obama," he says -- trying to strike at McCain's effort to make the G.I. bill debate about his war heroism.

The McCain campaign, of course, will try to make the conversation all about his bio for the next five months.

Here's some audio of a stunning rebuke that a top Hillary supporter gave her in response to her comparisons of the Michigan/Florida controversy to the country's historical civil rights struggles.

The supporter, New York Governor David Paterson, said flatly on a local radio show that Hillary was starting to show "a little desperation."

Listen below:

"I would say at this point we're starting to see a little desperation on the part of the woman who I support and I'll support until whatever time she makes a different determination," Paterson told a New York radio station, clearly weighing his words very carefully.

On the Michigan primary in particular: "You have to rule out the undecideds in Michigan. You have to assume she won 100 percent to nothing in Michigan. I don't think anybody in their right mind would do that, nor would they see it as a civil rights issue."

The controversy surrounding John Hagee's endorsement has finally gotten to John McCain. In the wake of new quotes being circulated by the Huffington Post in which Hagee called Hitler an instrument of God's will, McCain has now rejected Hagee's support.

"Obviously, I find these remarks and others deeply offensive and indefensible, and I repudiate them," McCain told CNN in a statement. "I did not know of them before Reverend Hagee's endorsement, and I feel I must reject his endorsement as well."

That matter aside, McCain was sure to bring this back to Barack Obama, insisting that his active effort to get Hagee's support originally was not nearly as bad as Obama's associations with Jeremiah Wright.

"I have said I do not believe Senator Obama shares Reverend Wright's extreme views. But let me also be clear, Reverend Hagee was not and is not my pastor or spiritual advisor, and I did not attend his church for twenty years. I have denounced statements he made immediately upon learning of them, as I do again today."

Late Update: Hagee has now issued a formal withdrawal of his endorsement, but it reads more like he's stepping aside rather than actually dropping his support:

"I am tired of these baseless attacks and fear that they have become a distraction in what should be a national debate about important issues. I have therefore decided to withdraw my endorsement of Senator McCain for President effective today, and to remove myself from any active role in the 2008 campaign," he said in a statement.

"I hope that the Senator McCain will accept this withdrawal so that he may focus on the issues that are most important to America and the world."

This is noteworthy: John McCain is now officially making a campaign issue of Obama's lack of military service.

On the Senate floor today, Obama hit McCain for not supporting Webb's 21st Century G.I. bill. In response, McCain released a lengthy statement. Here's the key line, buried in the middle of it:

I take a backseat to no one in my affection, respect and devotion to veterans. And I will not accept from Senator Obama, who did not feel it was his responsibility to serve our country in uniform, any lectures on my regard for those who did.

McCain is constantly said by pundits to be reluctant to bring up his Vietnam experiences in a political context. But this is now the third day in a row he's done this.

Yesterday and the day before he made oblique, but obvious, references to his torture in captivity. And today -- to my knowledge for the first time -- McCain directly attacked Obama for his lack of military service.

It's not an exaggeration to say that the McCain campaign message, boiled down as succinctly as possible, is this: "I'm more of a man than you are." Stay tuned for tomorrow's installment.

McCain's full statement after the jump.

Read more »

National Dems are bullish about expanding their Senate majority, given that they're dramatically out-raising the GOP and that they have the Republicans on defense in multiple states.

And here comes the first wave of ads from Dem Senate candidates, a sign that Dems are aggressively shifting into general election mode, even if the presidential race hasn't quite finished yet.

Here's the new ad from Jeanne Shaheen, who is running ahead of incumbent John Sununu in the New Hampshire Senate race:

More ads after the jump.

Read more »

John McCain might just have to work a little hard to secure the electoral votes of his home state of Arizona, a new poll from Southwestern firm Behavior Research Center (no link) finds.

McCain (R) 50%, Obama (D) 39%
McCain (R) 51%, Clinton (D) 36%.

Sample size: 630 likely voters, weighted for age, sex, race and party identification.
Margin of error: ±4%.

While this is a double-digit lead, it is still uncomfortably close for a home-state candidate -- indeed, an incumbent Senator seeking re-election with those numbers would be considered a possible target.

Even if McCain is still favored to win Arizona, any effort he has to put in to lock it down is time and energy that could have spent elsewhere, and it also means down-ticket Dems will need less ticket-splitters to win their races.

The Senate just voted to pass Jim Webb's 21st Century version of the G.I. bill, which would greatly expand educational benefits to veterans.

Guess who skipped it?

John McCain.

McCain, who touts his support for veterans, had previously declined to support the bill. He offered another version of it so he'd be seen as having tried to offer an alternate solution.

McCain came under pressure from real live veterans and others to back the Webb bill. And rather than vote against it, he skipped the vote instead.

Both Hillary and Obama voted for it, and it passed 75-22.

On a conference call with reporters just now, Hillary spokesperson Howard Wolfson flatly rejected the notion that Camp Hillary is pushing for a full seating of Florida and Michigan in order to ensure that Obama's win is seen as somehow tainted should the delegations not be seated.

Wolfson was asked by Slate's John Dickerson if an Obama victory would be "counterfeit" if the delegations aren't seated -- and the votes aren't counted -- in the manner Hillary hopes.

"I wouldn't use the word you used," Wolfson answered. "This is not about tainting the nominating process. It's about an effort to secure maximum participation from everyone who came out and voted."

Wolfson added: "That's not what Senator Clinton is thinking, not what we're thinking. I wouldn't characterize it in the way that you characterized it."

That would appear to be a flat-out assertion that Hillary's position is that even if she doesn't get the votes counted as she hopes to, Obama's victory would be nonetheless completely legitimate.

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

Click To Play

Barack Obama is now floating a compromise on the Florida situation, telling the St. Petersburg Times that one idea would be to cut the delegations' sizes in half -- a step back from his previous stance of splitting the delegates 50-50 between himself and Clinton, but a far cry from the Hillary camp's insistence upon seating them in full.

Obama also rejected the idea that the Florida primary represented a true test of electability or popular support: "In all these races if I didn't campaign at all and this had just been a referendum on name recognition, Sen. Clinton would be the nominee."

The Republican National Committee is hiring one of the party's toughest oppo-researchers -- former Karl Rove protege Tim Griffin, who was also at the center of the U.S. Attorney scandal -- to dig into Barack Obama's past and unearth info to damage his general election candidacy, a senior Republican operative confirms to me.

Griffin played a lead role in the GOP oppo operation during the 2004 campaign, unearthing info that damaged John Kerry's presidential bid. According to the senior GOP operative, who's familiar with Griffin's past work, he was instrumental in unearthing a videotape of a 1971 interview that Kerry did in which he appeared to confirm that he renounced his medals to protest the Vietnam War.

The video was subsequently used in an ad by the Swift Boat Vets, whose work was renounced by McCain. The McCain campaign -- and the RNC -- declined to comment on Griffin's hiring.

"Griffin is basically going to consult for the Republican National Committee on working out Obama's vulnerabilities," the senior Republican said, somewhat euphemistically. "The hope is to do to Obama what folks successfully did with John Kerry."

Griffin tends to describe his own work in fairly bellicose terms. "We think of ourselves as the creators of ammunition in a war," Griffin once said. "We make the bullets."

Read more »

A new set of polls from Quinnipiac gives some credibility to the Clinton campaign's argument that Hillary is the more electable Democrat. She does better than Obama against McCain in the big three swing states, and he's currently running behind in two out of the three:

Florida
McCain (R) 45%, Obama (D) 41%
Clinton (D) 48%, McCain (R) 41%

Ohio
McCain (R) 44%, Obama (D) 40%
Clinton (D) 48%, McCain (R) 41%

Pennsylvania
Obama (D) 46%, McCain (R) 40%
Clinton (D) 50%, McCain (R) 37%

It's unlikely that these numbers alone would be enough to get super-delegates to overturn the pledged-delegate majority for Obama, but it does lend weight to Hillary's electability argument.

In another sign that the Obama campaign views the race for the nomination as essentially over, Obama has reportedly begun his search for a running mate, tapping former Kerry adviser Jim Johnson to head up the selection process.

This is obviously a subject the Obama camp can't discuss publicly at this point, with Hillary Clinton still in the race and arguing that she is the more electable Democrat.

John McCain will release his health records tomorrow, an important step in dealing with any unease that the 71-year old might not be physically up to the presidency -- and a step he didn't take during the primary season, which in helped allow concerns about his age to linger.

McCain said the release has been delayed by a concern for accuracy and thoroughness on the part of his doctors: "They're going to be saying, 'We have reviewed these records and these are the facts.' And I think it's very clear that they want to make sure that every single thing is right."

Check out this funny ad from a group called Coloradans for Economic Growth, promoting Republican candidate Bob Schaffer in the state's top-tier Senate race. The ad attempts to sell the right-wing Schaffer to voters concerned about the environment:

It would appear that what business interests think environmentalist voters want to see is ... a bunch of flowery images in what otherwise looks like a Nasonex commercial.

Barack Obama has lagged behind John McCain in Florida, with a much poorer performance than Hillary Clinton, and a new piece this morning in the New York Times sheds some light on one factor: Jews in Florida, a normally loyal Demoratic constituency, still feel distrust of Obama.

Obama is taking some steps to defuse the situation, speaking today at a synagogue in Boca Raton in order to let voters there meet him up close, something he couldn't do before when boycotting the state's rogue primary.

"Because of a dispute over moving the date of the state's primary, Mr. Obama and the other Democratic candidates did not campaign in Florida," the paper explains. "In his absence, novel and exotic rumors about Mr. Obama have flourished. Among many older Jews, and some younger ones, as well, he has become a conduit for Jewish anxiety about Israel, Iran, anti-Semitism and race."

John McCain is taking a major step in the general election campaign, as he prepares to meet this weekend at his Sedona ranch with three individuals who have been mentioned as potential running mates: Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal, and his former rival Mitt Romney.

McCain has reportedly taken a very hands-on approach in the selection of his running mate, so the stakes will be very high this weekend for the three men involved. Of those three, each offer pluses and minuses: Crist would bring a big state but is distrusted by some conservatives; Jindal is young and would be a non-white person on the Republican ticket, but has only been governor for less than a year; Romney became a favorite of establishment conservatives during his campaign, but the two men also came to dislike each other in the process.

The fundraising figures for April show that the Democratic party committees continue to dominate in total cash-on-hand, despite a surge of support for the Republicans as they settled on John McCain as their nominee.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee out-raised the National Republican Congressional Committee for the month, with $5 million for the DCCC to $4.2 million for the NRCC. The real edge is in cash-on-hand -- the DCCC has $45.3 million on hand, compared to only $6.7 million for the NRCC, an advantage that will have big ramifications this Fall.

The National Republican Senatorial Committee just edged out the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee for the month, at $4.3 million to the DSCC's $4.2 million. However, the DSCC maintains a cash-on-hand advantage of $37 million to the NRSC's $19.4 million.

The only good area for the GOP is the Republican National Committee, which has vastly outdraised the DNC. The RNC took in $20 million for the month, compared to only $4.8 million for the DNC. And the RNC now has a cash advantage of $41 million against the DNC's $4.4 million.

Howard Dean's 50-State Strategy of party-building, while effective in many ways, has had the downside of the DNC not raising an awful lot of money for itself. In addition, the RNC also has an advantage of being able to court big-money donors who want to go above and beyond any limits in donating to John McCain as the official Republican nominee, while the Democratic fundraising game is still very much a battle between the Obama and Clinton campaigns.

Rep. Tom Cole's authority as head of the House GOP's campaign committee is being curtailed in the wake of three defeats in red House districts, defeats which threatened his job security as NRCC chair.

A Republican source tells Election Central that Cole and Minority Leader John Boehner announced to the House GOP Conference several changes in approach -- most notably that two auditors will be appointed to provide oversight over the committee.

Read more »

Hillary advisers have publicly said that they expect a Dem nominee to be chosen by early June, but it looks like Hillary is envisioning a scenario under which this contest could go all the way to the convention, after all:

BOCA RATON, Fla. - Hillary Rodham Clinton says she is willing to take her fight to seat Florida and Michigan delegates to the convention if the two states want to go that far. In an interview with The Associated Press, Clinton was asked whether she would support the states if they continue the fight.

The presidential candidate said Wednesday, "Yes I will. I will, because I feel very strongly about this."

Could this really happen? Could Hillary take the battle over Florida and Michigan all the way to the convention? It's possible, but unlikely.

The next major step along the way is May 31st, when the Rules and Bylaws Committee meets to consider what to do about Florida and Michigan. For reasons that we'll explain here in more detail tomorrow, it's likely that the RBC will successfully vote on some sort of solution to get them seated in some fashion.

If that doesn't happen, the next stop is the Credentials Committee in late June. Hillary supporters are outnumbered on the Cred Committee by Obama supporters. DNC chair Howard Dean also controls a bloc of members. In theory, if the Cred Committee didn't reach a solution to Hillary's liking, her backers could introduce a minority report at the convention.

But this is unlikely to happen in reality. She says she'll take it this far if the state delegations want to, which seems unlikely. And without the states as cover, her backers on the committee seem unlikely to take this step, too, because such an effort would almost certainly fail, and her backers -- some of whom have their own careers to think about -- would take the blame for the ensuing chaos.

In short, it's highly unlikely that this will come down to the convention. But it's not impossible. More on this in some detail tomorrow.

National Dems are breathing a sigh of relief today, because the results of a GOP primary in Oregon yesterday suggest that Dems are now more likely to hang on to a key seat in an open Dem-held swing district.

That's because in last night's voting in Oregon's Fifth district, a conservative businessman named Mike Erickson prevailed over his GOP challenger -- and Erickson is alleged to have a rather colorful past that, well, makes him a less than ideal GOP candidate.

Specifically, Erickson has been accused of impregnating a younger woman and paying for her abortion back in 2000.

Read more »