This isn't exactly the kind of story that speaks positively of John McCain's ability to manage the public's finances.

Newsweek is reporting that John and Cindy McCain failed to pay taxes on a California property for the past four years. This is especially odd considering that the McCains are worth an estimated $100 million, and could easily afford to pay the bill.

After a reporter inquired about the bill with the McCain campaign, they immediately sent San Diego County a check for $6,744.42 -- and even then, they're still short by $1,742.

This is not the first unflattering report about the McCains' finances, by the way. Two weeks ago, it was reported that they were carrying a six-figure credit card debt, compared to the Obamas being debt-free and actually saving up a similar amount for their daughters' college funds.

Obama To Tour Foreign Countries
The Obama campaign has announced that the candidate will be embarking on an overseas tour and meet with foreign leaders -- an important step in establishing a credible image on foreign policy. The candidate will visit Britain, France, Germany, Israel and Jordan, and the trip is expected to take place some time in July.

Obama And McCain Courting Latinos Today
Barack Obama and John McCain are both speaking today before the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials conference in Washington. For John McCain, this is an opportunity to overcome the Latino community's overall antipathy towards the Republican Party and its anti-immigrant bent. For Obama, his job is to secure the lead he currently has in the polls among a demographic where he lagged way behind during the primaries.

McCain: Obama "Didn't Seem To Be Serious" About Town Halls
During a campaign appearance yesterday in Cleveland, John McCain expressed pessimism about Barack Obama taking up his challenge of holding 10 town-hall meetings in the course of the campaign. The Obama campaign had previously answered with an offer of five appearance, being three traditional debates and two town halls. "The response, in all due respect, didn't seem to be serious," McCain said.

Hagel: I'm Closer To Obama Than McCain
Sen. Chuck Hagel, the conservative Nebraska Republican who has turned vocally against the Iraq War, has indicated in an interview with Bloomberg TV that he does not plan to publicly endorse any candidate for president. Hagel added, however, that his differences with Barack Obama were probably "not as big" as his differences with John McCain.

Poll: McConnell Under 50 In Kentucky
A new Rasmussen poll of Kentucky finds Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell leading Democratic businessman Bruce Lunsford by a 48%-41%, margin, with a ±4.5% margin. This is an improvement from their poll from a month ago, which had Lunsford ahead after his primary victory, but still a mark of concern for a four-term Senator who has become the leader of his party. Keep an eye on this race in the months ahead.

Elizabeth Dole Reverses Herself On Offshore Drilling
The Charlotte Observer reports that Sen. Elizabeth Dole opposed offshore drilling near North Carolina as recently as last week, but has now introduced a bill to give states the option of allowing it -- in line with President Bush and John McCain's embrace of the issue. "Now, more than ever, responsible and practical steps are needed to increase our energy independence and strengthen economic and national security," Dole said in a statement.

A new SurveyUSA poll in Ohio shows a very tight race in this big swing state -- and significant movement in John McCain's favor, too, though Barack Obama is maintaining a nominal lead.

The numbers: Obama 48%, McCain 46%, with a ±4.2% margin of error. A month ago, it was Obama 48%, McCain 39%.

We knew the Republican brand is in trouble, but this is just ridiculous. Two statewide Republican candidates in this year's elections in Washington state are choosing to run without that pesky R-word next to their names.

This was made possible by the recent adoption of a new electoral system for the state, known as "Top-Two." All candidates will run on the same ballot, and the top two will go to a runoff election, regardless of party. The tricky part is that each candidate will get to choose the party label next to their name.

All of this means a Republican can list himself as something else -- and one of the two candidates even acknowledged to us that he's doing so precisely because he knows the GOP brand is lethal.

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This just keeps getting more and more absurd. Now the tall tale about China drilling for oil off American shores has found its way into a House GOP candidate's campaign flyer.

And to make matters even more ridiculous, the candidate's staffers are giving us conflicting information about whether he even sent it out!

The flyer is the work of John Gard, a Wisconsin Republican who narrowly lost a Congressional race in 2006 and is now seeking a rematch against freshman Democrat Steve Kagen. It was handed out at a county fair on June 15, a few days after Dick Cheney was forced to admit that his story about China drilling for oil in the Gulf of Mexico was false.

And this gets even sillier still.

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This is pretty novel. Obama campaign manager David Plouffe has filmed a new Web video of himself, using a laptop in his office, in which he rallies the troops with a PowerPoint about the campaign's strategy to win the general election.

The Obama campaign is emailing out the video to supporters. Give it a watch:

In it, Plouffe makes points similar to the ones he made in a PowerPoint presentation to reporters the other day, but with a new PowerPoint. Now the Obama camp wants it to get out to its broader audience of supporters.

Plouffe optimistically tells viewers that John McCain doesn't have many opportunities to grab any of the 252 electoral votes that went to Kerry, while the Obama camp is going after 2004 red states like Iowa, Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada, and even some "unusual" places like Alaska, Montana and North Dakota.

At the same time, Plouffe make sure to stress to supporters that they can't just take it easy. As he points out, the apparent cash different between Obama and McCain will be mediated by the RNC's $50 million lead over the DNC -- not an inconsiderable difference, considering that the McCain campaign will be relying on the RNC for a lot of heavy lifting.

"John McCain, the RNC, the shadowy outside groups, are not gonna let this election happen without a fight," Plouffe says. He adds a warning that Michelle, too, will be a target: "And so right around the corner we're gonna see millions of dollars attacking Barack, attacking Michelle Obama, and we have to have the ability to fight back."

Wow, the unity love is really gushing today.

Hillary spokesperson Mo Elleithee confirms to me that Bill and Hillary Clinton have now maxed out to Obama, donating $4600 to his campaign today.

It's a strong signal to the Clinton fundraising elite and donor base that the time has come to open the wallets for Obama. It comes a day after the Obamas similarly maxed out to Hillary's campaign to relieve it of debt.

Late Update: Check out our highlight reel of today's Obama-Hillary unity event...

There's been a bunch of speculation about what will happen after the election to the formidable Internet social networking tools Obama's Internet operation has spawned, such as the networking groups over at MyBarackObama, for instance.

Well, here's one interesting possibility: What if they were used in some way to oppose Obama on one issue or another?

That's already happened in one case. Over on Barack Obama's Web site, someone has set up a new social networking group devoted solely to getting Obama to oppose the FISA bill he announced his support for earlier this week.

It's got almost 500 members, which is dwarfed by other MyBo groups, though it's only been existence for 24 hours. This is perhaps suggestive of what this machinery could be used for on occasion if Obama makes it into the White House.

Hmmm. Check out conservative activist Grover Norquist's less-than-tasteful description of Barack Obama:

Norquist dropped by The Times' Washington bureau today and, as part of his negative critique of Obama's liberal stances on economic issues and other matters, he termed the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee "John Kerry with a tan."

Guess it could have been worse. He could have termed the Illinois Senator "John Kerry in blackface."

Such admirable restraint on Norquist's part!

The event of the week is about to start: Obama and Hillary at their first public unity event in Unity, New Hampshire.

As one politico cracked to me a few minutes ago, the two in their matching outfits look like a "couple going to the prom"...

Some live-blogging of the event here.

We'll bring you video of all the action soon.

Late Update: You can watch the event live right here on the Obama campaign's web site.

Senator Chris Dodd has emerged as a hero for the netroots and for opponents of the Dems' FISA cave-in because of his steady opposition to telecom immunity and his promise to filibuster it.

So it's noteworthy that on the Senate floor last night, in a moment that passed unnoticed, Dodd offered effusive praise of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid for announcing last week that he opposes the cave-in bill.

"I commend the majority leader," Dodd said, according to a transcript. "He has had a very trying week. The floor staff and others have done a remarkable job in getting us to this point. I wouldn't want this evening to pass without noting they do not get the recognition they often deserve, but this institution functions because there are a lot of people whose names are never known who make this happen."

"I want the record to reflect the deep appreciation I have for the majority leader -- I know others do as well -- for the way in which he and his office have allowed us to achieve the results we have up to this point," Dodd also said.

Given Dodd's high profile on the issue, the praise will make Reid aides very happy, because Reid took some pretty big hits last December from the netroots and other critics who charged that Reid had ignored Dodd's hold on the earlier FISA legislation.

A fuller transcript of Dodd's remarks after the jump.

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This is great. We now count three House Republicans who have continued to peddle the myth that China is working with Cuba to drill for oil in the Gulf of Mexico, even though Dick Cheney had already admitted it was bunk.

The latest: Virgil Goode, the Virginia Republican best known for denouncing the election of Rep. Keith Ellison, a Minnesota Democrat, on the grounds that Ellison is a Muslim.

Goode faces a potentially tough challenge from Tom Periello, an international human rights worker who has been aggressively advertising on Christian radio and has also been able to raise a decent amount of money. So Goode's message to his base is clear: Vote for the Dems, and you're voting for China.

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A key hire by the Obama camp: He reportedly signs up senior Hillary policy adviser Neera Tanden, one of her top loyalists, as his new Director of Domestic Policy.

Tanden, a fixture on many a Hillary campaign conference call, was a key architect of her health care plan, which was probably the one domestic policy proposal of hers that was most often compared favorably to Obama's.

The conservative Family Research Council goes up on the air with a new spot using Obama's own recent speech about fatherhood to question his pro-choice views...

The spot, which is airing first in Cincinnatti, followed by Dallas and Atlanda, opens with a clip of Obama during his recent Father's Day speech saying: "We need fathers to recognize that responsibility doesn't just end at conception."

It continues with FRC president Tony Perkins, who's seated holding a toddler and asks: "If, as you say, fatherhood begins at conception, when does life begin?"

The ad is a sign that the major evangelical groups will swallow whatever misgivings they have with McCain and target Obama. Their stepped-up efforts appear to be a reaction to the aggressive evangelical outreach being done by the Obama camp.

John McCain is up with a new ad that seems designed to reframe the battle over energy policy as a national security issue and even to some degree a referendum on the candidates' patriotism:

"John McCain will call America to our next national purpose: Energy Security," the announcer says, and later even adds: "Putting country first. McCain."

It's worth noting that Obama has done better on economic issues in most polls, while McCain has done better on national security -- thus the McCain camp's efforts to rephrase energy prices from being an economic issue to being about security.

The ad will be airing on national cable and in targeted battleground states.

Obama And Clinton Today: Unity In Unity
Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton will hold their first public campaign event together since Hillary dropped out of the race -- an important step in sending the right message to any disaffected Hillary voters out there. The location has been much remarked about: The small town of Unity, New Hampshire, where the two candidates tied exactly in the primary.

McCain In Ohio Today
John McCain will be visiting a General Motors plant in Warren, Ohio, today. Ohio is of course a crucial state for Republicans -- no GOP candidate has won the presidency while simultaneously losing Ohio, and George W. Bush's narrow 2004 victory here was crucial to his reelection. Currently, polls show Barack Obama taking the lead here.

Poll: Obama Leads McCain By Five
The new Time Magazine poll gives Barack Obama a narrow lead over John McCain of 43%-38%, with a ±4% margin of error. Obama beats McCain 44%-37% on who is trusted more with the economy, while McCain wins 53%-33% on the issue of national security and terrorism.

Clinton To Donors: Give To Obama
At last night's joint event with Barack Obama in front of her own top donors, Hillary Clinton repeated her call for her supporters to raise money for Obama. "We are a family," Clinton said, "and we have an opportunity now to really demonstrate clearly we do know what's at stake, and we will do whatever it takes to win back this White House." No word yet on whether she asked them to go to BarackObama.com.

NRCC: Damaged GOP Brand Has Lost Us Special Election
An internal report at the National Republican Congressional Committee has identified a key reason why they lost special elections for red districts in Illinois, Louisiana and Mississippi: The poisonous political environment hurting the whole Republican brand. "None of the candidates nor their allies successfully established themselves and their local brand in contrast to the negative perception of the national GOP," the report says.

Bush Pastor Launches Pro-Obama Site
Here's a funny item to start your morning. Rev. Kirbyjon Caldwell, the Methodist minister who officiated at the wedding of Jenna Bush and Henry Hager, has launched a new pro-Obama Web site, JamesDobsonDoesntSpeakForMe.com. Caldwell previously spoke at the Republican National Convention in 2000, and still considers Bush a friend, but is now reaching out to religious voters on Obama's behalf.

Barack Obama has taken a major symbolic step towards party unity: In his efforts to help repay Hillary Clinton's debts, he and Michelle have personally donated the maximum $4,600 to Hillary's defunct campaign.

The announcement was made at a joint event with Clinton before a group of her donors in Washington, and was met with applause from the formerly Hillary-backing audience.

Terry McAuliffe proudly showed two checks -- one from the Obama, another from $4,600 from Obama finance chair Penny Pritzker and her husband -- to reporters gathered outside the event.

We already knew that McCain supporter Joe Lieberman had adopted a role as a leading critic of Obama on foreign policy. But now, judging from some quotes buried in this new ABC News interview with the self-described Independent Democrat, it looks as if Lieberman has expanded his repertoire to include attacks on Obama over Reverend Wright, too:

"In fairness we don't know if Rev. Wright said these inflammatory, anti-American, racial comments every Sunday, but I would not continue to go to a synagogue where that kind of rhetoric was spoken," Lieberman said, adding, "I think it did raise questions in people's minds about why did he stay in the church that long," but he said he would "take (Obama) at his word" and move on.

Hmmm. Is Lieberman taking Obama "at his word" and moving on? Or is he saying that Wright should "raise questions" about why Obama stayed in the church?

Lieberman defenders like to say that his criticism of fellow Dems is consigned to their foreign policy views, but he now appears to view racially-tinged criticism of their pastors as fair game, too.

A bunch of new polls of Senate races around the country paint a very bright picture of the Democrats' prospects, with Dem candidates running strong all over the map. But it's not entirely good news:

• In Colorado, Quinnipiac has Democrat Mark Udall ahead of Republican Bob Schaffer by a 48%-38% margin, for an open Republican-held seat.

• In New Jersey, Fairleigh Dickinson puts incumbent Democrat Frank Lautenberg way ahead of Republican Dick Zimmer, by a 45%-28% margin.

• In Mississippi, Rasmussen gives appointed Republican incumbent Roger Wicker a statistically insignificant 48%-47% edge over Democrat Ronnie Musgrove -- not significantly changed since their last poll from a month ago that put Musgrove ahead 47%-46%, despite an extensive ad campaign by Wicker in this deep-red state. Keep an eye on this one.

• In Texas, a new poll from Texas Lyceum gives incumbent Republican John Cornyn an insignificant 38%-36% lead over Democrat Rick Noriega -- a very high number of undecideds in a race featuring an incumbent who has been elected statewide on multiple occasions.

• The one sore spot is Minnesota, where Al Franken continues to trail incumbent Republican Norm Coleman. Quinnipiac puts it at Coleman 51%, Franken 41% -- a bad sign for Dems, if the Republican is above 50% in this blue state.

Late Update: This post originally used numbers from an incorrect page at Rasmussen's site for the Mississippi race. It has been corrected.

The GOP's prospects for holding onto a key House seat in New York -- once practically assured in their Staten Island stronghold -- have rapidly gotten bleaker and bleaker, to the point where the seat could be on its way to the Democrats.

After wealthy GOP candidate Frank Powers -- who wasn't even the party's first choice to begin with -- tragically passed away over the weekend, the party has had to go hunting for a new one. But one potential candidate after another has bailed. They include a local TV newscaster, multiple state legislators, a local D.A., and at least half a dozen others -- to a person, they've all said, Thanks but no thanks.

"It's a crazy situation," said former Rep. Guy Molinari, the unofficial leader of the Staten Island GOP, in a phone interview with Election Central.

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Here's yet another potential Obama-JFK comparison for you.

If Obama does actually end up campaigning in deep-red Alaska, as his state director said he might do later this summer, he'll join a rarefied club that includes exactly one other member: The 35th President of the United States.

Our readers have rendered their verdict: The last -- and only -- Democratic Presidential candidate to campaign in Alaska was John F. Kennedy, during the 1960 campaign against Richard Nixon.

You can read the speech JFK gave in that state on September 3rd of that year right here.

This is a fun one. On the McCain conference call this morning, GOP Senator Sam Brownback questioned Obama's bipartisan credentials -- even though Brownback himself has repeatedly worked with the Illinois Senator.

"I think that the biggest thing really I've seen from Barack Obama is that willingness, an aggressiveness, to talk bipartisan and yet to vote and be hard left," Brownback said.

But as the Obama campaign was quick to point out, Obama has done far more than "talk bipartisan" when it comes to Brownback himself.

Brownback himself sent out a press release in May 2007, touting their co-sponsorship of the "Iran Sanctions Enabling Act," which would increase economic pressure on Iran.

Obama was an official co-sponsor of Brownback's Darfur Peace and
Accountability Act in 2006.

Brownback and Obama collaborated to introduce legislation establishing a clear U.S. policy towards the Congo in 2005.

We found these with Google in about three seconds, and there are more.

Not that facts matter, of course.

A funny catch from McClatchy -- or perhaps not so funny, depending on where you're, er, standing...

Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama would sit at a table at two of three presidential debates this fall, according to a formal proposal unveiled Thursday, which, perhaps unintentionally, would neutralize Obama's height advantage.

The Commission on Presidential Debates proposed the less formal, more conversational talk-show format for two of three 90-minute debates it's seeking this fall. The third debate would be a town hall-style session in which the candidates would be free to get up from high stools and walk around the stage...

Obama is about 6 feet 1 inch tall; McCain is 5 feet 9.

The two nominees haven't yet responded to the commission's proposal. We'll let you know if they do.

Hey, it wouldn't be the first time that completely meaningless trivia impacted a presidential race, would it?

Looks like the Senate vote on the FISA cave legislation, which was set for as early as today or tomorrow, has been postponed until Senators come back from recess in July:

Objections by Sen. Russ Feingold (D-Wis.) will push back an overhaul of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) until after lawmakers return in July, Democratic leaders said Thursday. Feingold is strongly opposed to language that would likely give telephone companies that participated in warrantless surveillance retroactive immunity from lawsuits.

"It doesn't look like it," Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said of taking up the FISA bill this week. "Sen. Feingold wants additional time and would like to postpone it until after the Fourth of July."

It's possible that this could make life a bit tougher for Senators who support the legislation and wanted to put the vote on it behind them. And it's certainly a setback for the measure's champions in the House, such as Rep. Steny Hoyer, who have been eager to get the cave-in bill signed into law already.

The Obama and McCain campaigns are battling it out today over the Supreme Court decision striking down the D.C. handgun ban, and McCain's team moved aggressively to put Obama on defense over an issue that has long bedeviled Dems in Presidential campaigns.

In a statement just out from his campaign -- which is after the jump -- Obama supported today's decision. Obama said that despite striking down the ban it had "endorsed" the view that "crime-ravaged communities" can act to protect themselves through gun control measures.

Last year an Obama aide indicated that Obama thought the ban was Constitutional. And so the Obama campaign moved to preempt any criticism of him for flip-flopping by saying this morning that that language was an "inartful" description of his position, adding that in fact Obama hasn't taken a position on whether the D.C. gun law was at odds with the Second Amendment.

Needless to say, the GOP didn't really accept this explanation. The McCain camp quickly threw together a conference call to blast Obama for changing his position. "This is either an incredible flip flop or incredible inexperience on this issue," Senator Sam Brownback, a McCain supporter, charged on the call.

One interesting tidbit that foreshadows what's ahead: As Jonathan Martin notes, McCain's statement on the Supreme Court decision went out of its way to highlight Obama's infamous "bitter" remarks, saying:

Unlike the elitist view that believes Americans cling to guns out of bitterness, today's ruling recognizes that gun ownership is a fundamental right -- sacred, just as the right to free speech and assembly.

Full statements from Obama and McCain after the jump.

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Not sure how to account for this one. Take a look at these numbers on Iraq buried in the new Quinnipiac polls of Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin...

As you can see, in every one of these key battleground states, majorities favor staying in Iraq until the situation is "stable," and then withdrawing troops, which in some ways is closer to the GOP's current stated position, though not really identical with it. In all four, decided minorities favor starting withdrawal immediately, with the goal of completing withdrawal in 18 months.

The funny thing about this is that there are two ways of reading it. Either these numbers favor McCain, for obvious reasons. Or, alternatively, they may suggest that McCain is screwed -- in states where majorities favor staying in Iraq until stability is achieved, he's still losing to Obama, in some cases by sizable margins.

Late Update: As a commenter rightly notes below, one key takeaway here is that the debate over Iraq that unfolds in the coming months will be heavily influenced by who successfully defines the terms of this debate -- terms like "stability" and "winning."

Late Late Update: I agree with those of you who say the hed wasn't quite right, and have changed it accordingly. And yes, the question in this poll was badly phrased, which probably explains the findings. That said, it isn't enough to merely note this and conclude that Obama has already won the debate over Iraq. While majorities nationally favor withdrawal, there still is a debate over Iraq looming, and Obama has to win it.

Wow, talk about broadening the map. The Anchorage Daily News reports that Obama may actually campaign in Alaska, a state that's about as red as it gets.

"That is the plan -- we are pretty sure he's going to come at the end of the summer," Obama's new Alaska state director, Kat Pustay, told the paper.

We'll believe that when we see it, but if he does go it would be quite a statement. The last Democrat to win Alaska was Lyndon Johnson, during his landslide victory in 1964. John Kerry got only 36% there in 2004, and Al Gore fared even worse four years earlier, winning only 28%.

Late Update: We're not sure if a Dem presidential candidate has ever campaigned in Alaska, but we're sure our historian/reader types can figure it out...

When you write an item about leading Hillary supporter Ed Rendell, you are required to describe him as "blunt." And here is Rendell again, being, well, blunt about Bill Clinton's alleged hard feelings towards Obama...

Bill has to "get over it," and "shake it off," Rendell says. Did someone say he's blunt?

Ben Smith noted yesterday that Obama's campaign has harmed Bill in some ways, because Obama has run an implicit campaign against his presidency. That said, who the heck knows if Bill is really "miffed" with Obama, as everyone keeps saying; the original report that got this going is based only on the word of an anonymous Democrat who supposedly spoke to Bill.

I don't know if Bill is "miffed" or not. He very well may be, and if he is in fact "miffed," Rendell is right; he should get over it. Either way, it has now become true that Bill is "miffed," and there will be no changing that, ever.

Barack Obama is well-positioned to win a set of key swing states, a new round of Quinnipiac polls suggests -- and some of these aren't even close. The numbers:

Colorado
Obama (D) 49%, McCain (R) 44%
Margin of error: ±2.7%.

Michigan
Obama (D) 48%, McCain (R) 42%
Margin of error: ±2.6%.

Minnesota
Obama (D) 54%, McCain (R) 37%
Margin of error: ±2.5%.

Wisconsin
Obama (D) 52%, McCain (R) 39%
Margin of error: ±2.5%.

Michigan, Minnesota and Wisconsin all voted narrowly for John Kerry and Al Gore, while Colorado gave its nine electoral votes to George W. Bush twice. So it's definitely a good sign for Obama that he's way ahead in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and has decent-sized leads in both Colorado and Michigan.

Another Dem-leaning independent group has now closed up shop: The Fund for America, a group formed in preparation for the 2008 race that raised money from the Democratic Party's heaviest-hitting donors, including George Soros.

It's yet another sign of just how rapidly Obama is remaking the Democratic Party machinery in his own image: Fund for America is closing up because the Obama camp signaled to its big money people to stop giving to such groups.

It's only the latest such organization to follow Obama's will: Progressive Media USA, the group led by Media Matters' David Brock, recently announced that it would not be running ads in the general election. And MoveOn recently shuttered its 527, as first reported here.

It's worth stressing again what a major gamble this is on Obama's part: In exchange for centralizing control of his message within his campaign, he's effectively disarmed these big-spending groups, even as the GOP is almost certain to ramp up outside activities on its side. Of course, Obama's enormously successful fundraising could render that activity moot.

Obama Camp Gives Donors Fundraising Goal For Hillary's Debts
The Obama campaign has put some teeth in its request to donors to help Hillary Clinton's campaign retire its debts, assigning them an official goal. "Barack has asked each of us to collect five or six checks to help Senator Clinton repay the people who provided goods and services to her campaign," wrote Obama national finance chair Penny Pritzker in an e-mail to top fundraiser.

Obama To Appear In Pennsylvania, Then Raise Money With Clinton In DC
Barack Obama will hold an economic summit today with various national business leaders in Pittsburgh, an area that was not particularly kind to him in the primary and where he'll need a strong general election showing. He will then head to DC tonight for a fundraiser with Hillary Clinton -- a show of party unity in front of a crowd of her own donors.

McCain Campaigning In Ohio
John McCain will be holding a town hall event today in Cincinnati, a Republican-leaning area in a state where a loss would make it very difficult for him to win the White House. Expect McCain to stick with some of his standard themes from the last few days: That he's serious on energy policy, that Barack Obama isn't offering any solutions, and that Obama has broken his promises on campaign finance.

Obama Campaign To Deploy "Persuasion Army"
In its strategy for the general election, the Obama campaign plans to rely on what it calls a "persuasion army," confirmed supporters who will talk to their friends and neighbors about the campaign. Campaign manager David Plouffe favorably cited the Bush campaign in 2004, which employed the same tactic.

Swift Boat Financier Doesn't Pay Reward To Kerry Allies
T. Boone Pickens, the chief financier of the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth, has unsurprisingly declined to pay his offered $1 million reward to anyone who can disprove the group's 2004 allegations against John Kerry's war record. A group of veterans who served with Kerry submitted a total of 54 pages meant to prove that ten specific charges had been lies.

Cash-Strapped Dem Convention Cutting Volunteer Field Trip
The Democratic National Convention's organizing committee, which is currently $11 million short of its fundraising goals, is scrapping its plan to reward the over 12,000 volunteers with a post-convention trip to the Denver Zoo. No doubt they'll meet enough goofy animals at the convention center, anyway.

Democrats got a bit of bad news yesterday in the Maine Senate race, when the secretary of state overruled the Maine Democratic Party's bid to challenge left-wing independent candidate Herbert Hoffman's ballot petitions.

Hoffman, whose anti-war platform could potentially win votes that would have otherwise gone to Democrat Tom Allen, was found to have 38 valid signatures more than were necessary to get on the ballot.

Incumbent Republican Susan Collins has led Allen in all the polls, but the most recent survey from Rasmussen found it to be turning into a single-digit race.

At a presser today, Obama weighed in again on the FISA cave, and suffice it to say that what he said won't make opponents any less unhappy about Obama's position than they were already.

Asked specifically why he's supporting the current FISA bill when he'd promised months ago to support a filibuster of an earlier version of the bill, Obama suggested flat out that "national security" overrides the question of telecom immunity...

It's true that Obama says mitigating things like we need to be "watching the watchers." But here's the key quote from him:

"The bill has changed. So I don't think the security threats have changed, I think the security threats are similar. My view on FISA has always been that the issue of the phone companies per se is not one that overrides the security interests of the American people."

Obama's line on national security here seems to be affirmation of something that many understood already: That he will support the bill even if telecom immunity isn't stripped from it, despite his promise to try to get immunity out of the legislation. If the issue of telecom immunity doesn't override national security, he'll of course vote for the bill with or without it.

Separately, the developing politics of this are interesting. Today Harry Reid announced that he will oppose the bill. Many Democrats are now asking, What will Hillary do?

Tea leaf readers note that Hillary's New York colleague, Chuck Schumer, also announced today that he's voting against it. Will Hillary follow suit? It seems like a huge opening for her to repair relations with progressives angry with her over her treatment of Obama during primary. On the other hand, some Dems note a complicating factor: If Hillary votes against the bill, it could cast a bit of a shadow over the planned "unity" Hillary-Obama event on Friday.

Stay tuned.

Late Update: Video added.

This is just brutal. Take a look at Obama communications director Robert Gibbs, who's a bit of a killer, stomping all over Ralph Nader's suggestion that Obama is sidestepping poverty issues such as predatory lending because he wants to "talk white"...

Meanwhile, Matthew Yglesias points out another pesky flaw in Nader's argument: Obama actually does advocate cracking down on predatory lending and other measures to stop financial exploitation of poor people.

Details, details.

They just can't seem to get enough of this one. It looks like another Republican is still pushing the idea that China is drilling for oil in deep ocean waters near Cuba -- Rep. Sam Graves of Missouri is continuing to push it even after big-name Republicans like GOP Sen. Mel Martinez and even Dick Cheney have disavowed it, and his staff is refusing to offer any retraction of his statement.

The Missouri Democrats are sending around this YouTube of Graves, who is facing a tough challenge from former Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes, pushing the China-Cuba story at local campaign events:

Graves campaign spokesman Jason Klindt is sticking to the story for now.

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Attention, junkies -- time for some more staff notes!

The Obama campaign has installed another Hillary operative in a key slot in a crucial swing state: Jackie Bray, who was deputy field director for Hillary in Ohio during the primary, is now taking over field operations for Obama in that state.

Obama spokesperson Josh Earnest confirms the hire to me. Bray is the third Hillary operative the Obama campaign has hired, coming aboard after Hillary campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle and former Hillary spokesperson Isaac Baker, who was hired as Obama's Ohio communications director.

Hillary beat Obama in Ohio by 10 points, so it's a natural for the Obama team to sign Bray up for such a key post in such an important battleground.

A new SurveyUSA poll shows John McCain taking a decent lead in one battleground state: Missouri.

The numbers: McCain 50%, Obama 43%, with a ±4.3% margin of error. Three weeks ago, Obama had a statistically insignificant lead of 45%-43%. The race here has a very stark gender gap: Men go for McCain 60%-36%, and women for Obama 50%-41%.

This state has 11 electoral votes, and has voted for the winner in every presidential election over the last 100 years except for 1956.

This is a live one. John McCain said he strenuously disagrees with top adviser Charlie Black's comment that a terror attack on U.S. soil would help McCain's campaign -- but more evidence has just emerged that McCain does believe this, or a variation of it, anyway.

The latest? Back in 2004, as McCain was stumping in Connecticut on behalf of GOP Rep. Chris Shays, McCain said flatly that the recent release of an Osama Bin Laden tape had likely given the GOP a "little boost."

This is courtesy of The Hour, a daily paper in Norwalk, Connecticut, in November of that year (also verified in Nexis)...

But as McCain greets two breakfast-eating business partners, one from Stamford and the other from Bridgeport, the topic turns to the presidential race. The two men tell the senator they support President George W. Bush, and to that end, McCain says, "(Osama) Bin Laden may have just given us a little boost. Amazing, huh?"....

The two men, who requested anonymity, nod their heads in agreement. Later, while riding with Shays on an RV to a rally at the Stamford Government Center, McCain further explains, "(The video) is helpful to President Bush because it puts the focus on the war on terrorism."

The reference was to a tape of Bin Laden that had emerged a few days earlier. The McCain camp didn't immediately return an email.

Of course, it's perfectly possible that McCain believed that the specter of another terror attack on the U.S. helped the GOP back in 2004, and no longer believes that it would. But clearly, in the past a little light bulb has gone off over McCain's head and he's had the thought that the possibility of an attack would help Republicans. The thought isn't exactly foreign to him.

Black also said that the assassination of Benazir Bhutto had also helped McCain, something the McCain camp also disavowed. But back in December, when the assassination happened, he said it could "serve to enhance" his "credentials."

The point, again, is that McCain does believe, or has believed, what Black said, even if he's now saying he doesn't. After all, he told us so himself -- twice!

The Obama campaign has thus far refrained from calling on McCain to fire Charlie Black, the top adviser who stirred up a big brouhaha the other day by saying that a terror attack on U.S. soil would help McCain's campaign.

But now Obama ally MoveOn is calling for just that. The group blasted out an email to supporters moments ago that echoes some tough language from Change to Win, the coalition of unions backing Obama...

Our allies at Change to Win have called for McCain to fire Charlie Black, saying "the memory of all those who died on 9-11 demand it." We couldn't agree more.

Surely the Obama team is glad to have MoveOn staking out a left flank and keeping the story alive. Full MoveOn email after the jump.

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The McCain campaign is clearly alarmed by the public's perceptions of yesterday's Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, which put Barack Obama ahead 49%-37%. They've now blasted out to reporters a memo from GOP pollster Public Opinion Strategies, arguing that they aren't down by that much.

POS argues that the party identification from the LAT/Bloomberg poll was too beneficial to the Dems, at 39% Democrats to 22% Republicans. "If party identification on the L.A. Times survey is recalculated to just down by ten (29% GOP / 39% Dem / 27% Ind / 5% Don't Know/Refused)," they argue, "the ballot would be 40% McCain - 47% Obama."

I'm not sure just how much of an improvement that really is, for the GOP nominee to be polling at only 40% and seven points behind a Democrat who was unknown to most Americans until this past year.

Wow, John McCain is really upping the ante in the energy wars today. We think he is, anyway.

In a speech he's set to deliver today in Nevada on energy, he'll guarantee "strategic independence" from foreign oil by 2025:

In recent days I have set before the American people an energy plan.

And let it begin today with this commitment: In a world of hostile and unstable suppliers of oil, this nation will achieve strategic independence by 2025...

Some will say this goal is unattainable within that relatively short span of years -- it's too hard and we need more time. Let me remind them that in the space of half that time -- about eight years -- this nation conceived and carried out a plan to take three Americans to the Moon and bring them safely home.

We've asked the McCain campaign for clarification of the term "strategic independence," and we'll let you know if we get an answer. For now, assuming "strategic independence" means "independence" McCain is promising us stability in the Mideast in five years (2013); and independence from foreign oil in less than two decades.

More excerpts from McCain's speech after the jump.

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It's a bit odd that this passed unnoticed, but Obama's national field director, Jon Carson, blasted out an email to supporters last night letting them know that the campaign is trying to organize some 3,000 so-called "unity events" across the country on Saturday.

The idea, it seems, is to capitalize on the attention that Friday's event with Hillary and Obama in Unity, New Hampshire, will get -- and to get non-Obama supporters to pair up with Obama supporters at house parties and the like.

It's impossible to know what kind of success this will have, but it's the sort of under-the-table organizing the Obama team did to great and surprising effect during the primaries. Details here.

This is pretty interesting: A focus group conducted in Pennsylvania, among Hillary supporters and key swing voters, sheds some light on the challenges ahead for Obama with regard to overcoming questions about his background...

On some questions of character, patriotism, and values (who would you rather carry the American flag at the Olympics, who would you rather carpool with), the focus group overwhelmingly picked McCain. While Jeremiah Wright barely came up and "bitter" didn't at all, two of the respondents -- the Clinton supporter and a female Bush voter -- had very negative opinions of him. "I don't trust Osama ... Obama. It's only a letter difference," said Charles, the Hillary backer. "His middle name is Hussein." Observed Terry, the female Bush voter: "I don't feel he's a true American."

But...the focus group -- which was conducted by Democratic pollster Peter Hart, for the Annenberg School at the University of Pennsylvania -- also found that more of them backed Obama than McCain.

Five backed Obama, four backed McCain, and three were undecided -- despite the fact that the voters were all white, none had previously voted for Obama, and the focus group was conducted in a place not known as sympathetic to the Illinois Senator. Obviously he has lots of work to do with these voters, but it isn't the worst place to start.

Oh, boy. Ralph Nader is at it again, accusing Barack Obama of being too weak a Democratic candidate on the grounds that he's ... acting white.

In an interview with the Rocky Mountain News, Nader lambasted Obama for not discussing poverty enough. "What's keeping him from doing that?" Nader asked. "Is it because he wants to talk white? He doesn't want to appear like Jesse Jackson?"

Barack Obama has begun privately calling Hillary's top fundraisers and making personal appeals for their support, and in some cases is getting some criticism in return, suggesting that the delicate task of uniting the fractured Democratic fundraising establishment is still incomplete.

Obama's calls to the donors, which were described to me by multiple sources directly familiar with them, come at a very sensitive moment, with negotiations between the two campaigns continuing. Tomorrow Hillary and Obama are set to meet with all these money people together -- a high-stakes event that both camps are hoping will go well.

"Obama has been calling Hillary's top money people and asking for their support, but the fundraisers are in some cases being critical of Obama's operation," said a senior Hillary person who works directly with her top donors on a regular basis.

According to sources, the Hillary fundraisers' criticism of Obama on these calls has focused partly -- but not exclusively -- on a demand that Obama do more to retire Hillary's campaign debt. This perhaps explains why Obama went out of his way yesterday on a call with his own donors to ask them to help her out.

But these criticisms from the donors suggests that bitterness may remain until Obama's efforts show actual results on her behalf.

Venture capitalist Alan Patricof, one of Hillary's top fundraisers and one of the more sought after money-people in the Democratic Party, declined to comment on personal discussions with Obama. "All of Hillary's supporters want to be helpful to Senator Obama and assure his election," Patricof told me. But he stressed that Hillary's debt problem remained unsolved.

"We are also appropriately concerned with the need for his direct support to help retire part of her debt," he said. "He is mindful of this matter and I am very hopeful that he will be helpful."

But Hillary's debt isn't the only concern.

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Obama Campaign Targeting 14 Red States
In their efforts to expand the playing field, Obama deputy campaign manager Steve Hildebrand told the Politico that the campaign will be putting resources into 14 states that George W. Bush won in 2004, and will even be targeting states they're unlikely to win, like Wyoming. "If we can register more Democrats, if we can increase the Democratic performance and turnout, maybe we can pick up a congressional seat."

Obama To Give Press Conference Today, McCain In Nevada
Barack Obama will be holding a 3:15 p.m. ET press conference today in his home base of Chicago, following a closed-door policy meeting with business leaders supporting his candidacy. John McCain will be in the swing state of Nevada, with an event in Las Vegas focusing on energy policy.

Hillary Meeting With House Dems Today To Urge Unity
Hillary Clinton is making a Democratic unity tour part of her return to Capitol Hill. Clinton is set to meet today with the House Democratic Caucus, where she will thank her former backers and ask them to work hard on Barack Obama's behalf.

Obama: Dobson "Making Stuff Up"
Barack Obama has responded to James Dobson's condemnation, after Dobson accused Obama of distorting the Bible and having a "fruitcake interpretation" of the law for arguing that religious doctrine should not directly dictate public policy. "I think you'll see that he was just making stuff up, maybe for his own purposes," Obama said.

Utah Congressman Loses Reelection In Primary
Rep. Chris Cannon, a Utah Republican known for his outrageous gaffes over the years, was defeated in his primary last night by a landslide margin. With 100% of precincts reporting, Cannon lost to state political operative Jason Chaffetz by a 60%-40% margin.

San Fran Group Seeks To Name Sewage Plant After Bush
Now this is funny. A group calling itself the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco is planning to put an initiative on the ballot to rename the city's sewage treatment plant after President Bush. The group, which was formed at a bar, is calling their proposal "an appropriate honor for a truly unique president."

The Obama campaign is offering a major olive branch to Hillary Clinton and her supporters. On a conference call with his top fundraisers, Obama asked them to help raise money to retire Clinton's $10 million in debts to vendors -- bills that were racked up in the long primary campaign that in many cases involved attacks against himself.

There are multiple reasons why Obama would want to do this. By helping Clinton pay off her outstanding bills, he ingratiates himself with many of her top donors -- giving them a new incentive to raise money on his behalf. And the overall message of Democratic unity this projects will make Hillary's voters feel that much more welcome in his campaign.

One point of clarification: The Obama camp's help extends only to the vendor debts, but not the more than $10 million in personal debt from Hillary's own self-financing loans. Clinton herself has told her own donors that while she needs help paying off vendors, she is not asking for help paying off the money the campaign owes her personally.

You might not have noticed this, but there is in fact a hotly-contested Congressional primary tonight in Utah. And here's why it matters: One of the most entertaining gaffe-machines in Congress, GOP Rep. Chris Cannon, could very well lose reelection after six terms.

Cannon has a history of making colorful comments, to say the least. For example, back in April he said that there are "lots of women who choose to be in polygamous relationships and who are very articulate about the benefits they get," and that it was a preferable arrangement to single parenthood.

And after the Foley scandal in 2006, he declared the teenage pages were "egging this guy on."

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Hmmm. This, from Chris Matthews, might be the most comically awful Obama/Osama scrambling we've seen this cycle...

Said Matthews: "We had a recording come out of the Obama headquarters -- not Obama, I'm sorry...Bin Laden, Bin Laden -- it came out of Bin Laden's headquarters over there in Pakistan..."

Hoo boy. Here's the thing about this. The man made a mistake. And I have mixed feelings about jumping on this. Matthews and many other reporters and commentators -- us at TPM included, obviously -- write or say the words Obama and Osama multiple times a day. And we all dread being the one to make this mistake.

But, look, one of the realities of this campaign is that there is a tacit, and not so tacit, effort underway to sow doubts about Obama with false suggestions that he's got a secret Muslim past or even terrorist sympathies. So the bottom line is that you're going to take a hit if you botch this. It's just an occupational hazard -- a minor thing to have to deal with in exchange for the privilege of covering an absolutely thrilling and historic presidential race.

And, man, that was a real stinker, Chris.

This is a good one. Check out this new ad that GOP Senator Gordon Smith, who's locked in a tough re-election fight in Oregon, has just released. The spot highlights his work with Barack Obama, who, last we checked, is the Democratic standard bearer...

"Who says Gordon Smith helped lead the fight for better gas mileage and a cleaner environment?" the ad asks. "Barack Obama! He joined with Gordon and broke through a 20-year deadlock to pass new laws which increase gas mileage for automobiles."

This obviously is helpful to Obama, who can cite it as proof that even Republicans agree that he has been successful working across party lines.

Late Update: The ad is also further proof of just how far Smith will run away from the Republican brand in this blue state. -ek

Late Update: The Obama campaign has now responded in a statement e-mailed out to reporters:

"Barack Obama has a long record of bipartisan accomplishment and we appreciate that it is respected by his Democratic and Republican colleagues in the Senate. But in this race, Oregonians should know that Barack Obama supports Jeff Merkley for Senate. Merkley will help Obama bring about the fundamental change we need in Washington," said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

Barack Obama has taken a big lead over John McCain in the new Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg poll, an indication that the presumptive Democratic nominee is benefitting from both party unity and the sheer unpopularity of the Republican nominee.

The numbers: Obama 49%, McCain 37%, well beyond the ±3% margin of error. This lends some corroboration to the Newsweek poll from last week that put it at 51%-36%, showing that it was not necessarily a total outlier.

Key internal number: Despite the talk during the primaries that Obama would suffer losses among white voters, he's in fact doing quite well -- he and McCain are tied at 39% each among white respondents in this poll. In the unlikely event that every last white undecided were to break for McCain, Obama would be almost where John Kerry was in 2004 exit polling.

We haven't seen many Hillary staffers join the Obama campaign yet, but Team Obama has now tapped a Hillary communications staffer and installed him in a key post in the crucial swing state of Ohio -- continuing Obama's rapid buildup of staff in the battleground states.

Isaac Baker, a Hillary spokesperson in Ohio throughout the primary, has joined Camp Obama as the Ohio director of communications. "We're building a strong field organization that will bring this campaign to all 88 counties," Baker IMs me.

Baker is the second Hillary staffer to jump to Team Obama after Hillary campaign manager Patti Solis Doyle recently joined as the chief of staff to the as-yet-unselected Veep. While Doyle's obviously a higher level staffer than Baker, the lead Ohio press gig is the sort of low-profile post that can matter, given the state's obvious importance in the general and given how bitterly contested it's likely to be.

Michelle Obama is set to keynote her first fundraiser for the Democratic National Committee, another sign that the Obama camp and DNC are joining forces in preparation for a general election contest against a still-formidable Republican fundraising machine.

DNC spokesperson Stacie Paxton confirms to me that she'll headline the event, which is likely to be a high-profile affair and is set for Thursday night at the Waldorf Astoria in New York.

The event is also a sign that Michelle is emerging as a key fundraising draw and a key promoter of party unity in the wake of the primary. Michelle has already done events designed to win over potentially disaffected Hillary supporters.

Others expected to speak at the dinner: New York First Lady Michelle Paterson and Providence Mayor David Cicilline. It's Michelle's first event with DNC chair Howard Dean, who will also speak and will introduce Michelle.

Now this is something. A new SurveyUSA poll shows that Barack Obama is tied with John McCain in Indiana, a state that hasn't gone Democratic since the Lyndon Johnson landslide of 1964.

The numbers: Obama 48%, McCain 47%, within the ±4% margin of error. For some perspective, George W. Bush won this state by a whopping 60%-39% margin in 2004.

The Obama campaign made news a few days ago by sending a top staffer to this red state, and Indiana has also been included in their first big ad campaign of the general election.

Meanwhile, a separate SurveyUSA poll also puts Obama narrowly ahead in New Mexico by 49%-46%, within the ±4.3% margin of error in a traditional swing state that went for Gore in 2000 and then Bush in 2004.

In a speech Barack Obama is set to give in Las Vegas, he really ratchets up the attacks on John McCain on energy, a battleground that will only increase in importance with new polls showing that energy policy is a paramount concern of voters. A key excerpt...

For decades, John McCain has been a part of this failure in Washington. Yes, he has gone further than some in his party in speaking out on climate change. And that is commendable. But time and time again, he has opposed investing in the alternative sources of energy that have helped fuel some of the very same projects and businesses he's highlighting in this campaign. He's voted against biofuels. Against solar power. Against wind power...

After all those years in Washington, John McCain still doesn't get it. I commend him for his desire to accelerate the search for a battery that can power the cars of the future. I've been talking about this myself for the last few years. But I don't think a $300 million prize is enough. When John F. Kennedy decided that we were going to put a man on the moon, he didn't put a bounty out for some rocket scientist to win -- he put the full resources of the United States government behind the project and called on the ingenuity and innovation of the American people. That's the kind of effort we need to achieve energy independence in this country, and nothing less will do. But in this campaign, John McCain offering the same old gimmicks...

Note Obama's concession that yes, McCain has "gone further than some in his party" on energy. As noted here before, we're seeing a consistent strategy on the Obama team's part to deal with perceptions of McCain as a "maverick."

Rather than pretend these public perceptions don't exist, Obama has time and again conceded a little bit in that direction, as he does here, as a way of leading people through those perceptions to an understanding that on the issues that matter to them, McCain simply doesn't represent a clean break with the past.

Full speech after the jump.

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A new Gallup poll finds that Obama holds a huge and striking advantage over McCain on which is more trusted to handle energy issues.

And not only that, it also finds that energy policy, by one measure, has now become the number one concern of voters.

The poll finds that Obama leads McCain by 19 points (47%-28%) on the question of who would do a better job handling energy policy, including gas prices. It also finds that 51% say that energy and gas prices are "extremely important" in determining their vote, higher than the economy (49%) or Iraq (44%).

It's worth pointing out that energy policy is central to McCain's strategy -- pushing an energy plan has emerged as one of the key ways in which he's hoping to achieve separation from Bush and the GOP.

However effective that larger effort may prove, on the straight-up question of which candidate is more trusted to handle the actual specifics of energy policy, Obama is simply crushing McCain.

Bill Clinton's office, responding to lots of chatter in political circles about why he hasn't yet endorsed Barack Obama, releases a terse statement:

"President Clinton is obviously committed to doing whatever he can and is asked to do to ensure Senator Obama is the next President of the United States."

It's not exactly an appearance with Obama at a rally in Unity, New Hampshire -- but it's an endorsement nonetheless.

So how far will the pundits go to protect McCain's reputation as a "maverick" -- and how far will they go to explain away his many reversals and flip-flops? The answer could help decide the presidential race.

Judging by Richard Cohen's column in today's Washington Post, the early returns are not encouraging. Cohen offers what has to be the most creative justification for doing this that we've ever seen -- he argues that McCain's flip-flops matter less than Obama's ... because McCain was a POW!

I'm not kidding.

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Another swing-state poll suggests that the damage done to Democratic unity by the bitter primary has been exaggerated. The new Michigan numbers from Public Policy Polling (D): Obama 48%, McCain 39%, with a ±4.1% margin of error.

Obama previously trailed McCain in this state according to most pollsters, due in large part to the controversy surrounding the rogue primary keeping him out of the state. However, recent numbers have shown him moving into a lead as he's been able to freely campaign here.

Here's what the pollster has to say about the larger trend at work here: "Every new poll PPP does in a swing state provides more evidence that talk of long term Democratic disunity because of the drawn out contest between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton was over blown."

Did McCain actually flip flop on the question of whether scenes of international violence help him politically? Looks that way.

The Obama campaign is keeping up the pressure on the McCain campaign over top McCain adviser Charlie Black's assertion that a terror attack on U.S. soil would benefit McCain, which McCain subsequently disavowed. On a conference call with reporters moments ago, the Obama camp said it had dug up a quote from McCain back in December when he did in fact say that the specter of attacks helped him.

Black had also said that the Bhutto assassination had helped McCain. And the McCain camp disavowed this, too. But here's what McCain said back when the assassination happened:

In an interview with reporters after the event, McCain said, "I would hate for this tragedy to affect anyone's campaign." But he was quick to add that "my theme throughout this campaign has been that I'm the one with the experience, the knowledge, and the judgment. Perhaps it may serve to enhance those credentials."

On the call, one of Obama foreign policy advisers drolly noted the inconsistency. "Back in Decmember, he said something very different," he said. "He said that the assassination...would enhance his national security credibility."

Yep. Wonder if the big news orgs will note this in their coverage of McCain's "disavowal" of Black's remarks.

Late Update: Just to clarify, this is important because it suggests that McCain really does think what Black inadvertently revealed.

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

Click To Play

NYT: Muslims Disaffected By Obama Campaign Tactics
The New York Times reports this morning that many Muslim voters are feeling disaffected by the Obama campaign's efforts to distance the candidate from the perception that is aligned with Muslim interests or is himself a Muslim. "A lot of us are waiting for him to say that there's nothing wrong with being a Muslim, by the way," said Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, the first Muslim elected to Congress and a very early endorser of Obama.

Both Candidates Go West To Talk About The Environment
Barack Obama will be in Las Vegas today for a campaign event discussing energy policy and green jobs, an effort to appeal to voters in this swing state by emphasizing environmental issues. John McCain will be in Santa Barbara to discuss environmental issues -- an interesting choice of venue, as the Los Angeles Times points out, given that this city is where candidates usually go to talk about how they oppose offshore drilling.

Clinton Campaign To Supporters: We Still Need Money
Hillary Clinton's defunct campaign yesterday sent out an e-mail to supporters, asking for money to help with the candidate's $20 million debt. "By helping us pay off our campaign debt, you're not just helping Hillary elect a Democratic president and grow our majority in Congress," the e-mail said. "You're making it possible for her to work as hard as she can on the issues we care about."

Dobson: Obama Distorting The Bible
James Dobson is clearly worried about Barack Obama's efforts to reach out to religious voters -- he's dedicated a section of today's pre-taped radio show to bashing Obama's arguments against directly applying biblical laws to public policy. "I think he's deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own worldview, his own confused theology," said Dobson.

Poll: GOP Senate Nominee Gets Anti-Bounce After Primary Victory
A new Rasmussen poll of New Mexico suggests that GOP nominee Steve Pearce's political stock has in fact gone down in the wake of his narrow primary victory. Pearce trails Democratic nominee Tom Udall 58%-30% for this open Republican-held seat -- worse than his showing before the primary, when he was behind 53%-37%.

McCain Campaign To Nevada Gov: Thanks, But No Thanks
This is fun. The McCain campaign has signaled that its not terribly enamored of scandal-plagued Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons, passing over him for the title of state campaign chair. This honorary job almost always goes to a party's governor, but will instead go to the lieutenant governor in this case.

The Obama campaign is going after the McCain camp over top adviser Charlie Black's claim that a terror attack on U.S. soil would help McCain politically.

Here's the statement from Obama campaign spokesperson Bill Burton:

"Barack Obama welcomes a debate about terrorism with John McCain, who has fully supported the Bush policies that have taken our eye off of al Qaeda, failed to bring Osama bin Laden to justice, and made us less safe. The fact that John McCain's top advisor says that a terrorist attack on American soil would be a 'big advantage' for their political campaign is a complete disgrace, and is exactly the kind of politics that needs to change. Barack Obama will turn the page on these failed policies and this cynical and divisive brand of politics so that we can unite this nation around a common purpose to finish the fight against al Qaeda."

Note the line about how Obama "welcomes a debate about terrorism" with McCain. That Obama wants to have a debate about national security is fast becoming an Obama campaign refrain.

Which is good, because as I've noted before, McCain's attacks on Obama as soft on terror are all about persuading people that the McCain campaign is the one on offense. For Obama to keep saying that this is a debate he wants and will win can only be helpful in preventing that meme from developing.

Late Update: A question: Why didn't the Obama campaign call on McCain to fire Black? Wouldn't that have kept the story going and forced the McCain team to prove it's serious about not indulging in the Rovian fearmongering that McCain claims to be above?

Good idea or bad idea? We'd be interested in hearing you all weigh in on this.

A new Rasmussen poll of Pennsylvania gives Barack Obama a narrow lead over John McCain in this must-win state. The numbers: Obama 46%, McCain 42%, with a ±3% margin of error.

And despite the constant message in the primaries that Obama wouldn't be able to win "beer track" voters, the pollster's analysis has this: "Obama has a sizable lead among those voters earning less than $40,000 a year, with McCain well ahead among those who earn more than that annually."

Even if we factor out African-American voters who are more economically downscale, this would still suggest Obama is doing solidly among white blue-collar voters.

The hotly-contested race for the New York 13th Congressional District, a major pickup opportunity for Dems, was seriously shaken up over the weekend with the sudden and tragic passing of GOP candidate Frank Powers, who was found dead in his sleep of apparently natural causes at age 67.

So what happens next? What does the GOP do now?

A national GOP source tells us that the party is already talking to local leaders about potential new candidates, but nothing will happen until after the funeral.

It's worth taking a quick look at the state of the race, because it has suddenly become one of the contests being most closely watched by national strategists in both parties.

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Top McCain adviser Charlie Black is now backpedaling hard from his claim in an interview that a terror attack on the United States would help McCain in political terms, though he is acknowledging that he did say this.

Black was quoted by Fortune magazine that should another terror attack hit, "certainly it would be a big advantage" to McCain.

I asked the McCain campaign if this was their view of things. Here's the statement they sent me, from McCain spokesperson Tucker Bounds:

"Charlie deeply regrets his comments. They were inappropriate and he recognizes that the candidate we work for has devoted his entire adult life to protecting his country and placing its security before every other consideration."

Earlier today McCain himself said that he disagreed with the comment. But he added the caveat that he wasn't sure that Black had said this.

Now we know from Black himself, via the campaign, that he did indeed say it.

John McCain is rapidly distancing himself from a claim by senior adviser Charlie Black that a terror attack on the United States would help McCain in political terms.

Here's McCain at a presser today, responding to a question about his top adviser, who rather bluntly told Fortune magazine that the assassination of Benazir Bhutto "helped" McCain and added that a terror attack on U.S. soil "would be a big advantage" to McCain...

"I strenuously disagree," McCain said.

The funny thing about this is that while this is obviously a hideously tasteless gaffe for McCain's top adviser to make, the notion that a terror attack would help Republicans is something that's seen as perfectly routine when pundits argue it.

This odious argument somehow isn't seen as crude or distasteful when "disinterested" observers say it, which is bizarre, even putting aside the fact that it's probably outright wrong, given the multiple polls finding that the GOP's advantage on national security has long since evaporated.

At a D.C. gathering of GOP insiders today today, Karl Rove previewed the next GOP attack line on Obama, one that has overtones of "uppity fellow thinks he's better than you," but with a curious twist...

"Even if you never met him, you know this guy," Rove said... "He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."

Obama is "the guy at the country club"? As Jake Tapper notes, Obama probably "wouldn't be admitted into many country clubs that members of the Capitol Hill Club frequent."

It should also be noted, of course, that Rove took a man who actually is a country club denizen who makes "snide comments" about others -- that would be George W. Bush -- and turned him into a regular Joe. Meanwhile, the guy who would struggle for admittance to some of these exclusive enclaves -- Obama -- is now "the guy at the country club." Rovian up-is-downism at its finest.

Late Update: Steve Benen makes some very good points about how this attack jars against other GOP efforts to frame the attacks on Obama.

The Obama and McCain campaigns blasted each other today over energy policy, with the Obama campaign pointing out that a speech McCain gave today calling for alternative-energy development is directly at odds with his entire career.

Energy policy could be key in this race because it's become the principal issue on which McCain is hoping to achieve separation from President Bush and the GOP. By stressing his supposed "green" credentials, McCain is hoping to keep alive the sense that he's a "maverick" and defuse the Democratic attack line that he's the "McSame" as Bush.

On a conference call just now with reporters, Obama's director of economic policy Jason Furman charged that McCain is now backing alternative energy research, but he's consistently voted against research and fuel-efficiency standards in the past.

Here's the audio from the call:

Click To Play

The Obama campaign has just announced the details of his planned joint appearance with Hillary this coming Friday -- their first appearance together since Obama clinched -- and it has to be said that the specifics are pretty artful.

They're holding a joint rally in a town that's actually called "Unity, New Hampshire." And that's not all: In "Unity," the Obama campaign says, each candidate received exactly the same number of votes! One hundred and seven apiece, to be exact.

You can't make this stuff up. What was the likelihood of finding a place called "Unity" for a unity event -- let alone one where both candidates pulled exactly the same support?

A new Rasmussen poll lends some weight to Obama's prediction that he can take New Mexico, which narrowly went for Bush last time around. Here are the numbers, which have narrowed a bit compared to last month:

Obama: 47% (50%)

McCain: 39% (41%)

Two key numbers that help explain Obama's lead: More (46%) think Obama has enough experience for the job than think he doesn't (43%). And a solid majority (53%) think the most important goal for the next president in Iraq is to bring home the troops.

Separately, a quick note to readers: We'll be posting here on every swing state poll as they come in.

Okay, we've got some more news for you on the bizarre House race for the open Dem-held seat in Oregon, where GOP nominee Mike Erickson is facing allegations that he pressured a woman into getting an abortion back in 2000 and early 2001.

The latest: In a development that boosts Dem chances of holding the seat, The Oregonian has published a detailed story based on claims from the woman herself, whose damning accusations against Erickson are a must-read.

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Check out these key numbers that were buried in the USA Today poll that was released yesterday:

61% of Democrats said they were more enthusiastic than usual about voting in this year's election, while just 35% of Republicans said that.

Also in the poll, Obama's fav/unfav is 64%-31%, while McCain's is 59%-35%.

As Mark Murray notes, Obama enjoys an "enthusiasm gap" that is formidable -- the Dem enthusiasm number is nearly twice that of the GOP. It's the sort of thing that could make a real difference in the close states.

The gap becomes even more key in the context of Obama's 50-state strategy: Expectations of an energized voter turnout for Obama will give plausibility to the Obama camp's claims of broadening the map, thus forcing McCain to invest scarce resources in states they might otherwise have been able to more or less ignore.

Here are some new fundraising numbers that complicate the notion that Obama will have an enormous fundraising advantage over McCain this fall: The Republican National Committee now has $50 million more on hand than its Dem counterpart.

The latest FEC filings show that the RNC raised over $24 million in the month of May alone, and has over $53 million cash on hand. By contrast, the DNC raised only $4.8 million, and has just under $4 million cash on hand -- a paltry amount compared to the national GOP's coffers.

This is significant because it reveals just how important Obama's decision to forego public financing really is -- and how much of a risk he's taking by effectively closing down the 527s on his side. Obama will unquestionably retain an enormous head-to-head money advantage over McCain's official campaign committee, but the GOP will almost certainly be able to step in with a parallel apparatus that will be formidable.

This blog took a fair amount of heat for suggesting during the primary that Maureen Dowd's nonstop catty columns about Hillary had an obsessive, even unhinged quality to them. So it was pretty gratifying to see that Times public editor Clark Hoyt weighed in yesterday with a piece aggressively attacking Dowd's coverage of the Dem primary.

The crux of Hoyt's case is that her columns on Hillary were "loaded with language painting her as a 50-foot woman with a suffocating embrace, a conniving film noir dame and a victim dependent on her husband." But take a look at Dowd's defense of herself...

"I've been twisting gender stereotypes around for 24 years," Dowd responded. She said nobody had objected to her use of similar images about men over seven presidential campaigns. She often refers to Barack Obama as "Obambi" and has said he has a "feminine" management style...

"From the time I began writing about politics," Dowd said, "I have always played with gender stereotypes and mined them and twisted them to force the reader to be conscious of how differently we view the sexes." Now, she said, "you are asking me to treat Hillary differently than I've treated the male candidates all these years, with kid gloves."

This is false, and Dowd almost certainly knows it. As Media Matters notes today, many critics loudly objected to her ritual feminizing of male candidates -- her devotion of an entire column to John Edwards' $400 haircut, or her characterization of Obama as a "starlet" who "can make a three-course meal out of a Nicorette," to name only two examples.

More broadly, by pretending that people are asking her to treat Hillary differently than male candidates, Dowd is ducking the real case against her.

Read more »

NYT Goes After Obama On Ethanol
Barack Obama's squeaky-clean image is targeted in a new article this morning in the New York Times, challenging his support of corn-ethanol subsidies. "And when it comes to domestic ethanol, almost all of which is made from corn," the paper says, "he also has advisers and prominent supporters with close ties to the industry at a time when energy policy is a point of sharp contrast between the parties and their presidential candidates."

McCain To Propose Cash Prize For Clean Car Technology
John McCain is set to deliver a speech today in Fresno, where he will lay out his proposals to encourage cleaner cars. The key proposals will be to offer a $5,000 tax credit to the auto companies for every customer that buys a yet to be developed zero-emissions vehicle, and to offer a $300 million prize for the successful development of battery technology that can overtake current plug-in auto solutions.

Obama Courting Women Voters In New Mexico
In a further act of outreach to women voters who supported Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama will be holding a campaign event in Albuquerque today to discuss "the unique economic challenges facing working women," according to his campaign's morning e-mail to reporters.

Obama Campaign Working To Turn Out Black Voters
The Obama campaign is working to boost African-American turnout in crucial swing states like Florida, Virginia, North Carolina and others in order to turn those states from red to blue. It will be a delicate balancing act, though -- while Florida has more than half a million black voters who didn't turn out in 2004, for example, the campaign will have to focus on that community without embracing identity politics and alienating white voters.

SurveyUSA: Obama's Lead Slipping In Oregon
A new SurveyUSA poll of Oregon gives Barack Obama only a 48%-45% lead, within the ±4.3% margin of error. Their last poll from three weeks ago gave Obama a 49%-39% lead.

Alaska AFL-CIO Endorses Dem Against Ted Stevens
In a blow to the re-election campaign of GOP Sen. Ted Stevens, the Alaska AFL-CIO has endorsed his Democratic opponent, Anchorage Mayor Mark Begich. Unlike most states, unions in Alaska often endorse the dominant Republicans, and the AFL-CIO has endorsed Stevens in all his past re-election campaigns -- but his lagging both numbers and ethics investigations may have changed the calculations this time.

Oregon Sen. Gordon Smith's campaign makes an interesting claim in its latest ad: That the Republican incumbent who came out publicly against the Iraq War just after the 2006 elections was in fact "one of the first to stand up to George Bush and other Republicans to end this war," a questionable claim clearly meant to boost his image in this liberal anti-war state:

Obviously, a whole lot of other people were against the war well before November 2006 -- and Smith himself voted for the war in 2002 and remained a supporter for four years. As senior Oregon political columnist Jeff Mapes points out, the ad "might have been accurate if she called Smith one of the first Republicans to oppose the war."

"Sen. Smith is proud to have been one of the first Republicans to advocate an end to the war in Iraq," Smith campaign spokesperson Lindsay Gilbride told Election Central via e-mail. "Regardless of the political season, he will continue working with his colleagues on both sides of the aisle to advance our national security, strengthen our economy and promote energy independence."

Frank Powers, a businessman who had been the leading Republican candidate for the hotly-contested open New York House seat of retiring GOPer Vito Fossella, has passed away at age 67.

Our condolences go out to his family and friends.

MoveOn To Pressure Obama On FISA Bill
MoveOn.org, which endorsed Barack Obama in the Democratic primaries, is clearly not happy with his decision to support the new FISA bill that includes lawsuit-immunity for the telecom companies. They now calling upon their members to demand that Obama keep his October 2007 promise to filibuster retroactive immunity.

Obama Plans To Wear Down McCain With 50-State Campaign
The Obama campaign is planning to leverage its expected fundraising might into a campaign unlike any we've seen in modern times, with advertising on everything from the Olympics to targeted cable channels like MTV, and paid staff in every state. Indeed, the campaign doesn't expect to win every state they'll compete in -- but they do expect to force the lesser-funded McCain campaign to have to pour resources into those locations.

Michelle Obama Wooing Former Hillary-Backing Women
Michelle Obama is quickly emerging as a key campaign surrogate for winning over women voters and activists who previously supported Hillary Clinton. On Friday, Mrs. Obama flew to Washington and delivered a speech to the National Partnership for Women & Families -- and paid special tribute to particular audience members who had been major Hillary-backers.

McCain Hoping To Avoid Bob Dole's Mistakes
The New York Times notes this morning that while John McCain and Bob Dole seemingly share many attributes -- war heroes who became the oldest non-incumbent nominees for president -- McCain is working hard to avoid the mistakes that bedeviled Dole's disorganized campaign. McCain's campaign does not include any of Dole's top advisers, and he is actively seeking to be more in the public eye and up close with with voters in town halls, as opposed to the aloof Dole campaign of 1996.

Brokaw Is The New Interim Host Of Meet The Press
NBC announced today that Tom Brokaw has been selected to be the new host of Meet The Press from now until Election Day. "I've been appearing on Meet the Press since the days of Watergate when it was moderated by Lawrence E. Spivak right through the distinguished tenure of my great friend, Tim Russert, so I feel right at home," Brokaw said in a press release.

GOP Fears Nader Effect From Bob Barr
Major Republicans are worried that Libertarian nominee Bob Barr, the former Georgia GOP Congressman who has turned against the Iraq War, could siphon conservative voters who are unhappy with the party's recent turn to big government. Georgia Rep. John Linder, who defeated Barr in a 2002 primary forced by redistricting, predicted that Barr could get at most four percent of the vote, "But in some states that may be enough."