The new survey of Florida by Public Policy Polling (D) shows John McCain retaking a narrow lead in this important swing state.

The numbers: McCain 47%, Obama 44%, with a ±3.5% margin of error. A month ago, Obama had taken a slim lead of 46%-44%.

They key internal number is that Democrats crossing over to vote McCain are disproportionately older white women -- identified in the pollster's analysis as "your prototypical Hillary Clinton supporters."

"Barack Obama still has some work to do getting those folks on his side if he wants to have any chance of winning Florida," the pollster adds.

A new SurveyUSA poll gives John McCain the lead in the perennial swing state of Florida -- a state where recent polls have given contrary outcomes, and which is sure to be closely contested through this November.

The numbers: McCain 50%, Obama 44%, with a ±3.8% margin of error. Age seems to be a factor here, with the internals showing Obama ahead 48%-46% among votes under the age of 50, but McCain ahead 53%-41% among voters over 50.

Quinnipiac: Obama Ahead In Pennsylvania, Ohio And Florida
A new set of Quinnipiac polls has some very good news for Barack Obama, with him leading in all three of the largest swing states, albeit within the margins of error in two cases. The numbers: Obama ahead 49%-42% in Pennsylvania, ahead 46%-44% in Ohio -- and ahead 46%-44% in Florida.

Obama In Iowa Today, Then Texas Tonight
Barack Obama has a busy day ahead, starting in the swing state of Iowa. He'll be meeting with flood victims in Cedar Rapids, discussing the economy at a campaign event later on, speaking via satellite to AFSCME's annual convention -- and then heading off to Texas for a fundraiser tonight in Houston.

McCain In Wisconsin Today
John McCain is holding a campaign event today in Racine, Wisconsin, scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. ET. This perennial swing state has voted Democratic in every election since 1988, but it's often been very, very close, and it's always on the GOP's target list.

Obama: GOP Will Try To Scare Voters About Me
Barack Obama told a Missouri crowd last night that Republicans will try to scare voters by reminding them that he "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills." Campaign spokesman Robert Gibbs said Obama was not referring to race: "What Barack Obama was talking about was that he didn't get here after spending decades in Washington."

McCain Hedges On Tax Increases For Social Security
John McCain is giving himself wiggle room on whether he'll raise taxes in order to fortify Social Security, a position that has been condemned by many on the no-tax right. "And in any negotiation that I might have, when I go in my position will be that I am opposed to raising taxes," McCain told a fundraiser last night, "but we have to work together to save Social Security."

McCain Camp: Stevens Scandal Part Of Pork-Barrel Culture
John McCain's campaign has finally responded to the scandal surrounding the Ted Stevens indictment, with a spokesperson telling the AP that Stevens is part of Washington's culture of pork: "This is a sad reminder that the next president will have his work cut out for him in rebuilding public trust by ending once and for all pork barrel spending and reforming Washington from top to bottom."

Obama Camp Condemns Rap Song Bashing His Detractors
Barack Obama's campaign is distancing itself from an overly-exuberant supporter, with the campaign condemning a rap song by Ludacris that uses various obscenities to describe President Bush, Hillary Clinton, John McCain and Jesse Jackson. "This song is not only outrageously offensive to Sen. Clinton, Rev. Jackson, Sen. McCain and President Bush, it is offensive to all of us who are trying to raise our children with the values we hold dear," said spokesman Bill Burton.

Barack Obama might just be taking a narrow lead in the big swing state of Florida, a new Rasmussen poll suggests -- a state where John McCain has been expected to do a lot better all throughout this year.

The numbers: Obama 49%, McCain 47%, within the ±4.5% margin of error. In Rasmussen's last poll from almost a month ago, McCain had a seven-point lead. Obama's favorable and unfavorable numbers now stand at 51%-47%, a big improvement from his 44%-53% favorables a month ago.

Most recent polls have given McCain the lead here, but it's a close one.

Barack Obama's support has significantly risen in Florida -- a place where John McCain is thought to have an advantage -- to the point where he's taken the lead in a new poll.

The latest numbers from Public Policy Polling (D): Obama 46%, McCain 44%, within the ±3.6% margin of error. In their last poll from March -- taken right in the middle of the first Jeremiah Wright controversy -- Obama trailed 50%-39%.

For now, the polls are mixed on Florida. PPP, Quinnipiac and ARG have given Obama a narrow lead, while Rasmussen puts McCain ahead.

Obama To Promote His Version Of Faith-Based Social Programs
Barack Obama will be speaking today in Ohio, where he will deliver a speech calling for an expansion of government cooperation with faith-based programs. The Obama campaign's e-mail to reporters says that religious charity programs would be held to all civil rights standards in hiring and who they serve, while the Associated Press adds that religious organizations would still be able to discriminate in non-taxpayer funded areas.

McCain Speaking To Sheriffs Today
John McCain will be speaking this morning to the National Sheriffs' Association conference in Indianapolis -- possibly a sign that his campaign views Obama as a serious threat to carry the red state of Indiana, or that he aims to pitch himself as a Nixon-style "law and order" candidate. He will then travel to Mexico and Colombia, where he will likely promote the principles of free trade.

NRA To Go After Obama This Year
A right-wing group is set to mount a major offensive against Barack Obama: Namely, the National Rifle Association. The NRA is planning to spend $40 million on the presidential campaign, with $15 million on ads portraying Obama as a threat to Second Amendment Rights.

McCain Takes Money From Swift-Boat Backers
USA Today points out this morning that John McCain has had no problem accepting $70,000 in donations this cycle from backers of the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth in 2004, despite his condemnation of the group at the time. On top of this, it should be noted that the McCain camp has included Bud Day, an active participant in Swift Boat commercials, in their "Truth Squad" to go after Wesley Clark's criticism of McCain's national security credentials.

Rasmussen: McCain Ahead In Florida
A new Rasmussen poll of Florida gives John McCain the lead in this large swing state. The numbers: McCain 48%, Obama 41%, with a ±4.5% margin of error. Other recent polls have put Obama ahead, leaving the situation ambiguous.

Poll: Dem Ahead In Deep-Red House Seat In Kentucky
A new SurveyUSA poll suggests that Democrats could be poised to pick up a deep-red Kentucky House district that voted 65% for President Bush in 2004. In the district of retiring GOPer Ron Lewis, Democratic state Sen. David Boswell has a 47%-44% edge over Republican state Sen. Brett Guthrie, within the ±4.3% margin of error.

A new Rasmussen poll of Florida finds John McCain with a decent lead over Barack Obama in this big swing state. The numbers: McCain 47%, Obama 39%, with a ±4% margin of error.

This is contrary to a Quinnipiac poll from yesterday, which gave Obama a 47%-43 lead here, making the reality of the situation ambiguous. Obama's campaign has downplayed Florida as a must-win state, though they do plan to actively contest it. If they were able to win it, then a victory would become exceedingly difficult for John McCain.

New polling from Quinnipiac has some very bad news for John McCain, with him trailing in all three of the largest swing states -- even Florida:

Florida
Obama (D) 47%, McCain (R) 43%
Margin of error: ±2.6%

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

Pennsylvania
Obama (D) 52%, McCain (R) 40%
Margin of error: ±2.5%

According to our Election Central Poll Tracker, this is the first poll ever in which Obama has led McCain in Florida. Obama previously had a lot of trouble here thanks to the primary controversies that kept him out of the state, but this poll shows he's overcoming that difficulty rather quickly. Even if part of it is a post-primary boost, it would still seem to say that any ill will from the primaries is over with.

Though Obama campaign manager David Plouffe said the other day that Obama can win without Ohio and Florida, the campaign is moving aggressively this week to beef up its efforts in the Sunshine State.

The campaign tells us that Dem operative Steve Schale will manage the state's Florida campaign, while Ashley Walker, who ran the state during the primary, will be the Florida political director.

Obama advisers regard these two as among the very best the state has to offer. Obama aides say Shale has a great track record in winning House races in the state, meaning he has the sort of fine-grained local knowledge necessary to find extra votes in odd places -- the sort of thing that can make a big difference in a close race.

The personnel moves, combined with the fact that Obama will visit the state later this week, suggest that the Obama camp knows that Florida is going to be a grueling fight and that for all the talk of remaking the map, they will compete as aggressively as possible there -- starting now.

Meanwhile, as expected, the Obama campaign also announced today that longtime Clinton loyalist Patti Solis Doyle has joined the campaign as the head of the Veep-candidate-to-be's staff. The move is either a sign that Hillary's Veep prospects are good or that they're bad, depending on which pundit is doing the talking.

Late Update: A long list of Obama staff hires announced today after the jump.

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In a sign that the Obama campaign's strategies will deviate significantly from Democratic campaigns of recent years, campaign manager David Plouffe is now indicating that two of the biggest swing states will not be considered must-wins by themselves, but only part of a comprehensive plan to compete in more states

Plouffe reportedly told the crowd at a fundraiser on Friday that Ohio and Florida would not be required for victory, though he certainly plans to compete there. "You have a lot of ways to get to 270," he later told the Associated Press. "Our goal is not to be reliant on one state on November 4th."

John McCain is already pushing to consolidate support among Cubans in Florida, running a new Spanish-language radio ad attacking Barack Obama, without directly naming him, for wanting to negotiate with the Raul Castro regime:

"While some support a dialogue with Raul Castro, John McCain believes we should support the courageous men and women who continue to stand up for freedom in Cuba," says former Cuban political prisoner Roberto Martin Perez. "Rather than resume relations with Raul Castro, John McCain wants first and foremost for all political prisoners to be released."

The full English translation is available after the jump.

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Although the national GOP efforts to negatively associate down-ticket Democrats with Barack Obama failed in the recent special elections, it appears to have paid off in one respect: We now have a red-district Democrat backing away from from Obama's candidacy.

Freshman Rep. Tim Mahoney of Florida told the Palm Beach Post that he's remaining officially uncommitted for now, and wants the opportunity to lobby John McCain on key local issues.

"I'm a Democrat," Mahoney said. "But am I going to have a pep rally or something like that? No, I'm not going to do that."

If Obama is going to win Florida, he'll need to have local Dems being a lot more energized and active on his behalf than this guy. But his reluctance seems odd, given that Dems in much deeper-red Mississippi and Louisiana won special elections even after being "tarred" by their association with Obama.

In a huge blow to Hillary's hopes, such as they are, the DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee has now voted in favor of a compromise measure for Michigan, giving 69 pledged delegates to Hillary Clinton and 59 to Barack Obama at a half-vote each.

This effectively ends Hillary's bid to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations in full -- which she was hoping for in a last-ditch effort to close the delegate count and, more importantly for her campaign's moral arguments, to try to narrow Obama's unofficial popular vote lead.

Still, Hillary's chief delegate counter, Harold Ickes, seemed to signal that there's still a possibility that she might fight on. In a harsh tone of voice, Ickes told the committee that Hillary personally informed him that she reserves the right to take the dispute over Michigan to the Credentials Committee in Denver, on the grounds that the committee had no right to transfer "Uncommitted" votes over to Obama.

The 69-59 measure was put forth by the state party's leadership, with Sen. Carl Levin arguing for full voting rights for each delegate. It remains to be seen whether he will fight on over the question of half-votes, or whether the matter is now effectively over.

The vote was 19 in favor to eight opposed, less than the unanimity received by the Florida half-vote compromise.

Hillary's total advantage in pledged delegates for Michigan and Florida is now set at +24 -- well short of the advantage of more than +100 that she once hypothetically enjoyed.

The DNC Rules and Bylaws Committee has officially voted, in a unanimous motion, in favor of the compromise measure for the Florida Democratic delegation, seating all pledged delegates and super-delegates at a half-vote each.

The compromise was endorsed by the Obama campaign, and even received the evidently-reluctant support of pro-Clinton members of the committee.

Bottom line: Hillary Clinton will net a +19 edge in pledged delegates for Florida, not enough to significantly change the math. Up next will be the debate on Michigan, which is a much tougher issue to settle.

As expected, the motion to fully seat the Florida delegation according to the results of the January rogue primary has gone down in defeat, following a brief formal debate.

The vote tally: 12 votes in favor, 15 opposed. The committee is now proceeding to debate on a compromise motion that would seat the delegates at half-voting strength, which is expected to carry the day.

The vote was followed by chants of "Denver! Denver!" from a contingent of Clinton supporters in the audience.

As the DNC prepares to decide the fates of the Florida and Michigan delegations tomorrow, a key question has to be asked: Did those rogue primaries truly reflect the will of their states' Democratic voters?

The case against that proposition, it turns out, is a fairly compelling one in statistical terms.

Here's why: If you take a close look at the numbers, it turns out that while the Florida primary turnout was high relative to past primaries within the state, the relative Democratic turnout vs. the Republican primary lagged way behind relative party turnout in other primaries and caucuses across the country, where the voting counted from the start. And in Michigan in particular, the voting level there was simply abysmal.

This suggests the possibility that far more Democratic voters would have come out in both states if they'd expected the contests to count, meaning that it's hard to argue that the primaries that actually took place really reflected the will of the people.

This is important context to keep in mind given that the Hillary campaign will argue tomorrow that the only way of preserving the people's will is giving them the solution they want -- a full seating of both delegations in accordance with the primary voting.

A detailed explanation after the jump.

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In a further sign that the Clinton camp is setting low expectations for the Rules Committee meeting tomorrow, Harold Ickes is now warning that not all of the Clinton-backing committee members -- representing a plurality, but not a majority -- might not vote for the campaign's position of seating all the Florida and Michigan primary delegates.

As for himself, Ickes humorously told the Wall St. Journal that he could "possibly" vote against Hillary's interests, "but it's highly unlikely."

It looks like it's going to be a bit more difficult for the GOP to portray Obama as the preferred candidate of hostile foreign tyrants.

Less than a week after John McCain attacked Obama for saying he would be willing to negotiate with the Castro regime, Fidel Castro himself has given a major thumbs down to Obama's plan to let Cuban-Americans visit their relatives on the island, while still maintaining the overall commercial embargo.

"Obama's speech can be translated as a formula for hunger for the country," the retired dictator wrote in a column for the state-run newspaper, going on to call the proposal "propaganda for consumerism and a way of life that is unsustainable."

At the same time, Castro acknowledged that he isn't exactly a sought-out endorsement in American politics: "Were I to defend him, I would do his adversaries an enormous favor. I have therefore no reservations about criticizing him and about expressing my points of view on his words frankly."

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."

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."

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."

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.

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."