The Filter: March 17, 2008

A round-up of this morning's must-read stories.

FOR DEMOCRATS, INCREASED FEARS OF A LONG FIGHT
(Adam Nagourney and Jeff Zeleny, New York Times)
While many superdelegates said they intended to keep their options open as the race continued to play out over the next three months, the interviews suggested that the playing field was tilting slightly toward Mr. Obama in one potentially vital respect. Many of them said that in deciding whom to support, they would adopt what Mr. Obama’s campaign has advocated as the essential principle: reflecting the will of the voters... The interviews were conducted at a time of rising displays of animosity between Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama, with Mrs. Clinton repeatedly arguing that Mr. Obama did not have the foreign policy credentials to stand up to Senator John McCain of Arizona, the likely Republican nominee. Several superdelegates said they were concerned that this could hurt the Democratic Party in the fall elections and put pressure on some of them to endorse one of the candidates to bring the contest to a quicker conclusion. 

THE DIVIDED DEMOCRATS
(Michael A. Cohen, Wall Street Journal)
If Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Obama are still landing blows against each other come August, the Democrats will have squandered the opportunity to define their candidate while handing Mr. McCain a series of well-tested attack lines for the fall campaign. Moreover, Democrats will have wasted the enormous fundraising advantage they currently enjoy -- money better spent on campaign ads denting Mr. McCain's reformist, maverick image. In 1968, Democrats had the good fortune to run against Nixon, whom Democratic voters largely despised. This year, the party's nominee will have to square off against Mr. McCain, a man who is generally respected among Democrats. In short, Democrats are poised to give a GOP candidate, with largely unexplored liabilities on Iraq and the economy, a free ride. That's why it is imperative for Democrats to resolve this issue sooner rather than later.

OBAMA'S PASTOR: THE BACKSTORY
(Mike Allen, Politico)
Politicians know a troublesome story has “broken through” the Eastern media echo chamber when Jay Leno is laughing at them.  In the case of the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., retiring pastor and outgoing spiritual adviser to Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), it took less than 48 hours... Political reporters and editors were inundated with e-mails from red-state friends and relatives wanting to know why the brouhaha wasn’t getting more instant and constant coverage from every news outlet.  To reporters who had followed the campaign, it was an old, oft-written story. [But] it’s possible for regulars on the trail to be too familiar with the material. With the video widely available in the heat of the race, readers and viewers were thirsty for coverage.

WHITE MALE VOTE ESPECIALLY CRITICAL
(Dan Balz, Washington Post)
In the fierce campaign between Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, a battle dominated by questions of race and gender, white men have emerged as perhaps the single critical swing constituency. The competition for the support of white men, particularly those defined as working class, will shape the showdown between Clinton and Obama in Pennsylvania's Democratic presidential primary on April 22. Obama (Ill.) won majorities among those voters in what appeared to be breakthrough victories in Wisconsin and Virginia last month. But he badly lost working-class white men to Clinton (N.Y.) in Ohio and Texas two weeks ago, keeping the outcome of the Democratic race in doubt indefinitely. The results in Ohio in particular raised questions about whether Obama can attract support from this crucial demographic. They also brought to the forefront the question of whether racial prejudice would be a barrier to his candidacy in some of the major industrial battlegrounds in the general election if he becomes the Democratic nominee.

MCCAIN ARRIVES IN IRAQ, PLANS TO MEET MALIKI
(Joshua Partlow, Washington Post)
Sen. John McCain visited Iraq on Sunday as part of a congressional delegation on an international tour, a chance for the likely Republican presidential nominee to emphasize his support of the U.S. military effort in Iraq and his foreign policy experience. Unlike a previous trip to Iraq, in which he was criticized for his optimistic pronouncements about progress and security, McCain's visit on Sunday was largely out of the public view. U.S. Embassy and military officials stressed that the visit was not a campaign event. McCain apparently did not travel with reporters or make press statements. 

MANY VOTING FOR CLINTON TO BOOST GOP
(Scott Helman, Boston Globe)
About 100,000 GOP loyalists voted for her in Ohio, 119,000 in Texas, and about 38,000 in Mississippi, exit polls show.A sudden change of heart? Hardly. Since Senator John McCain effectively sewed up the GOP nomination last month, Republicans have begun participating in Democratic primaries specifically to vote for Clinton, a tactic that some voters and local Republican activists think will help their party in November... Spurred by conservative talk radio, GOP voters who say they would never back Clinton in a general election are voting for her now for strategic reasons: Some want to prolong her bitter nomination battle with Barack Obama, others believe she would be easier to beat than Obama in the fall, or they simply want to register objections to Obama.

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS, DEMOCRATS SEEK ANSWERS
(John Harwood, New York Times)
The public phase of the Democratic presidential race will now pause, briefly, for a back-to-the-future experiment in back-room deal-making. It’s an unusual turn for the self-styled party of the people, which four decades ago began to throw open the doors of its nomination process to rank-and-file voters. But Democrats have never faced a problem quite like the one that Michigan and Florida present for the race between Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. There have been disputed delegations, and rules challenges, since the post-1968 reforms in the Democratic nominating process. But none combined the combustible elements of large states, a live nomination fight and the electoral version of instant replay.

MEMO TO CLINTON AND OBAMA: STOP SPINNING
(Thomas Schaller, Salon)
In making your respective cases for electability, each of you has attempted to extrapolate evidence from the statewide primary and caucus results. And the evidence you've presented isn't very convincing. Both of you can't be wrong -- one of the two candidates, logically, has to be less electable, even if the difference is infinitesimal. And maybe both of you are right. Maybe each candidate is electable enough, meaning capable of assembling a specific coalition of voters and collection of electoral votes that will be enough to vanquish John McCain in November. Maybe each candidate is capable, in his or her own way, of winning -- or losing. Herewith, point by point, is my take on the various arguments you have both been pelting me with for the past week or more, and why I don't find them persuasive.

OBAMA GAINS 14 MORE DELEGATES
(Peter Slevin, Washington Post)
While Obama was speaking in Indiana, thousands of Democrats in Iowa were taking part in county conventions, the second step in allocating the state's delegates to the national convention. Obama gained eight of the 14 delegates won in the Jan. 3 caucuses by former senator John Edwards, who has since dropped out of the Democratic presidential race, along with one won by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, according to the Obama campaign. Caucus-night projections showed Obama getting 16 delegates and Clinton 15. With the other six Edwards delegates standing firm, Obama's camp claimed 25 delegates from Iowa, compared with 14 for Clinton.

AS CAMPAIGN DRAGS ON, AIDES PUT LIVES ON HOLD
(Julie Bosman, New York Times) 
There is the abandoned $1,000-a-month temporary apartment in Des Moines, littered with dirty T-shirts and a deflated air mattress. The campaign aide whose 105-degree fever sent her to the hospital. The neglected fiancée in New York who handed down an ultimatum: Take a weekend off — or else. The campaign of 2008 has sustained more than a few casualties.