The Filter: March 21, 2008

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

BREAKING: BILL RICHARDSON ENDORSES OBAMA

MOTIVE SOUGHT FOR OBAMA PASSPORT BREACH
(Anne Gearan, Associated Press)
The State Department says it is trying to determine whether three contract workers had a political motive for looking at Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama's passport file. Two of the employees were fired for the security breach and the third was disciplined but is still working, the department said Thursday night. It would not release the names of those who were fired and disciplined or the names of the two companies for which they worked. The department's inspector general is investigating. The disclosure of inappropriate passport inquiries recalled an incident in 1992, when a Republican political appointee at the State Department was demoted over a search of presidential candidate Bill Clinton's passport records. At the time he was challenging President George H.W. Bush. The State Department's inspector general said the official had helped arrange the search in an attempt to find politically damaging information about Clinton, who had been rumored to have considered renouncing his citizenship to avoid the Vietnam War draft. 

CAN CLINTON WIN POPULAR VOTE, SUPERDELEGATES?
(Ben Smith, Politico)
The apparent collapse of planned new votes in Florida and Michigan could push victory on a key symbolic measure — the primary season popular vote — beyond Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s grasp... It’s impossible to project turnout in the 10 states and territories left to vote, but Clinton will have to close a deficit of more than 700,000 votes. That means, even with extremely high turnout estimates, she would have to win by huge, double-digit percentages in the states where she could have an edge — Pennsylvania and West Virginia — while holding Obama to tiny gains in states such as North Carolina and Oregon, where he is heavily favored.  Without those blowouts, many influential Democrats contend, she will find it hard to convince superdelegates of a legitimate victory. 

ANOTHER ANGRY BLACK PREACHER
(E.J. Dionne, Washington Post)
One black leader who was capable of getting very angry indeed is the one now being invoked against Wright. His name was Martin Luther King Jr. .... Wright was operating within a long tradition of African American outrage, which is one reason Obama could not walk away from his old pastor in the name of political survival... I loathe the anti-American things Wright said precisely because I believe that the genius of our country is its capacity for self-correction. Progressivism and, yes, hope itself depend on a belief that personal conversion and social change are possible, that flawed human beings are capable of transcending their pasts and their failings. Obama understands the anger of whites as well as the anger of blacks, but he's placed a bet on the other side of King's legacy that converted rage into the search for a beloved community. This does not prove that Obama deserves to be president. It does mean that he deserves to be judged on his own terms and not by the ravings of an angry preacher.

MORE: McCain Aide Circulates Obama/Wright Video, Is Suspended (Politico) 

SOUTHWEST PASSAGE
(Thomas Schaller, American Prospect)
McCain represents Arizona, the fastest-growing state in the nation's fastest-growing and increasingly pivotal electoral region, the Southwest. Couple his home region advantage with his prominent leadership role on the immigration issue and the man whom anti-amnesty conservatives openly deride as "Juan McCain" is, in theory at least, the Republicans' best chance to keep the Hispanic-heavy Southwest in the GOP's column this November. "It completely screws [the Democrats' Southwest ambitions] up," McCain adviser Charles Black recently told The Washington Post. "We nominated the one person who will not suffer that backlash." Can McCain thwart the Democrats from capturing the Southwest in 2008? Or will history remember him as the Republican who, home state aside, was responsible for finally letting the Southwest slip from red to blue?

CLINTON, OBAMA ARE WALL STREET DARLINGS
(Janet Hook, Los Angeles Times)
Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, who are running for president as economic populists, are benefiting handsomely from Wall Street donations, easily surpassing Republican John McCain in campaign contributions from the troubled financial services sector. It is part of a broader fundraising shift toward Democrats, compared to past campaigns when Republicans were the favorites of Wall Street. Some Democrats worry that the influx of money will make their candidates less willing to call for increased regulation of financial markets, which have been in turmoil after a wave of foreclosures on sub-prime mortgages... The candidates' receipts reflect a broader trend that demonstrates how money follows power in Washington. It suggests that the nation's money managers are betting heavily that either Clinton or Obama will capture the White House and that Democrats will retain control of Congress.

CLINTON'S EXPERIENCE IS DEBATED
(Peter Baker and Karen DeYoung, Washington Post)
While Clinton's advertisements have boasted that she is best prepared for a 3 a.m. crisis phone call, the schedules contain no evidence that Clinton was at the table during major national security decisions. They do not list her as attending National Security Council meetings or joining briefings in the Situation Room. She did not have a national security clearance. And the documents make clear that at moments of major crisis, Clinton was often busy with her own agenda. What remains uncertain is how she might have influenced events in less visible ways. The schedules do not record whom she called on the telephone, what spontaneous conversations she may have had in the West Wing during the day, or what positions she conveyed through her top aide at daily senior staff meetings. And they certainly do not disclose what she may have advised her husband in the privacy of their living quarters.

SMALL DONORS TAKE BIG ROLE IN ELECTION
(Mary Jacoby, Wall Street Journal)
The recent flood of Internet donations that has helped pump 2008 presidential campaign coffers to highs also is accomplishing what Watergate-era campaign-finance regulations set out to do: dilute the influence of special interests and wealthy donors. 

MORE: Presidential Candidates Pull in $790 Million (Los Angeles Times)

MCCAIN TURNS HIS ATTENTION TO RAISING CASH FOR RACE
(Leslie Wayne, New York Times)
Mr. McCain, whose ability to raise money has risen and fallen with his political fortunes, has embarked on a nearly daily schedule of fund-raising since March 4. But, in February, as he racked up one primary win after another, his attention focused more on gaining delegates than dollars. The $11 million he raised that month was less than the $11.7 million raised in January. At the same time, his campaign maintained the same amount of bank debt as before, slightly under $5 million. Mr. McCain’s financial fortunes may change in the months ahead, however. He has said that he plans to focus on fund-raising and has scheduled 20 to 30 events a month.

MICHIGAN ENDS REVOTE BID
(Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post)
With Florida Democrats already all but giving up on a new contest, the Michigan state Senate's decision to adjourn yesterday without acting on a new primary left in limbo a Clinton strategy that relied on a string of victories in the remaining contests, to be capped by victories in the Michigan and Florida revotes, to help her gain ground in both the pledged-delegate and popular-vote totals against Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.). Clinton aides express the hope that a late surge in both categories will help convince the party insiders known as superdelegates that she has the best chance to beat Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the presumptive Republican nominee, in November. Without the Michigan and Florida delegates, Clinton's odds grow longer.

MORE DEMOCRATS, FEWER REPUBLICANS IN PENNSYLVANIA
(Angela Couloumbis and Amy Warden, Philadelphia Inquirer)
State registration numbers show that since last November, the Democratic Party has gained a whopping 111,227 new voters. In that same time frame, the Republican Party lost 13,391 people from its ranks. Perhaps even more alarming for the state GOP: Since the beginning of the year, 57,651 residents who were already registered voters - either Republicans, independents, or in any other party - switched to become Democrats. In contrast, only 10,754 already-registered voters filed party-change applications to become Republicans. Whether it's disillusion with Bush, excitement over the primary race between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, or a deeper shift in sentiment among Pennsylvania voters, registration numbers for Democrats have surged over the last few months. State Democratic Party officials say that although they would love to take credit, they haven't been making a concerted effort to bolster the Democratic ranks. That territory, they said, has been ceded to Clinton's and Obama's campaigns, which have been going all out in an effort to sign up voters through highly targeted statewide registration drives.