John McCain, the titular head of the Republican Party, is having trouble getting North Carolina Republicans to toe the line. McCain told NBC's "Today" show that an ad featuring Jeremiah Wright's incendiary comments "is unacceptable."

North Carolina GOP Chair Linda Daves remains defiant. Daves says the ad will air:

Contrary to any media reports, the 'Extreme' ad will run as scheduled next week. There has never been any intention to pull the ad and it will air.

The 'Extreme' ad has garnered attention around the country. I want to thank the people across North Carolina and across the country who have shown overwhelming support for us. Our aim is to tell the truth and ask difficult questions. We will continue to do so. ...

Democrats in North Carolina are trying to inject race into this ad. This tactic, designed to further drive a wedge between the people of North Carolina, is despicable and wrong. This ad has absolutely nothing to do with race. It is completely factual and contains no information that has already received a public airing. Let me be perfectly clear: It is entirely inappropriate for voters to consider race when judging the quality of a candidate running for any office. If Senator Clinton had a pastor who made these same anti-American statements and the Democrat candidates for Governor endorsed her, we would be running the same ad.

The state party's plans may be moot since some TV stations refuse to run the ad.

Democratic congressional leaders reportedly want uncommitted superdelegates to make up their minds by July 1.

The New York Post reports:

Democratic Party bigwigs are preparing to push superdelegates to get off the fence once state primary elections end in June, officials said yesterday.

The leaders, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean, might pen a joint letter to the party insiders.

The letter would send a clear message to about 300 insiders who have stayed on the sidelines while Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have mounted increasingly harsh attacks on each other.

NBC's Tim Russert observed:

The Democrats are very, very nervous. They realize this back and forth between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is taking its toll. John McCain is either tied or beating them in national polls, even though when you ask the generic question, "Who do you prefer this fall, the Democrat or the Republican?" the Democrat wins easily. But when you match them head to head, it's a tie race.

So, Howard Dean is now going to ask people, after the primaries are over, to make a decision – step forward and say, "This is who I, as an undecided superdelegate, have decided to support," hopeful that he can then get a presumptive nominee by early June, start healing the party in July and August, and start Labor Day with a united front.

It's going to be a very difficult challenge.

Ya think?

The American people have had enough of the election drama between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. A Pew Research Center poll found:

Interest in what the public perceives as an excessively negative presidential campaign declined in the days leading up to the Pennsylvania primary. Just 29% of Americans say they paid very close attention to news about the presidential campaign last week, the lowest percentage recorded since December 2007. By comparison, 43% said they were following campaign news very closely during the weekend leading up to the March primaries in Texas and Ohio. Interest in the campaign has fallen among Republicans, Democrats and independents. In late February, more than half of Democrats were following campaign news very closely; that number has fallen to 38%.

Thirty-five percent think the campaign is dull, up from 25 percent in February. Fewer Americans say the campaign is "interesting," 56 percent now compared to 70 percent in February. It comes as no surprise that Democrats find the drama more interesting than do Republicans or independents.

The survey found that more people have heard about Obama's controversies, including Jeremiah Wright and Bittergate, than Clinton's phantom sniper fire or Geraldine Ferraro's racially charged comments.

The Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr. is starring in numerous YouTube videos. He's also featured in an attack ad that the North Carolina Republican Party is threatening to air in the run-up to the May 6 primary election.

On Friday, Wright will take a star turn in his first interview since he burst on the nation's TV screens and computer monitors. The show has released excerpts from his interview with Bill Moyers:

REVEREND WRIGHT:
The persons who have heard the entire sermon understand the communication perfectly.

When something is taken like a sound bite for a political purpose and put constantly over and over again, looped in the face of the public. That's not a failure to communicate. Those who are doing that are communicating exactly what they want to do, which is to paint me as some sort of fanatic or as the learned journalist from the New York Times called me, a "wackadoodle."

It's to paint me as something: "Something's wrong with me. There's nothing wrong with this country...for its policies. We're perfect. Our hands are free. Our hands have no blood on them." That's not a failure to communicate. The message that is being communicated by the sound bites is exactly what those pushing those sound bites want to communicate.

The ubiquitous Lanny Davis, a Hillary Clinton supporter, has put together a top ten list of "undisputed facts" showing Barack Obama's weakness against John McCain:

1. Hillary Clinton won by 10%, 220,000 votes, despite after most of the polls in the last several weeks on RealClearPolitics, including its RCP all-poll average, showed her ahead by single digits and dropping. The exit polls showed her winning by +5. (It's easy to forget that she won if you listen to the Obama spinners last night and today. Believe it or not, Pennsylvania's Rep. Murphy, a freshman congressman who supported Barack Obama, actually said last night on Larry King that Senator Obama did so well in losing to Senator Clinton yesterday that he has a "wind at his back." I am not kidding.

2. Senator Obama tried hard to win the state, campaigned intensely throughout the state for most of the last six weeks -- and was trying to win, not just lose a narrow margin.

3. He spent $11 million on media -- about three times more than Senator Clinton.

4. Most of his ads were personal negative attack ads against Senator Clinton, meaning attacks on her character and integrity.

5. There were no personal attack ads run by Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania.

The other five reasons are available here.

Hillary Clinton is banking on her impressive victory in the Pennsylvania primary to convince superdelegates that she's more electable in November. In a memo to "Interested Parties," the Clinton campaign says:

The voters in Pennsylvania have spoken. America is listening. And the tide is turning.

By providing fresh evidence that Hillary is the candidate best positioned to beat John McCain in the fall, the Pennsylvania primary is a turning point in the nominating contest.

Despite making an unprecedented financial investment in his Pennsylvania campaign, including millions on negative ads in the closing days of the race, Sen. Obama again failed to win a state that will be vital to a Democratic victory in November and spurred new questions about his ability to beat John McCain. No candidate has ever had more resources or enjoyed the kind of momentum that Sen. Obama had in Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania victory also means money in the bank. The Clinton campaign is on track to rake in $10 million in less than 24 hours. The New York Times reports:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is in the midst of a record-breaking fund-raising day on the Internet, collecting $8.3 million as of just before 6 p.m. today since the race was called for her in Pennsylvania on Tuesday night, her campaign said.

The money has come from roughly 85,000 donors, about 70,000 of whom are new to the campaign, said Peter Daou, the Clinton campaign's Internet director. Donations have averaged a bit over $100, he said.

Nothing succeeds like success.

In the 2000 presidential election, voters in Palm Beach County, Fla., were flummoxed by the butterfly ballot. The confusing ballot design caused thousands of voters, including some Holocaust survivors, to vote for Pat Buchanan when they intended to vote for Al Gore.

Eight years later, it's happening in Palmer Township, Penn., where the absentee ballot design places the name of the candidate below the matching bubble or between two bubbles. One confused voter said:

I'm not a stupid person, and I was very distressed, because here we are; Pennsylvanians -- us, Pennsylvanians! -- could determine the next president of the United States, and this was not a reassuring experience for me.

Poll workers were clueless that voters were being disenfranchised by design:

We didn't even notice that.

Across the state in Philadelphia, election officials and poll workers were unprepared for the high turnout. In the birthplace of our democracy, there were voting irregularities, including malfunctioning voting machines and incomplete voter registration rolls. The names of many of the voters who switched their party registration to Democrat were not on the rolls so they were given a provisional ballot, which may or may not be counted.

Voting is underway in the crucial Pennsylvania primary, but the Obama camp is already spinning the election outcome. In a memo to "Interested Parties," the Obama campaign writes:

There has been much speculation about what each campaign needs coming out of tonight. The facts, however, are simple.

Behind in delegates and sporting a 14-30 primary record (not good enough even to make the playoffs in the NBA Eastern Conference), the Clinton campaign needs a blowout victory in Pennsylvania to get any closer to winning the nomination. Even President Clinton said that only a "big, big victory" will give her the boost she needs.

The Philadelphia Inquirer observed that there is "consensus" that Clinton has to "take the state big, perhaps by double digits, to be able to claim that she'd won it a way that matters in the overall nomination struggle-given her deficits in both the delegate race and the overall popular vote." [Philadelphia Inquirer, 4/3/08]

Needless to say, Hillary Clinton has a different spin. Clinton told CNN's Larry King:

A win is a win. We're going to go all the way through this process and see where we stand in June.

Michael Moore wants you. While Hillary Clinton fights to have the Michigan delegation seated at the Democratic convention, the pugilistic filmmaker wants to have his voice heard in Pennsylvania:

I don't get to vote for President this primary season. I live in Michigan. The party leaders (both here and in D.C.) couldn't get their act together, and thus our votes will not be counted.

So, if you live in Pennsylvania, can you do me a favor? Will you please cast my vote -- and yours -- on Tuesday for Senator Barack Obama?

I haven't spoken publicly 'til now as to who I would vote for, primarily for two reasons: 1) Who cares?; and 2) I (and most people I know) don't give a rat's ass whose name is on the ballot in November, as long as there's a picture of JFK and FDR riding a donkey at the top of the ballot, and the word "Democratic" next to the candidate's name. ...

I guess the debate last week was the final straw. I've watched Senator Clinton and her husband play this game of appealing to the worst side of white people, but last Wednesday, when she hurled the name "Farrakhan" out of nowhere, well that's when the silly season came to an early end for me. She said the "F" word to scare white people, pure and simple. Of course, Obama has no connection to Farrakhan. But, according to Senator Clinton, Obama's pastor does -- AND the "church bulletin" once included a Los Angeles Times op-ed from some guy with Hamas! No, not the church bulletin!

Can Moore get an amen?

The old-media "Prince of Darkness," Bob Novak, asks: "What's the matter with Obama?" Novak thinks Obama's recent missteps, including his bitter remarks about small town Americans and poor debate performance, will limit his appeal to Republican and independent voters:

These apostate Republicans never were deluded into considering him anything other than a doctrinaire liberal who wants a more intrusive government with higher taxation and tougher regulation. But they have leaned toward him as an exceptional candidate in the mold of John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan, a post-partisan leader and a welcome contrast to George W. Bush's failed presidency. That impression is threatened by Obama's performance the last 10 days, climaxed by Wednesday night's debate with Hillary Clinton.

Obama's new resemblance is less to Kennedy or Reagan than to leftist author Thomas Frank, whose 2004 book, "What's the Matter With Kansas?" answered the liberal conundrum: Why do ordinary Americans vote against their own economic interests to support Republicans? Frank explained that "deranged" and "lunatic" Kansans were led away by Republicans from material concerns to social issues. Obama similarly described small town Americans turning to guns and the Bible in frustration over government's failure to take care of them -- a more genteel version of Frank. That raises the question, "What's the matter with Obama?"