Candidate John McCain officially has no view of whether an extended Democratic primary battle is good or bad for his chances in November. At a press conference Tuesday in Ohio, he would not touch the hot potato. “I have stayed absolutely neutral,” he said. “I have never stated whether I wanted this election to stretch out or not. That’s …

The Clinton campaign reports its best fundraising day ever, bringing in $3 million by 7 a.m; $5 million by noon, and predicts $10 million by the time they quit counting tonight.

David Sirota applies his Race Chasm theory to the Pennsylvania primary in an interesting blog post this morning. The theory is really an observation, but a keen one: Obama tends to win states that have either a) virtually no African-American population, and therefore minimal white-black racial tension; or b) states with an …

The morning began with news that the North Carolina Republican Party was planning to run an ad that will reference “controversial figures from Obama’s past.” Ever since, both the McCain campaign and the Republican National Committee have been trying to distance themselves from the effort.

On a landing strip near Inez, Ky., RNC Chairman …

Polls are closed, and NYT is saying Obama is making a stronger than expected showing. It could be a long night, which means it sounds like a perfect opportunity to open a comment thread.

UPDATE: Clinton wins. Waiting to see how big.

UPDATE2: The Secretary of State’s latest tabulation.

Investigative reporter David Barstow took questions from readers about his remarkable story in Sunday’s NYT. Some highlights:

Q. Thanks for this one Mr Barstow. I guess if I have a question it’s: What took you so long?

— Daniel Abraham, Long Beach, Calif.

A. Thanks for the question, Mr. Abraham. This article would have come sooner,

…

This afternoon, Bill Burton, the Obama campaign’s spokesman, sent this statement out response to the new conservative independent expenditure campaign attacking Obama as weak on crime. The anti-Obama effort, which has not yet announced its budget, is being led by Floyd Brown, who created the Willie Horton ad in 1988.

Floyd Brown and the

…

I know it’s Earth Day. John McCain reminded me, the “Today Show” reminded me, heck, Crate & Barrel just sent me an e-ad reminding me that I can celebrate Earth Day by “refresh[ing] your drink with our exclusive 100% recycled hand blown glass.”

I didn’t realize, however, until Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton reminded me, that today is …

Foreign policy is not something that I have an especially sophisticated understanding of, but, well, I’m not sure how sophisticated this is, either:

“I want the Iranians to know that if I’m the president, we will attack Iran (if it attacks Israel),” Clinton said in an interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“In the next 10 years,

…

• “SDS was fueled by the “high-octane naïveté of self-important young people [who wanted to] sweep away the elites — military, business, political — and replace them with a new elite: students.” [Chronicle Review]

• “He would tell you, ‘I don’t think you should get on this one, this one is too close to where you live,

…

It’s worth taking a moment to note here that while tomorrow’s headlines will almost certainly be about the popular vote, the delegate math in Pennsylvania is (as it was in Texas) an entirely different proposition–and it could take a while to sort that one out. Areas with strong Democratic performance in the past get extra delegates, …