by Matthew Hay Brown

John McCain has taken advantage of the never-ending Democratic primary race to raise money and organize for the general election. But once Democrats unite behind a nominee, Sen. Mel Martinez says, "this is going to be a battle."

"I don't have any doubt that as soon as a nominee is named by the Democrats that that nominee is going to take a tremendous boost in the polls just because that's what happens," Martinez, the former general chairman of the Republican National Committee, tells America's Business with Mike Hambrick this week. "And then that's going to make it a very competitive race right into the fall."

The Florida Republican says "it's got to help that we have had some time for the McCain campaign to get its feet on the ground. He's raising money. Getting organization behind him. But it also remains a clear fact that the Democrats are going to unite and this is going to be a battle."

Republican former House Speaker Newt Gingrich warned this week of more Republican losses in November if the party doesn't follow his advice on charting "a bold new course of real change." Current Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that she was confident of further Democratic gains.

Martinez says he likes the GOP's chances.

"With McCain at the top of the ticket I think it ... paints a very hopeful picture for what might happen in the down ballot races," he says. "I think in the Senate that we have a really good chance to hold our own or maybe keep any losses to one or two seats which I think would be really, really good in this environment. And I think in the House side we could make some gains actually. I don't think that we could count on taking control of either house this cycle but I think we have a really good shot to win the White House, make gains in the House, and hold our own in the Senate."

by Jim Tankersley

PORTLAND, Ore. - A subdued but resolute Sen. Hillary Clinton returned to her signature issue and a long-debated contrast with Democratic rival Barack Obama in a brief Oregon campaign stop today.

Clinton used a trip to Doernbecher Children's Hospital, in the hills on the west bank of the Willamette River, to re-stake her campaign as a crusade for health care for all Americans - and to reframe the Democratic race as a choice between a candidate who will achieve universal coverage and one who won't even try.

"If you don't start in favor of universal health care, you're never going to get there," Clinton said at the outdoor hospital courtyard event. "How can anybody run to be the Democratic nominee for president and not have a universal health care plan? This is a huge difference."

The New York senator called universal coverage a moral and economic imperative for both children and adults, emphasizing a distinction between her plan and Obama's that she has highlighted for months with mixed results.

Clinton's plan would require all Americans to have health insurance. Obama's plan would mandate coverage for all children but not for all adults. The campaigns have clashed over how many people Obama would leave uninsured, and whether Clinton's mandate would truly result in universal coverage.

by Matthew Hay Brown

Maryland's highest court has rejected a Pakastani man's attempt to invoke talaq, the Islamic divorce that enables a man to dissolve his marriage by telling his wife "I divorce thee" three times.

Farah Aleem already had filed for divorce in Montgomery County Circuit Court in 2003 when her husband went to the Pakstiani Embassy in Washington to invoke the talaq.

By doing so, World Bank economist Irfan Aleem argued, he ended the marriage and did not owe his wife a share of his assets, valued at $2 million.

The state Court of Appeals disagreed.

"If we were to affirm the use of talaq, controlled as it is by the husband, a wife, a resident of this state, would never be able to consummate a divorce action filed by her in which she seeks a division of marital property," the judges ruled.

The talaq, they wrote, "directly deprives the wife of the due process she is entitled to when she initiates divorce litigation."

Nick Madigan of The Baltimore Sun has the rest of the story, after the jump.

People made homeless by cyclone Nargis shelter from the rain in Bogalay township area (Photo: EPA/STR.)

by Frank James

The military junta that leads Myanmar, also known as Burma, relented today and agreed to allow one U.S. cargo plane laden with relief supplies to land in the nation more than a week after a cyclone killed perhaps more than 100,000 people and made more than 1.5 million homeless.

White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe, speaking from Crawford, Texas where President Bush is preparing for his daughter Jenna's weekend wedding, admitted that one plane load wasn't much considering the staggering need in Myanmar. But at least it was something.

While the Myanmar government is allowing in supplies, it's still refusing to let U.S. relief workers into the nation.

Here's Johndroe's exchange with reporters:

Q Gordon, on Burma,/Myanmar, that first flight that gets in, that's scheduled to get in on Monday, can you say a little bit what that's going to be carrying, whether it's going to be -- what kind of materials are being sent?

(Photo: Matt Rourke/AFP/Getty Images)

by Matthew Hay Brown, and updated with Boehner comment

It is a measure of how concerned Republicans are about the recent House special election losses in Illinois and Louisiana that Vice President Dick Cheney will be traveling to Mississippi next week to participate in the get-out-the-vote effort for Greg Davis.

Davis, the Republican mayor of Southaven, Miss., is facing a tough fight with Democratic Prentiss County Chancery Clerk Travis Childers in the May 13 runoff vote in the special election to succeed former Rep. Roger Wicker in the state's First Congressional District.

"This seat is a very important one," Cheney told Mississippi radio host Paul Gallow during an on-air interview this morning. "It's been in conservative hands for a long time, and we'd hate to see the liberals gain control."

House Minority Leader John Boehner, meanwhile, took the unusual step of pledging to help secure Davis a seat on the House Veterans' Affairs Committee if he wins.

The cast of NBC Television's "The West Wing" with former Vice President Al Gore. Clockwise from Gore are Bradley Whitford, John Spencer, Richard Schiff, Allison Janney, Martin Sheen. (Photo: NBC handout.)

by Maeve Reston

JERSEY CITY, N.J. -- It turns out that hobnobbing with liberal blogger Arianna Huffington and the cast of NBC's "The West Wing" on the left coast can be a risky proposition for a Republican with White House ambitions.

In Jersey City Friday morning, John McCain emphatically denied a report by Huffington on her blog that he confessed, during a Beverly Hills dinner party in 2001, that he had not voted for George W. Bush after his bitter defeat in 2000. But "West Wing" cast members -- who said in published reports they supported a Democratic ticket -- back up Huffington's story.

"It's nonsense," McCain said this morning when a reporter asked about the matter in the Liberty Science Center. "I voted, campaigned for, worked as hard as I could for President Bush's election in 2000 and 2004. I voted for President Bush. I said so at the time." And McCain is proud of what he saw as his help in getting Bush elected. "I know we're already in a silly season--but my record stands very clearly of campaigning all over this nation on behalf of the candidacy of President Bush," he said. "I think that some people believe that contributed to the fact that he won that election, and also in the 2004 election."

On Monday, Huffington posted an entry on her website asserting that McCain confessed during the 2001 party that he had not voted for the President. On the Huffington Post website, she explained her long silence by saying ...

... she "felt it was time to for me to tell what I knew," because the press was giving McCain "a pass."

(Photo by Joe Raedle/Getty Images)

by Frank James

Richard Prince, who writes the always readable "Journal-isms" column for the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education website, must've been reading my mind.

He has a column today on something I noticed too, the mainstream media's relatively tame treatment of Sen. Hillary Clinton's comment to USA Today that she has stronger appeal than Sen. Barack Obama to "hard-working Americans, white Americans."

As Prince writes:

To many, it was a shocking statement -- equating "hard-working Americans" with "white Americans" and a naked attempt to cast herself as "the white candidate" in the race.

Even USA Today, to whom Clinton uttered the comment as a response to a general question about her campaign, broke the story under a bland Web site headline, "Clinton makes case for wide appeal."

It did seem like a better headline would have been "Clinton makes case for white appeal."

I agree; it was surprising that more wasn't made of this comment by the MSM. As soon as I read it, I was struck by how she seemed to be linking whites with hard work. Although she probably didn't mean to imply that non-whites aren't hard-working, that's the implication and it's not going to make any more friends for her among non-whites.

by Jim Tankersley

PORTLAND, Ore. - At first glance, Doernbecher Children's Hospital appears a perfect setting for Hillary Clinton's push today to emphasize her commitment to health care as the reason she's hanging in the presidential race. It's a world-class facility filled with the sort of patients - kids - who make for great campaign backdrops.

Two problems with that.

The first is the Clinton campaign picked an outdoor courtyard for its event. This isn't balmy North Carolina here: It's cloudy and 48 degrees in Portland right now. The outdoor heaters at the edges of the courtyard don't seem to be helping much.

The second problem: Clinton is late.

As a result, the assembled photographers and cameramen here are busying themselves filming young, shivering hospital patients in the front row. Some of the children have Type-1 diabetes. Some are waiting on medical procedures later today. Most are wrapped in thin blankets as they wait for the senator.

Clinton's campaign just released a preview of her remarks. "I'm in this race is because I believe in universal health care,"she says. "I've been fighting to cover everyone - no exceptions, no excuses - as long as you've known me."

Perhaps she could start by covering the kids here in some thicker quilts.

by Christi Parsons

Rahm Emanuel of Illinois considers Barack Obama the Democrats' "presumptive nominee," even though he thinks Hillary Clinton still has a chance to win the nomination.

"He is the frontrunner, which makes him the presumptive nominee given how late we are in the schedule," Emanuel said in an interview.

A bold step for the former advisor to Bill Clinton, who has studiously avoided picking sides between the former first lady and his friend from the Illinois delegation?

Not at all, Emanuel said. He said he's not counting Clinton out in the protracted primary fight, an assertion he made at the New Yorker magazine conference this morning.

The fact that the House Democratic caucus chair dropped the magic "presumptive" word caused a bigger stir, of course.

"Stating the obvious to the news media," he told the Tribune afterward, "is news these days."

by James Oliphant

If any of the Washington bigfoots who attended the Friday morning's breakfast with the Clinton campaign's braintrust were expecting to hear some conciliatory language toward Barack Obama and the presidential race, they left disappointed.

Chief strategist Geoff Garin and communications director Howard Wolfson defiantly made the case that Hillary Clinton can win still the nomination by being the candidate with the best chance to win in November.

"Senator Clinton is in a better position to win the general election," Garin told a group of Washington journalists at a breakfast sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor.

They dismissed any notion that the race was coming to the end of the line, despite the fact that only six contests remain on the Democratic primary slate. In their view, the primaries are just one step in the process. After they are completed, the superdelegates have their say and the dispute over the estranged delegates from Florida and Michigan must be settled.

They said Clinton would stay in past June 3 if Obama has not secured 2,209 delegates. (That's the figure the campaign uses because it counts the Florida and Michigan delegates.)

by Frank James

If you want to show that you have a subtle understanding of the world economy, when asked why gas prices are high you might want to offer an answer that mentions world oil demand, the declining dollar etc.

But those weren't among the reasons Sen. John McCain, the all-but-official Republican presidential lnominee, offered during his interview with Bill O'Reilly on Fox News Channel last night. It's the fault of the oil "cartel," meaning the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, he said.

"I think it's because of one fundamental problem. It's because you have a cartel that controls virtually all of the world's oil supply. And they, obviously, can set the price of oil to the highest level that can sustain it," McCain told O'Reilly.

Many problems with that answer. One, OPEC is responsible for about 40 percent of the world's oil exports, not "virtually all" the world's supply, as McCain said.

Also, as indicated earlier, economists place much of the blame for high oil prices on factors other than OPEC. There's demand in rapidly developing countries like China and India, for instance.

by Frank James

In his interview with Bill O'Reilly on FoxNews Channel last night, Sen. John McCain, right out the box, let loose the two charges he plans to hit Sen. Barack Obama hard with, 'inexperience' and 'judgment.'

It really wasn't anything different than what McCain, the all-but-official Republican presidential nominee, has said before about Obama.

It's significance is mainly in the fact that there's no message shift; it appears fixed. Polling has shown that Obama's relative inexperience in national politics is what most troubles many voters, particularly independents.

"What's his main weakness?" O'Reilly asked.

"Inexperience. I think inexperience and a lack of judgment and a record that shows that," McCain said.

His evidence? Obama's statement that he would sit down to talk with U.S. adversaries, including Mahmoud Ahmadenijad, Iran's president, and Obama's tax proposals, which, McCain charged, would raise taxes on 100 million Americans who pay capital-gains taxes.

A few minutes later, when he repeated what he thought Obama's main weaknesses to be, McCain through in "and vision" almost as an afterthought. He didn't have a chance to elaborate.

This last one may be the toughest for McCain to make stick. The "vision thing" is actually one of Obama's greatest strengths. He envisions a nation where his leadership, coupled grassroots pressure, gets Washington beyond the partisan logjam in order to address the country's numerous domestic and foreign problems. It may be idealistic. But it's certainly is a vision.

by Mike Dorning
updated

At least five more superdelegates have publicly committed to Barack Obama, including one who previously had supported Hillary Clinton.

California Democratic National Committee member and superdelegate Ed Espinoza endorsed Obama in a statement released this afternoon by the Obama campaign.

Another California DNC member, Vernon Watkins told the Associated Press that he now also was committed to support Obama at the party convention.

"The election is over, everybody knows that. Obama has won," Watkins told the AP

Local newspapers report two congressmen now pledge support to Obama, including one who had backed Hillary. A spokesman also said that American Federation of Government Employees union president John Gage, also a superdelegate, pledged to support Obama today after his union endorsed the Illinois senator.

Rep. Peter DeFazio, who represents Oregon, where Obama is campaigning today, told The Oregonian of Portland that he would support Obama at the party convention.

DeFazio told the Oregonian that Obama "represents our best chance of winning in November."

Rep. Donald Payne, an African-American Democrat from New Jersey who previously backed Clinton, now pledges his support to Obama, according to The Newark Star-Ledger

"After careful consideration, I have reached the conclusion that Barack Obama can best bring about the change that our country so desperately wants and needs," Payne told The Star-Ledger. It was "one of the most difficult decisions I have made," Payne said. "I've really been mulling it over for quite a while."

Payne said he chose to switch his allegiance now so that the party could concentrate on the campaign against presumptive Republican nominee John McCain.

"At this particular time we need to really unite behind one candidate," Payne told The Star-Ledger.. "It's time now for us to pull our party together. The quicker it's over, the better we'll be able to bring all of our forces together."

Payne said he endorsed Clinton "early on," during a period when he did not know whether Obama's candidacy "was just a trial balloon." As Obama began winning caucuses and primaries "I did certainly have a great deal of pride in the fact that an African-American would do so well," Payne added.

by Jill Zuckman

WASHINGTON--As House Democratic leaders wrestle with rescuing the shaky housing market and passing a massive farm bill this week, they are also taking on another challenge: targeting Sen. John McCain.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Democratic Caucus Chairman Rahm Emanuel have decided to fill a void left by the seemingly endless campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination.

"Given that we don't have a nominee at this point, I think it's worth reminding people that Bush-McCain is one word the same way Gingrich-Dole was one word in '96," said Emanuel (D-Ill.), who has called reporters who cover McCain's campaign several times a week.

Pelosi (D-Calif.) has issued a number of statements in response to McCain speeches on the economy and his plan for a summer moratorium on the federal gas tax.

For example, she recently accused McCain of planning to continue "the failed policies of President Bush that are responsible for the severe economic crisis facing our country." And she said McCain still supports "a multitrillion-dollar war" that has taken the country deeply into debt and recession.

By Matthew Hay Brown

Actor Alec Baldwin, who plays an archconservative television executive on 30 Rock but has supported liberal causes in real life, is again talking about a run for public office, he tells 60 Minutes on Sunday.

"There's other things I want to do [besides acting]," Baldwin tells interviewer Morley Safer in an excerpt released by CBS. "I mean, in a matter of weeks, I'm going to be 50.

"There's no age limit on running for office, to a degree. Something I might do one day."

In 2006, the Long Island native told The New York Times Magazine that he would like to be governor of New York. Asked if he was qualified to run for the office, he compared himself to another actor-turned-politician.

"That's what I hate about Schwarzenegger," he said. "His only credentials are that he ran a fitness program under some bygone president. ... I'm Tocqueville compared to Arnold Schwarzenegger."

One challenge that would confront a Baldwin candidacy is his nasty public divorce from actress Kim Bassinger, which included the leak last year of a voice message in which he called his 11-year-old daughter a "thoughtless little pig."

Given the recent weirdness out of Albany, that may not be disqualifying. In any event, Baldwin tells Safer he has learned from the experience.

"If you go through the things I have gone through with the media like this thing with my daughter, there's only one thing that comes to mind initially: that is how my daughter must have felt to have this played out in public," Baldwin tells Safer.

"The second thing I realize is: you can pretty much bet all you own that I would never leave another voicemail message for my daughter that wasn't just like something out of a Rogers and Hammerstein score."

by Don Frederick

Ever since he claimed his strong win Tuesday night in the North Carolina primary (and ceded the nail-biting race in Indiana to Hillary Clinton before most prognosticators), Barack Obama has clearly signaled that he's ready to move on with a general election campaign.

As part of that, his campaign has announced 14 co-chairs of "Vote for Change," its label for a nationwide voter registration drive.

All pretty predictable and routine ... until the list is perused.

Who knew, for instance, that Usher -- the R&B singer and record-label owner, identified in the Obama release by his full name, Usher Raymond IV (pictured at left) -- had any interest in the nitty-gritty of political organizing?

Same with band leader Dave Matthews.

And knockout actress Kerry Washington?

All three will be, according to the campaign, among those who "will oversee the program's efforts and act as surrogates to boost participation across the country."

The first quote about the effort, in fact, comes from singer Melissa Etheridge (right), who says, "Barack Obama started his career as a community organizer in Chicago, working with communities devastated by plant closings, and after law school he returned to those neighborhoods to register new voters. From the beginning of his career, he's made change happen by enfranchising people at the grassroots, and that's what Vote for Change is all about."

That may well be, but we can't wait to see her, Usher, Matthews and Washington toting regsitration sign-up sheets at shopping centers.

The other co-chairs are more traditional; they include Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri, Reps. John Barrow of Georgia, Melissa Bean of Illinois and Linda Sanchez of Long Beach (who created a buzz when, on the same day, she endorsed Obama while her sister, Rep. Loretta Sanchez of Santa Ana, announced for Clinton) and Maria Elena Durazo of the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor, AFL-CIO.

Don Frederick writes for Top of the Ticket, the L.A. Times political blog. Photo credits: Getty Images (Usher); Lifetime (Etheridge)