Courtesy of the North Carolina Republican Party, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s diatribes are back at center stage in an ad that (coincidentally?) is running in the run-up to the North Carolina primary on May 6.

Barack Obama’s supporters are, not surprisingly, crying foul. John McCain has denounced it, washing his hands of any responsibility for it. But it’s safe to say this won’t be the last time Obama and Wright are lashed together.

Take a look.

A couple of images have been floating around the web that give striking portraits of how the battle between Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama has been playing out across the nation.
First, there’s a geographic rendering:

Next, what’s called an “decision tree” that shows how counties nationwide have been breaking for the candidates:

Not breaking news exactly, but worth chewing over.

A fairly new website is intriguing for anyone following the byzantine nominating process the Democrats are living through. It’s mrsuper.org, self-described as, “an undeclared superdelegate debunks myths, offers insight and answers questions about the 2008 Democratic nomination process for President of the United States.”

Reputable journalists have vetted the guy (without, at his request, outing his identity), and the posts seem both credible and carry some insight. It’s worth checking out here.

As Pennsylvanians finally go to the polls, the name of the game today for the Clinton and Obama campaigns is managing expectations and cranking up the spin machine. Both sides have become adept at it, but for this primary, neither side is bothering to even wait for the polls to close.

Over the lunch hour, an e-mail went out from headquarters in Chicago, predicting a big win for Hillary Rodham Clinton — along with an elaborate explanation of why it won’t matter.

Some excerpts:

With all eyes on today’s contest, one thing is clear: Pennsylvania is considered a state tailor-made for Hillary Clinton, and by rights she should win big. She has family roots in the state, she has the support of the Democratic establishment-including Governor Rendell’s extensive
network-and former President Clinton is fondly remembered.

Clinton has been leading by large margins in Pennsylvania. In the weeks leading up to the primary, she led by as much as 25 points. They were so confident that their own Pennsylvania spokesman said Clinton would be “unbeatable” in Pennsylvania-regardless of spending by her opponent.

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.

Tonight’s outcome is unlikely to change the dynamic of this lengthy primary. Fully three quarters of the remaining delegates will be selected in states other than Pennsylvania. While there are 158 delegates at stake in today’s primary, there are 157 up for grabs in the
Indiana and North Carolina primaries two weeks from today. We expect that by tomorrow morning, the overall structure of the race will remain unchanged-except for the fact that there will be 158 delegates off the table.

Two hours later came Clinton campaign’s rebuttal to Obama’s prebuttal. More excerpts:

The Obama campaign is attempting to pre-spin the results from tonight’s Pennsylvania primary by suggesting that Sen. Clinton should - and will - win.

But after the Obama campaign’s “go-for-broke” Pennsylvania strategy, after their avalanche of negative ads, negative mailers and negative attacks against Sen. Clinton, after their record-breaking spending in the state, a fundamental question must be asked: Why shouldn’t Sen. Obama win?

Sen. Obama’s supporters - and many pundits - have argued that the delegate “math” makes him the prohibitive frontrunner. They have argued that Sen. Clinton’s chances are slim to none. So if he’s already the frontrunner, if he’s had six weeks of unlimited resources to get his message out, shouldn’t he be the one expected to win tonight? If not, why not?

As the phrase goes, watch what they do not what they say.

There’s a reason Sen. Obama and his campaign have ratcheted up their year-long assault on Sen. Clinton’s character and ended the Pennsylvania campaign with a flurry of harsh negative attacks. It’s because they know that a loss in Pennsylvania will raise troubling questions about his candidacy and his ability to take on John McCain in the general election. And it’s because they know that the race is neck and neck and tonight’s contest is a measure of where the campaign stands.

With Hillary Rodham Clinton’s campaign continuing to batter Barack Obama over what’s being called “bittergate,” his campaign fired back today with an account of her less-than-charitable assessment of working-class voters. They did so by picking up a Huffington Post piece that recounts a long-ago Camp David meeting where the Clintons were trying to come to terms with the loss of the U.S. House to the GOP.

That darned phone in the White House keeps ringing off the hook.

Hillary Rodham Clinton released a new ad Wednesday that reprises her middle-of-the-night-phone-call-threatening-Armageddon, casting the crisis in economic terms. Unlike the original, which took pains to paint a bullseye on Barack Obama for his lack of experience, this one takes aim at John McCain as someone who do nothing to help struggling American families.

Fair enough. But McCain’s folks were quick enough on their feet to one-up Clinton within a few hours, cribbing her own video with an Internet ad (cheap, but guaranteed free media coverage) that blasted both her and Obama as typical Democrats who only want to raise taxes to fight crises.

Nothing — not yet, at least — from Obama on 3 a.m. phone calls.

After subsiding a bit early this week, the drumbeat continued, in drips and drabs, that the end may well be within sight of Hillary Rodham Clinton’s once-supposedly-unstoppable presidential bid.

The pundits continue to pile on, parsing the significance of such disparate news items as Vermont Sen. (and Barack Obama backer) Pat Leahy saying Friday she should get out of the race to Sen. Chris Dodd’s (also with Obama) saying much the same just the day before.

Then came new poll data showing that Obama has regained his national lead over Clinton and that her negative ratings had returned to as high as they were seven years ago.

On and on it went, with Slate Magazine topping the exercise with “The Hillary Deathwatch,” a feature that will be regulary updated with the current odds of her winning the Democratic nomination. As of Friday, the odds stood at 12 percent.

Amid all this (and much more piling on), Clinton’s campaign sent out a letter Friday to fundraisers that read, in part: “Have you noticed a pattern?

“Every time our campaign demonstrates its strength and resilience, people start to suggest we should end our pursuit of the Democratic nomination.

“Those anxious to force us to the sidelines aren’t doing it because they think we’re going to lose the upcoming primaries. The fact is, they’re reading the same polls we are, and they know we are in a position to win … we aren’t going to simply step aside. You and I are going to keep fighting for what we believe in, and together, we’re going to win.”

Just in time for the campaign trail lull that will accompany Easter weekend, a new meme began catching hold today among some Hillary Clinton watchers. Short version: The end may be nigh.

It actually started Thursday, when the New York Times frontpaged an analysis blandly headlined, “Clinton Facing Narrower Path to Nomination.” Detailing the breaks she absolutely, positively needs to wrest the nomination away from Barack Obama, the story’s bottom line:
“[A]ll this has seemed something of a long shot since her defeats in February. But that shot seems to have grown a little longer.”

Slate Magazine quickly picked up on the new CW: “The question is, who is going to tell Hillary it’s over? Certainly not Bill. Certainly not her aides.”

The notion kept gaining traction. Time magazine’s Mark Halperin listed 14 “painful things Hillary Clinton knows — or should know.” Among them: “She can’t win the nomination without a bloody convention battle — after which, even if she won, history and many Democrats would cast her as a villain.”

Finally, Politico.com went kinda meta on the question, putting it in the context of the sausage machine that covering a campaign often becomes, explaining why Clinton “has virtually no chance of winning” — and why that bpottom line hasn’t taken hold more widely in the media.

Bottom line:
“Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.

“People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.

“As it happens, many people inside Clinton’s campaign live right here on Earth. One important Clinton adviser estimated to Politico privately that she has no more than a 10 percent chance of winning her race against Barack Obama, an appraisal that was echoed by other operatives.”

Sure, this CW may evaporate over the weekend, gather steam or be replaced by a 180-degree switcheroo, in which the pundits proclaim yet another Clinton comeback. But for now, it’s out there.

Under a withering barrage of rhetorical fire over the comments of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama delivered what his strategists called a “major” speech on race and its role in the campaign.

The talking heads and bloggers are already praising it for its nuance or ripping it to shreds for such soundbites as his reference to Wright as “like family to me.”

All of the bloviating aside, here’s the transcript of “A More Perfect Union.”

Here’s the video.

Update: The Obama campaign released this statement by the candidate this afternoon.

This isn’t the first time the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s pastor, has created a controversy for the Illinois senator’s presidential bid, but this one has turned into a veritable firestorm that shows no immediate sign of abating. In a videotaped 2003 sermon, Wright told his congregation, “They want us to sing God Bless America — no, no, no. Not God Bless America. God damn America.”

First reported Thursday on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” here’s the abbreviated version of what’s fanning the flames on talk radio and in the blogosphere.

For more context, here’s the original ABC report, assembled after the network’s reporters reviewed Wright’s sermons and found this particular stunner.

Obama has repeatedly distanced himself from Wright’s most incendiary comments, likening him to “an old uncle who says things I don’t always agree with.” And Thursday, confronted with his pastor’s newly-reported comments, Obama told a reporter, “I profoundly disagree with some of these statements.

His church, Trinity United Church of Christ on the south side of Chicago, first became a focal point of controversy months ago, when reporters pointed out that its mission statement asserted that it’s a congregation that considers itself “Unashamedly Black and Unapologetically Christian.” Here’s the church’s website.

Not surprisingly, conservatives lit into Obama, with Rush Limbaugh taking the lead, calling Wright “a racist, hatemonger pastor.”

The guys at PowerLine weighed in, as well.

But some folks on the left were somewhat aghast, wondering if this could mortally wound Obama’s campaign. An anonymous poster at TalkingPointsMemo summed up the queasiness among many liberals.

Even The Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan, as big an Obama devotee as can be found on the Web, was troubled by the statements and the fallout, even as he tried to spin it in the most positive way.

This will either flare out relatively quickly as the pace of campaigning heats back up after the lull of the past few days, or it will gain traction and have a lasting effect on Obama. Stay tuned.