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

HOW DID THE CLINTON CAMPAIGN GET HERE?
(Peter Nicholas, Los Angeles Times)
Already, some in Clinton's senior staff are pointing fingers over what went wrong, with some of the blame aimed at Clinton herself. As the race unfolded, neither Clinton nor anyone else resolved the internal power struggles that played out with destructive effect and continue to this day. Chief strategist and pollster Mark Penn clashed with senior advisor Harold Ickes, former deputy campaign manager Mike Henry and others. Field organizers battled with Clinton's headquarters in northern Virginia. Campaign themes were rolled out and discarded, reflecting tensions among a staff bitterly divided over what Clinton's basic message should be... Penn said in an e-mail over the weekend that he had "no direct authority in the campaign," describing himself as merely "an outside message advisor with no campaign staff reporting to me." "I have had no say or involvement in four key areas -- the financial budget and resource allocation, political or organizational sides. Those were the responsibility of Patti Solis Doyle, Harold Ickes and Mike Henry, and they met separately on all matters relating to those areas."

MCCAIN CAMPAIGN STUMBLES EARLY
(Jonathan Martin, Politico)
The rollout of John McCain’s general election campaign in the weeks since he became the de facto Republican nominee has not exactly been a textbook exercise in positive messaging. McCain was accused of having a romantic relationship with a lobbyist by the New York Times (he vehemently denied it). The DNC filed a complaint against McCain with the Federal Election Commission questioning whether he is violating the spending limits imposed on a campaign that takes public funds. Mike Huckabee continued to nip at McCain’s heels, postponing a full pivot to the November race. And, just last week, McCain had to spend part of two days denouncing ostensible allies and apologizing to Barack Obama for the use of his middle name.  Oh – and Obama and Hillary Clinton raised more than $130 million combined in the first two months of the year.

LATINO-BLACK RELATIONS MAY TILT TEXAS RESULTS
(Joel Millman, Wall Street Journal)
In contrast to some U.S. cities, where political rivalry festers between the races, blacks and Latinos here and across Texas are getting along -- and that may benefit Barack Obama in Tuesday's Democratic primary. A series of recent polls show that Sen. Obama, who once trailed Sen. Hillary Clinton by 20 points in Texas, now has a slight lead. Evidence is emerging that some of his strength is coming from the state's million-plus Hispanic voters, who had been expected to support Sen. Clinton.

OBAMA AND CHICAGO MORES
(John Fund, Wall Street Journal)
On Tuesday, Barack Obama may well wrap up the Democratic nomination. Yet how he rose so quickly in Chicago's famously suspect politics -- and who his associates were there -- has received little scrutiny. That may change today as the trial of Antoin "Tony" Rezko, Mr. Obama's friend of two decades and his campaign fund-raiser, gets under way in federal court in Chicago. Mr. Rezko, a master fixer in Illinois politics, is charged with money laundering, attempted extortion, fraud and aiding bribery in an alleged multimillion dollar scheme shaking down companies seeking state contracts. John McCain's dealings with lobbyists have properly come under a microscope; why not Mr. Obama's? Partly, says Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass, because the national media establishment has decided that Chicago's grubby politics interferes with the story line of hope they've set out for Mr. Obama.

DELEGATE MATH TOUGH FOR CLINTON
(Howard Wilkinson, Cincinnati Enquirer)
As much as Hillary Clinton wants to win Ohio on Tuesday, a two-percentage point win won’t do her much good. Under the complex mathematical formula the Ohio Democratic Party will use to divvy up the 141 delegates at stake in the Ohio primary, a candidate has to win big –really big – to win the lion’s share of the delegates. And not all areas of the state are created equal. Southwest Ohio’s congressional districts can provide candidates only four delegates each; the more Democratic-rich congressional districts in Northeast Ohio get more.In districts with four delegates each, a candidate could win 60 percent of the vote and split those delegates right down the middle with the candidate who had only 40 percent.

ON SIGNATURE ISSUES, MCCAIN HAS SHOWN SOME INCONSISTENCIES IN THE SENATE
(Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times)
Mr. McCain, who derided his onetime Republican competitor Mitt Romney for his political mutability, has himself meandered over the years from position to position on some topics, particularly as he has tried to court the conservatives who have long distrusted him. His most striking turnaround has been on the Bush tax cuts, which he voted against twice but now wants to make permanent. Mr. McCain has also expressed varying positions on immigration, torture, abortion and Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary. 

OBAMA BACKERS URGE CLINTON TO EXIT IF SHE LOSES
(Brian Knowlton, New York Times)
on Sunday to bow out of the presidential race unless she scores clear victories in the crucial big-state primary contests on Tuesday. “I just think that D-Day is Tuesday,” said Gov. Top supporters of Senator Barack Obama, joined by at least one prominent Democrat yet to endorse a candidate, put pressure on Senator Hillary Rodham ClintonBill Richardson of New Mexico, a former Democratic presidential candidate who has yet to throw his support behind either candidate. And two Obama supporters, Senators John Kerry and Dick Durbin, pushed for Mrs. Clinton to withdraw if she does poorly at the polls on Tuesday.

IN TEXAS, CLINTON'S VETERANS TEST OBAMA'S ROOKIES
(Randy Kennedy, New York Times)
In dozens of interviews across Texas over the last two weeks with campaign workers, volunteers and voters, a similar picture has consistently emerged from place to place: a well-prepared Clinton campaign has relied on longtime friendships and deep connections to the state’s party operation here, especially in the highly organized, heavily Hispanic cities of South Texas. At the same time, the Obama campaign nearly always feels smaller — sometimes even makeshift, despite its considerable money advantage — but it also seems remarkably self-generating, drawing hundreds of the first-time campaign volunteers that have fueled his success elsewhere.

DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES TRADE GIBES ACROSS OHIO
(Anne E. Kornblut and Shailagh Murray, Washington Post)
Betting the future of her campaign on victories in Ohio and Texas on Tuesday, Clinton is closing out her effort with the argument that she would be best prepared to handle an international crisis, even running a provocative ad on the topic. She made that case again on Sunday, blending the argument with a description of herself as a "fighter, a doer and a champion" for low-income workers in this economically stressed region that has seen massive job losses. 

MCCAIN'S ECONOMY PLATFORM: BIG TAX CUTS, WITH CAVEATS
(Bob Davis, Wall Street Journal)
Those who know him well expect that a McCain presidency would be hard to categorize -- a conservative populist who acts by instinct rather than economic ideology. For businesses, that could make him hard to predict; for opponents, hard to pin down. In his 25 years in Congress, the Arizona senator has defined himself on economic issues more by his adversaries than by overarching economic principle.