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

OBAMA STANDS HIS UNIQUE GROUND ON RACE
(Peter Wallsten and Peter Nicholas, Los Angeles Times)
From the earliest days of his career, Barack Obama has sought to assure black voters that a political leader of mixed race, coming from the outpost of Hawaii, could understand the resentments of an African American community shaped by slavery and segregation. On Tuesday, Obama tried to explain that anger to voters who have been repelled by racially incendiary comments from his longtime pastor. 

TACKLING A SENSITIVE TOPIC AT A SENSITIVE MOMENT, FOR DISPARATE AUDIENCES
(Alec MacGillis and Eli Saslow, Washington Post)
As skilled an orator as Obama is, he has faced few moments as fraught as yesterday's. The clips of his longtime spiritual mentor declaring "God damn America" for its mistreatment of blacks and saying that the country had provoked the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks threatened to undermine Obama's promise to bind up racial and political fissures. Obama needed to address several audiences with the speech: undecided white voters in Pennsylvania, whose Rust Belt cousins Obama struggled to win over in Ohio even before the Wright controversy; African Americans aggrieved by the opprobrium being heaped on Wright; and staunch supporters such as Farley who needed reassurance about their candidate.

OBAMA'S RACIAL PROBLEMS TRANSCEND WRIGHT
(John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei, Politico)
It is true that Obama won a majority of white voters — a precedent-shattering achievement for a black presidential candidate — in an array of states like Illinois, Iowa, New Mexico, Wisconsin and Virginia.  But many of his recent victories came when he got the better end of highly polarized voting patterns. He lost the white vote, sometimes by gaping margins in states like Alabama (whites went 72 percent for Clinton to Obama’s 25 percent), Maryland (52 percent to 42 percent) and Louisiana (58 percent to 30 percent). He compensated only with overwhelming support by black voters.  In Ohio, it was Clinton who benefited from the racial pattern in the voting. She took 64 percent of the white vote, according to exit polls. That was easily enough to offset his 87 percent of the black vote. Overall, she won the state by 8 percentage points.  This result could haunt Obama. The past two general elections were tipped by narrow GOP victories in Ohio and these rural whites are a prototypical swing bloc in elections stretching back decades.

GOP SEES REV. WRIGHT AS PATHWAY TO VICTORY
(Jonathan Martin, Politico)
In their view, the inflammatory sermons by Obama’s pastor offer the party a pathway to victory if Obama emerges as the Democratic nominee. Not only will the video clips enable some elements of the party to define him as unpatriotic, they will also serve as a powerful motivating force for the conservative base. In fact, the video trove has convinced some that, after months of praying for Hillary Clinton and the automatic enmity which she arouses, that they may actually have easier prey. "For the first time, some Republicans are rethinking Hillary as their first choice," said Alex Castellanos, a veteran media consultant who recently worked for Mitt Romney's campaign. Even Obama's much-lauded Tuesday speech, which detailed his relationship with his church and focused on the issue of racial reconciliation, failed to shake the notion that Republicans had been given a rare political gift. "It was a speech written to mau-mau the New York Times editorial board, the network production people and the media into submission ... ," said GOP media consultant Rick Wilson, who crafted the ad in 2002 tying then-Sen. Max Cleland to Osama bin Laden.

TWO VIEWS FROM THE RIGHT:
A Speech That Fell Short (Michael Gerson, Washington Post)
Wright's Rantings Won't Sink Obama (Dick Morris)

CLINTON TRIES TO KEEP PLAN FOR TWO REVOTES ALIVE
(John M. Broder, New York Times)
Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s hopes of ending the primaries with game-changing victories from new contests in Florida and Michigan grew dim on Tuesday as Florida officially scuttled plans for a new vote and Michigan lawmakers appeared far from a deal. In a sign of how badly she thinks she needs the Michigan delegates to catch the Democratic front-runner, Senator Barack Obama, Mrs. Clinton made a last-minute schedule change and planned to fly to Detroit on Wednesday to plead with Michigan lawmakers to approve a new primary election in June to replace the January contest that awarded no delegates. 

RAISING MCCAIN
(Greg Veis, GQ)
It’s well- known that four years ago, when her father decided it’d be in his best interest to back George W. Bush’s reelection, [Meghan McCain] voted for John Kerry. “My dad actually outed me,” she says. “I’m an Independent. Socially liberal, economically conservative. I believe in a lot of Republican ideals, with the war being the number one thing I completely agree with my dad on.” Later on I hear from Meghan’s mother, Cindy McCain, who insists that the two simply “love the debate” and aren’t as far apart as they’ve often been portrayed. “They’re very similar,” Cindy says. “They’re both very intelligent and very direct in terms of—I mean this in a good way—their knowing what they want and knowing how to get there.” Meghan puts it more succinctly: “I’m almost incapable of bullshit. He’s the same way.” Indeed, John McCain is nobody’s idea of ideologically consistent, and it’s tempting to interpret his daughter’s progressive positions as evidence that life in the McCain household isn’t exactly a revival weekend at Bob Jones University. But Meghan sees her father’s politics as common sense.