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

POLICY BRIEFING: Clinton, Obama and McCain on how they plan to revive the economy.

8 QUESTIONS THAT WILL SHAPE WHERE THE RACE FOR THE DEMOCRATIC PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION GOES FROM HERE
(Dan Balz, Washington Post)
What is the most likely outcome of the dispute over the delegations from Florida and Michigan? What remaining state contests will be most important and why?  What is Clinton's path to the nomination? Has Obama successfully dealt with the controversy over the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.? Will the nomination battle go all the way to the convention? Will Democrats unite after the Obama-Clinton fight ends? Has McCain succeeded in uniting Republicans behind his bid? Would Clinton or Obama be the stronger foe against McCain?

SLOUCHING TOWARD DENVER
(Noam Scheiber, New Republic)
Each day Clinton and Obama spend consumed with the other is a day that moves John McCain closer to the White House. McCain's biggest asset is his political brand, which evokes a straight-talking, party-bucking reformer. Among his biggest liabilities is the suspicion he inspires among conservatives thanks to these same attributes. McCain apparently plans to spend the next few months making nice with his base. But anything he accomplishes on this front clearly diminishes his swing-voter appeal and, therefore, his chances in November. Ideally, the Democrats would be exploiting this tension like mad. They would highlight the anti-Catholic, anti-gay ravings of John Hagee, the evangelical minister whose endorsement McCain recently accepted. They would ridicule his chumminess with supply-side Neanderthals like Jack Kemp and his flip-flop on the Bush tax cuts. They'd dwell on McCain's less-noticed association with crony-capitalists during his tenure as Commerce Committee chairman. Instead, something close to the opposite is happening. McCain's courtship of the lunatic right and his ties to K Street have largely been hidden from view, while the Democrats' dirty laundry has been aired for swing voters. The upshot for Democrats has not been good.

A PRESENT FOR MCCAIN AS THE OTHER SIDE FIGHTS
(John Harwood, New York Times)
Feuding Democrats have handed Senator John McCain the gift of time. How well he uses it may determine his chance to beat them in November. At the moment, Republicans can savor protracted warfare between Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. As the Democratic rivals trade attacks, Mr. McCain, already the presumptive Republican nominee, has crept ahead of both in national polls. Yet Mr. McCain’s advisers recognize their long-term challenges in a remarkably threatening political environment. Voters remain weary of the Iraq war, worried about the economy and disenchanted with the lame-duck Republican president. The Democratic fight is largely personal. But Mr. McCain, of Arizona, faces ideological strains as he leads Republicans beyond the Bush era. Meanwhile, Democrats have expanded their base, and they have the turnout figures and campaign cash to prove it. "All of the energy has been on the Democrat side,” conceded Rick Davis, the McCain campaign manager. “That’s a hurdle for us.”

WHY OBAMA'S SPEECH ON RACE WON'T HELP HIM BEAT MCCAIN
(John Heilemann, New York Magazine)
The hard guys of the Republican Party have no intention of trying to paint the hope- monger as a closet black nationalist. They intend to portray him as insufficiently allegiant to his nation. They will weave together Wright’s “God damn America” with Michelle Obama’s statement that this is the “first time” she has been “proud of my country,” Obama’s eschewal of the American-flag lapel pin, and a piece of video that captures him standing at a campaign event without his hand over his heart during the national anthem... Obama knows that this is coming. He has his answer ready: that a lot has changed in twenty years; that voters want to move past the kind of politics that “uses patriotism as a cudgel”; that they are burning, yearning, to declare, as he put it in his speech last week, “Not this time.” One hears him say these sorts of things and hopes, audaciously, that he is right. Then one sees the Republicans licking their chops and fears that he is not.

MORE: Native Son (George Packer, New Yorker)
For half a century, right-wing populism has been the most successful political force in America, aided greatly by the tendency of liberals to fall into the competing claims of identity groups. Obama is a black candidate who can tell Americans of all races to move beyond race. As such, he is uniquely positioned to put an end to this era, and uniquely vulnerable to becoming its latest victim. 

BOTH OBAMA AND CLINTON EMBELLISH THEIR ROLES
(Shailagh Murray and Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post)
Unlike governors, business leaders or vice presidents, senators -- the last to win the presidency was John F. Kennedy in 1960 -- are not executives. They cannot be held to account for the state of their states, their companies or their administrations. What they do have is the mark they leave on the nation's laws -- and in Obama's brief three-year tenure, as well as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's seven-year hitch, those marks are far from indelible. "It's not an unusual matter for senators to take a little extra credit," Specter said.

2 MCCAIN MOMENTS, RARELY MENTIONED
(Elisabeth Bumiller, New York Times) 
What Mr. McCain almost never mentions are two extraordinary moments in his political past that are at odds with the candidate of the present: His discussions in 2001 with Democrats about leaving the Republican Party, and his conversations in 2004 with Senator John Kerry about becoming Mr. Kerry’s running mate on the Democratic presidential ticket. There are wildly divergent versions of both episodes, depending on whether Democrats or Mr. McCain and his advisers are telling the story. The Democrats, including Mr. Kerry, say that not only did Mr. McCain express interest but that it was his camp that initially reached out to them. Mr. McCain and his aides counter that in both cases the Democrats were the suitors and Mr. McCain the unwilling bride. Either way, the episodes shed light on a bitter period in Mr. McCain’s life after the 2000 presidential election, when he was, at least in policy terms, drifting away from his own party. They also offer a glimpse into his psychological makeup and the difficulties in putting a label on his political ideology over many years in the Senate.

MCCAIN, TRAVELING ALONG A TIGHTROPE
(Michael D. Shear, Washington Post)
Throughout a week-long trip that took him to more than a dozen meetings with leaders in five countries, McCain walked a fine line on Iraq and other issues as the all-but-certain Republican nominee confronted perhaps the central dilemma of his presidential campaign -- the question of what role Bush and the legacy of the past seven years will play in his campaign for the White House. At home, the answer may determine how well McCain succeeds in keeping his Republican base happy while also attracting the independents and Democrats he will need to win in November. And, win or lose, it will shape his image abroad, where a debate is already raging over whether a McCain presidency would be a de facto third term for the embattled incumbent.

TELECOM LOBBYISTS TIED TO MCCAIN
(Matt Kelley, USA Today)
Republican presidential candidate John McCain has condemned the influence of "special interest lobbyists," yet dozens of lobbyists have political and financial ties to his presidential campaign — particularly from telecommunications companies, an industry he helps oversee in the Senate. Of the 66 current or former lobbyists working for the Arizona senator or raising money for his presidential campaign, 23 have lobbied for telecommunications companies in the past decade, Senate lobbying disclosures show. McCain has netted about $765,000 in political donations from those telecom lobbyists, their spouses, colleagues at their firms and their telecom clients during the past decade, a USA TODAY analysis of campaign-finance records shows.