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

OBAMA READIES PLAN TO RESHAPE THE ELECTORATE
(Ben Smith, Politico)
Bringing new voters to the polls "is going to be a very big part of how we win," said Obama's deputy campaign manager, Steve Hildebrand, in an interview. "Barack's appeal to independent voters is also going to be key."  Hildebrand said the campaign is likely to turn its attention and the energy of its massive volunteer army this fall on registering African-American voters, and voters under 35 years old, in key states.  "Can it change the math in Ohio? Very much so," he said. "If you look at the vote spread between Bush and Kerry in 2004 - we could potentially erase that." President George W. Bush carried Ohio by about 119,000 votes in 2004, winning the state despite a massive, expensive Democratic effort to mobilize voters there... But there are signs that this year could be different. In the Obama campaign, youth turnout and Internet-based organizing--so often promised, and rarely delivered in the past--have been made real. And the first black nominee could reach deep into the large non-voting tracts within the African-American community.

DEMOCRATS' TURMOIL TESTS PARTY'S LOW-KEY LEADER
(Adam Nagourney, New York Times)
The turmoil in the Democratic presidential race has presented a sharp test of Howard Dean’s low-profile approach to leading the Democratic National Committee, bringing calls from many Democrats for him to take a more aggressive role in defusing the threat of a protracted and divisive nominating fight. After months in which he was largely absent from public deliberations about how to avert a risk to the party’s hopes of taking the White House in November, Mr. Dean stepped forward last week to say he wanted the contest resolved by July 1 and for Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama to tone down their attacks on each other. Yet three years after he won election as the party chairman by running largely as an outsider, it is not clear that Mr. Dean has the political skills or the stature with the two campaigns to bring the nominating battle to a relatively quick and unifying conclusion.

ECONOMIC SLUMP UNDERLINES CONCERNS ABOUT MCCAIN ADVISERS
(Jonathan Weisman, Washington Post)
Former senator Phil Gramm, with his aw-shucks Texas drawl, may at first blush have little in common with Carly Fiorina, the telegenic former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard. But they share a bond: Both are leading economic advisers of Sen. John McCain (Ariz.), the presumptive Republican nominee for president, and both have reputations as the kind of aggressive capitalists that may be sliding from favor as the nation's economy edges toward recession. Democratic opponents are already plotting attacks on two advocates of what Robert Reich, a former Clinton labor secretary, described as "dog eat dog capitalism," an economic philosophy that works well when the economy is on the upswing but may not play so well in a trough...To economists across the political spectrum, much of the criticism is unfair oversimplification. But even some advisers close to McCain said they wonder if such lightning-rod public figures should be so closely identified with his candidacy.

DEMOCRATS CASTING FOR WHITE MEN, STATE'S PRIZE
(Timothy McNulty, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
Mrs. Clinton went after a treasure trove of white male workers yesterday in a speech to the Pennsylvania convention of the AFL-CIO. Mr. Obama speaks to the same group today, while Mrs. Clinton travels to Pittsburgh for a closed-door economic summit at a union hall on the South Side. Mr. Obama beat Mrs. Clinton among white men, often among huge margins, in the primaries in Wisconsin, Virginia, California and Maryland, but next-door in Ohio, whose demographics are often seen as similar to Pennsylvania's, Mrs. Clinton turned the tables, taking 58 percent of the white males to Mr. Obama's 37 percent, according to MSNBC exit polls. Pre-primary polling in Pennsylvania has shown she has similar leads among white males here.  With white female Democrats going toward Mrs. Clinton and black voters to Mr. Obama, the movement of the white male voter either way could decide this primary and possibly the nomination. The answers to why Mr. Obama is not running very well among white men are as varied as the men themselves. In interviews, the two most-mentioned issues had to do with Illinois senator's race and his experience.

OBAMA CHANGES APPROACH TO WIN OVER BLUE-COLLAR VOTERS IN PENNSYLVANIA
(Shalaigh Murray and Perry Bacon, Jr., Washington Post)
When Sen. Barack Obama's bus rolls to a stop Wednesday in Philadelphia, he will have spent six days on the road and $3 million in television ads trying to bolster his chances in a state where polls show him running well behind Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.). A health nut, Obama (Ill.) has consumed hot dogs, french fries and homemade chocolates. He has sipped a few Yuengling beers. He has largely skipped arena-filling rallies in favor of town-hall-style events and casual visits, delivering populist appeals to the small-town, working-class voters who have proven most resistant to his candidacy. Despite a few stumbles -- at an Altoona bowling alley, Obama rolled a ball into a gutter on his first try -- political observers say he has started to make the inroads with voters he will need to cut into Clinton's lead.

MORE: Gonna Fly Now! Clinton Runs as Rocky in Philly (Jason Horowitz, New York Observer)
Hillary Clinton has spent the past few days courting the white, blue-collar workers who are most receptive to her no-nonsense message of hard work and experience. They also happen to be the people most suspicious of Mr. Obama. Some, like Ms. Vizzini, like him well enough, but echoing Pennsylvania governor and Hillary surrogate Ed Rendell, they think he will have problems with some white voters. Others think he’s an unreliable upstart who will stumble when it counts, or worse, that he’s simply a fraud. 

MCCAIN HAS YET TO WIN OVER KEY CONSERVATIVES
(Elizabeth Holmes, Wall Street Journal)
On the campaign trail last week, Sen. John McCain declared at least three times that the Republican Party is "united." But is it? Some prominent conservatives say they remain disenchanted with the party's likely nominee. Sen. McCain isn't doing enough to persuade them of his conservative credentials, they say, or win them over to his side. Although the sentiment among conservative leaders is that they will vote for Sen. McCain come November, they aren't thrilled about the prospect.

LEE HAMILTON TELLS A.P. HE'S BACKING OBAMA
(Associated Press)
Former Indiana Rep. Lee Hamilton is backing Sen. Barack Obama in an endorsement that could boost the presidential hopeful's national security standing, The Associated Press has learned. Hamilton, who during a three-decade House career rose to be chairman of the Foreign Affairs and Intelligence committees, also was vice chairman of the Sept. 11 commission. He planned to announce his endorsement of Obama on Wednesday. In an interview Hamilton said he viewed the Illinois senator as a champion of ''the politics of consensus and not of partisan division.''