Obama way up in NC

The Wright controversy may hurt Obama in Pennsylvania, as everyone seems to suggest, but there isn't evidence it's hurting him much beyond the Keystone state. A new poll out of North Carolina shows Obama up 21 points over Clinton. North Carolina is the next major primary after Pennsylvania and it has 134 delegates. A new Rasmussen poll out of Pennsylvania has Clinton up 10.

She went there

Until today, it seemed that the Clinton strategy was to not get involved in the Jeremiah Wright issue. The campaign was tight-lipped, letting the issue play out for itself. But as the fiery sermons fade from the newscasts, Clinton has brought them right back to the forefront. In an interview with the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, Clinton said, "You don't choose your family, but you choose what church you want to attend."

4,000

Over at HuffingtonPost, Nico Pitney put together this mosaic of the faces of 4,000 dead soldiers (there are a few duplicates because there is not always a picture released by the Pentagon.) You can see a bigger image here.

"The surge is working"

MSNBC:

Four U.S. soldiers were killed by a bomb blast in southern Baghdad late Sunday, raising the death toll for American forces since start of the war to 4,000, according to the Pentagon.

The grim milestone was reached less than a week after the fifth anniversary of the U.S. invasion to topple former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein and coincided with a spate of violence across Iraq on Sunday that left at least 61 people dead.

The attacks included rockets and mortars fired at Baghdad's U.S.-protected Green Zone and a suicide car bomb detonated at an Iraqi army post in the northern city of Mosul.

Blizzard video

Blizzard

Poor McCain

It will take John McCain five months to raise as much money as Barack Obama raised in February -- the shortest month of the year. In that month, as Obama was turning a corner and building a lead over Clinton, McCain was sitting atop the Republican field, essentially having won the nomination. We didn't know who would be the Democratic nominee, but Obama still raised $55 million.

McCain, on the other hand, was taking a victory lap. But that didn't seem to help him on the fundraising side. The New York Times reported today that McCain raised just $11 million in February -- less than he had raised in January, when he was trailing a handful of Republicans for the nomination.

New addition

Obama knows hoops

From the Trail:

After toiling all day Wednesday on his bracketology, Barack Obama has revealed his politically astute picks. The final four will include the University of North Carolina, whose primary looms in seven weeks. The South region will go to Pitt, on one end of a state that votes April 22. His Midwest nod goes to a home state of sorts, Kansas, from whence his grandparents hail. The West? UCLA, Clinton country, but the land of the fundraiser. And how does it all end? According to Obama, UNC will overtake UCLA for the national title.

More popular: sexism or racism?

Over at The War Room, Alex Koppelman highlighted a CBS poll, which he claimed showed that it may "actually be easier for an African-American to be elected president than it would be for a woman." The poll results he noted are as follows:

Survey respondents were asked two separate questions, whether -- all other things being equal -- they would prefer to vote for a man or a woman and whether they would prefer to vote for a white candidate over a black candidate. Five percent of those polled said they would prefer a white candidate; 2 percent said they'd prefer a black candidate. On the other hand, 17 percent said they'd prefer to vote for a man over a woman, while only 3 percent said they'd prefer the woman.

But over at The Caucus, Janet Elder highlighted what appears to be the opposite conclusion -- from the same poll. Elder noted that, based on the poll, "a plurality of Americans, 42 percent said racism was a more serious problem for the country compared to 10 percent who said sexism was the more serious problem. Twenty-three percent said neither racism nor sexism was a problem for the country and another 23 percent volunteered that the problems were equally serious for the nation."