A few days ago, a Republican friend of mine up on Capitol Hill emailed me and asked if I had any idea what the hell Rep. Rob Andrews (D-NJ) was thinking challenging incumbent Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) after Lautenberg had basically lined up the entire New Jersey Democratic political establishment behind him. But TPM Election Central's Eric Kleefeld took a look and says Andrews' bid may not be quite as quixotic as it looks.

Remember, the key to understanding this race is that the Republican nominees are such a collective trainwreck (a libertarian ideologue, a genuine fascist and a failed trust fund baby) that it doesn't seem like there's much of a way the Democratic nominee can lose.

Late Update: Hmmm, seems just today a non-certifiable Republican is hinting he's getting into the race.

Earlier today we told you that we were trying to find out details about how much of Sens. Clinton's and Obama's March money hauls were for the primary and for the general. Earlier today, Sen. Obama's campaign told us that "almost all" their $40 million was for the primary. And now we've just heard from Clinton campaign spokesman Howard Wolfson who says that "almost all" of their $20 million was for the primary too.

M.J. Rosenberg, on why the presidential candidates so rarely broach the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Okay, that wasn't so hard. Now can we have McCain's tax returns?

Mark Penn on his Colombia trade deal lobbying: It was an "error in judgment."

Winding its way through this year's primary process is a continuing concern that Republicans are somehow gaming the Democratic primary process. It was raised early on against Obama -- that his substantial support from independents and crossover Republicans was evidence of trying to saddle Democrats with the weaker nominee. More recently we hear again and again from Obama supporters that Hillary Clinton's victories on March 4th and perhaps going forward are padded with the votes of Republicans who Rush Limbaugh has gotten to vote for her in an effort to derail Barack Obama's candidacy. Today a long time TPM Reader even asked whether I didn't think it was possible that Barack Obama's huge fundraising numbers weren't made possible by Republicans trying to make him look stronger than he really is.

Since these questions come up a lot let me say for the record that I think all of these claims are nonsense. Some more than others of course. I'm about as sure as I can be of anything that Republicans aren't engaged in a massive clandestine effort to pump Barack Obama full of record-breaking amounts of campaign cash. But I'm also pretty sure all of Limbaugh's yapping hasn't made any substantial difference in the Democratic vote totals. Certainly, there's a possibility of this once one side's primary process is over. But while a few true political obsessives may engage in this sort of too clever double-bank shot voting, I've never seen any evidence that large numbers of people will turn out at the polls to vote for people they don't actually support.

It's hard to prove a negative. And this is just my opinion, though somewhat educated, I think. But I just don't think these sorts of things ever turn out to be true. They're unproven and largely undisprovable speculations that partisans on all sides use to paper over outcomes that don't conform to their assumptions and desires.

If you don't agree, I'd like to see the evidence.

Late Update: TPM Reader DS knows it sounds nutty but thinks there may be something to it ...

While I certainly don’t believe that Republicans are donating loads of money to Obama to make him look stronger, I am positive that the Republicans are trying to garner more support for Hillary to keep this race close and bloody Obama up. As for evidence, I probably have as much as you have to argue the contrary. . . . .none. All you need to do is listen to Rush’s show any day as he gloats about “operation chaos” as he calls it. He even has made merchandise regarding it. Not only are callers calling in and telling to the entire country that they are voting for Clinton in large numbers, they are also being selected as county and state delegates, possibly even delegates that get to go to the convention. It has gone even further though. He is in the process of coordinating a text messaging system or something that allows Limbaugh and the selected delegates to coordinate their efforts in some fashion. Listen, I know how this sounds, but all you need to do is go through his transcripts and listen to his show. Can Limbaugh’s minions make a difference, maybe or maybe not? In a close race like this a handful of delegates can be all that matters, especially if it goes to super delegates. Check it out for yourself.

Later Update: TPM Reader KA disagrees too: "Well I have to admit that as a Kansan, I often voted in primaries as a Republican to offset votes for someone I didn't want. And I know lots of people who do. Whether large numbers do, I don't know. If you are in a state where your party NEVER wins (or rarely), voting becomes more of a free for all."

I must say that it's rather ironic that our April 1st bloopers reel episode of TPMtv, partly in honor of the one year anniversary of TPMtv, is ending up to be one of our most popular episodes ever. Maybe we shouldn't spend so much time worrying about flubbed words or ambulance sirens. Anyway, in case you missed it ...

After the Clinton and Obama campaigns announced their March fundraising totals yesterday, a number of readers asked for that further important level of detail -- how much of the haul was for the primary and how much for the general election. Money raised for the general is irrelevant for evaluating how much each campaign has for contesting the remaining primaries.

We're asking. But so far neither campaign has responded to our queries.

We'll keep you posted.

Late Update: The Obama campaign has now told us that "almost all" their $40 million is for the primary. Still somewhat vague. They say they'll have full details when they do the filing in a couple weeks.

Late Update: In case you needed evidence that the protracted race is really taking a toll on some people, we note this email from TPM Reader JK ...

Josh

You wrote:
"Money raised for the general is irrelevant for evaluating how much each campaign has for contesting the remaining primaries."

Why you felt the need to say that is once again evidence of bias.

It IS relevant for how much a candidate will have for the general. There is no guarantee or expectation that the same contributors will pony up as much in the general. That is where Clinton's good judgement shows in saving some for the general.

Perhaps Obama can just put it on his Visa card if he's the nominee.

Would the Bush administration politicize an intelligence report? Don't answer that.

The new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq says the surge is working, but Dems think it's funny that the report omits the Iraqi government's recent failed offensive against Sadr's Mahdi Army.

In today's episode we examine the contending theories for how racialized voting may be affecting the Democratic primary race ...

High-res version at Veracifier.com.

Just out from the Wall Street Journal ...

Hillary Clinton's chief campaign strategist met with Colombia's ambassador to the U.S. on Monday to discuss a bilateral free-trade agreement, a pact the presidential candidate opposes.

Attendance by the adviser, Mark Penn, was confirmed by two Colombian officials. He wasn't there in his campaign role, but in his separate job as chief executive of Burson-Marsteller Worldwide, an international communications and lobbying firm.

The firm has a contract with the South American nation to help promote congressional approval of the trade deal, among other things, according to filings with the Justice Department.

There are so many reasons why candidates should be paying Mark Penn to stay as far away from their campaigns as possible. But this is yet another. Having your key campaign advisor also be an international man of mystery-cum-PR-lobbyist-cheeseball is fairly problematic. But for Hillary's sake, when her political future is on the line in a state like Pennsylvania, wracked by the loss of industrial jobs for decades, you think he could have waited a few more weeks before prancing off to help get a new free trade pact passed?

Hillary by 3. Details here.

Thanks to TPM Reader JW for the tip.

There's a new CBS/NYT poll out; but I haven't yet seen a write-up of the campaign details. So a few nuggets, which will be followed later with a write-up at TPM Election Central.

The internals look significantly better for Obama than Clinton. For instance, Democrats overwhelmingly think Obama's the stronger general election candidate -- 56% to 32%. On favorable vs. unfavorable ratings, Obama has the biggest net positive of all three candidates -- 19%. Clinton has a net negative 1%.

On "shares the values of Americans", it's Obama (70%-21%), McCain (66%-27%) , Clinton (60%-34%). But the numbers are fairly close.

One thing that jumps out at me if the question of who particular candidates would favor -- rich, middle class, etc. Obama does 'better' than Clinton. But 53% of voters think McCain would favor the rich -- and only 23% say he'd treat all economic classes the same.

Still there's good news for Hillary and Dems across the board in the horse-race number. Both Dems beat McCain by five points (Obama 47%-42% and Clinton 48% to 43%).

Late Update: The Times now has up their own write-up of the results, which paints a more mixed picture for Obama. Here's the Times pdf of the poll internals. Here's the one from CBS. I'd be curious to hear what others think after looking at the crosstabs. There's a notch down in Obama's favorables among Democratic primary voters. And a chunk of Democratic primary voters who had an unfavorable opinion of Clinton appear to have moved into the undecided column. Overall, though, in most of the key measures that people are now watching, the internals pretty much all look good for Obama and he appears to have been damaged very little by March. But, again, take a look at the internals and let me know your thoughts.

A number of TPM Readers have written in to suggest that in my posts today about racialized voting I seem to be treating it as an assumption that whites voting for Clinton are doing so because they're not willing to vote for Obama because he's black. So to dispel any confusion that's definitely not what I'm saying. There are any number of reasons voters are voting for Hillary Clinton. And I don't just mean that as a throwaway line. The one that stands out to me more than any other is her self-identification as a fighter, which puts her in line with recent Democratic candidacies much more than Obama's. That stance appeals to a lot of people not only because that's how they think of politics but because that's how they experience their lives.

So I think it is acceptable and important to note the broad differences in how different demographic groups vote, especially because the percentage of the white vote that Obama gets has varied greatly from state to state. We can ask that question without assuming that one group of people is voting for candidate A only because of candidate B's race.

But here's the thing. If I'm not mistaken that's actually pretty much exactly the argument the Clinton camp is now making both to reporters and super delegates. Namely, that if Barack Obama fails to make serious inroads with working class white Democrats in Pennsylvania that will mean that these voters actually refuse to vote for him either because he is black or because of the Wright issue, which is in many respects a proxy for the issue of race.

So in many respects it seems to me that Clinton is the one who in her current argument is reducing her candidacy to being largely about race.

Paul Kiel interviews NYT reporter Eric Lichtblau, who won a Pulitzer for his reporting on the Bush Administration's warrantless wiretapping program, about his new book, Bush's Law: The Remaking of American Justice.

Lichtblau knows this stuff as well, if not better, than anyone outside of the government. His discussion of what is known about the parameters of the warrantless wiretapping and data mining programs is worth your time.

In an Esquire interview, John Yoo seeks to put some distance between his legal memos and the policies later based upon them.

As we all know, there have been repeated claims over the course of this election season that the Clinton campaign has 'injected' race into the campaign in order to build up their voting advantage among white voters.

Let's start by setting aside whether that's true or not and focus on what it means and whether it actually would matter. I frequently get emails from readers who say, in so many words, hey, what does it even mean to 'inject' the issue of race or Obama's race into the campaign. Everyone knows that Obama is black. It's not a secret, etc.

There's a superficial logic to this point. But for those who make this argument seriously (and I think many just use it as a cudgel) you can only do so if you are indifferent not only to common sense and a great deal of data in social psychology. Even if we're not steeped in the data, I think we've all seen discussions of psych experiments where respondents' answers and opinions can be changed if certain statements are told to them or pictures are shown to them before the experiment starts. Simple suggestion that keys into different thought patterns.

It's easy to make a straw man of it. No, people aren't controlled like robots if one candidate starts saying race, race, race. Black, black, black. But focusing a political contest on race can make a difference. At least there is a very, very long history of it.

We've been digging through a lot of numbers over the last two days, mainly focusing on how voting patterns are affected by race. But through all this we need to remember the obvious, which is that the dynamics of a primary election are not the same as those of a general. So, for instance, if we assume for the sake of discussion that working class white Democrats in Pennsylvania are going to vote disproportionately for Clinton, what does that mean for the general if Obama's the nominee? Will the premium, as ugly a word as it may be in this context, of being a white candidate overcome party affiliation? Or more concretely, will a white voter who wouldn't vote for Obama over Clinton nevertheless vote Obama over McCain?

I think there's an instinctive desire not to be naive and say, 'no'. If they won't vote for a black candidate in the primary they won't vote for a black candidate in the general either.

But the truth is that we don't know. What's more, these calculations aren't figuring in gender either. There is no question that women are turning out in big numbers to vote for Hillary Clinton. If Obama's the nominee, how will the lack of that opposing draw on the other side affect him in a race against McCain?

The road from John Yoo's torture memo to Abu Ghraib is a short one.