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Barack Obama’s March fundraising totals equaled $40 million, with only a little under $600,000 in debts. By constrast, Sen. Clinton reportedly raised just under $20 million with over $8 million dollars in debts. The new totals will make Sen. Obama more competitive the longer this race continues, and will allow him to not only out-fundraise Sen. Clinton but be better positioned for the general election.

News

Former President Jimmy Carter has hinted that he will support Sen. Obama for President. He noted in an interview his families support for Obama, “My children and their spouses are pro-Obama. My grandchildren are also pro-Obama. As a superdelegate, I would not disclose who I am rooting for, but I leave you to make that guess.”

Commentary

Jim Vandehei of Politico has written a powerful piece on the “media make believe” of a horse race between Obama and Clinton.

Vandehei writes:

Her own campaign acknowledges there is no way that she will finish ahead in pledged delegates. That means the only way she wins is if Democratic superdelegates are ready to risk a backlash of historic proportions from the party’s most reliable constituency.

Unless Clinton is able to at least win the primary popular vote — which also would take nothing less than an electoral miracle — and use that achievement to pressure superdelegates, she has only one scenario for victory. An African-American opponent and his backers would be told that, even though he won the contest with voters, the prize is going to someone else.

People who think that scenario is even remotely likely are living on another planet.

Outrage

In an interview with the Washington Post, Sen. Clinton again proclaimed her determination to stay in the Democratic race for President all the way until the Convention. She has suggested that Florida and Michigan must be counted, and “if we don’t resolve it, we’ll resolve it at the convention — that’s what credentials committees are for.” In other words, Sen. Clinton is making it clear that she intends to make a play for controlling the credentials committee which will decide whether and how to seat the FL and MI delegations.

Sen. Clinton has also suggested that the pledged delegates that Sen. Obama earned through voting are “free” to abandon him. In other words, she will try to “steal” Obama’s pledged delegates. While it’s within the rules to try and convince pledged delegates to abandon the choice their precincts voted for, this is a particularly duplicitious position for someone to push after demanding that “every vote count” in FL and MI. What’s the point of voting if the pledged delegates don’t support who their precincts supported?

Blogs

Silver Spring over at MyDD has done an impressive nationwide, district by district, analysis comparing Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama in terms of who would best help Democrats in the fall. Utilizing the often-accurate Survey USA data 8 months before the general election, Silver Spring demonstrated that Sen. Obama will outperform Sen. Clinton in 10 out of the 12 likely competitive Senate races in the fall. He further showed that Sen. Obama would outperform Sen. Clinton in 27 of 39 competitive races against Republicans. The district Obama helps with the most? Virginia CD-11 (by 27 points), Colorado CD-4 (by 24 points), and Arizone CD-1 (by 23 points).