Morning News

From the Louisville Courier-Journal:

Sen. Barack Obama told a thunderous crowd at Indiana University Southeast yesterday that he’s the best candidate to bring change and he’ll do it by spurning special interests and focusing on the needs of working Americans.

As the nation’s political attention turned to Indiana — one of the last primaries for Democrats trying to determine their presidential nominee — Obama said he respects his opponent, Sen. Hillary Clinton and that they share "common ideas."

But he told the estimated 2,500 people in the IUS gym that they "do have a real choice."

"I believe the only way we’re going to bring about the changes that you need to see in your lives and the lives of your community is if we don’t just offer different policies, but we offer a different kind of politics in Washington," he said.

Obama spoke and answered questions from the audience for nearly an hour as supporters chanted, waved and cheered, often so loudly they drowned him out.

… Obama said he also plans to spend more time in Indiana, spreading his message that a fundamental change in thinking is necessary to find solutions to problems in health care, Social Security and the nation’s energy policy.

Pauline Shanklin of Jeffersonville came to see Obama and said she believes he’s the best choice for Democrats.

"I like his youth. I like his enthusiasm. I like his ideas," she said. "I’m tired of old Washington. We need a change."

J. T. Evans of Madison said he attended because he also believes Obama’s message is the right one for the party and the nation.

"I think he’s the best hope we’ve had in a long time to unite the country and not divide it," Evans said.

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

… Barack Obama sought to assure supporters Wednesday that the party would survive the fractious Democratic presidential primary.

"Don’t worry about the party being divided in November," Obama told 2,500 fans at Indiana University Southeast. "The Democratic Party is going to recognize as soon as we have a nominee that there is too much at stake for us to be divided."

But the Illinois senator acknowledged "there has been some time lost" that could have been spent focusing on Republican John McCain, adding "and that is why we would like to wrap up this campaign as quickly as possible."

Both of the Democratic White House hopefuls spent time Wednesday in the next big battleground: Indiana.

… Indiana has fewer delegates than North Carolina, which also votes on May 6, but polls show Obama way ahead in North Carolina while it’s still close in Indiana. That means this state, which has not voted for a Democratic president since 1964, will see a lot of both Democrats for the next two weeks.

… Obama’s campaign manager said that even though Clinton’s Pennsylvania win garnered her some headlines, it will give her only about 10 more Pennsylvania delegates to the Democratic National Convention than Obama, whom she still trails by more than 150.

From Time:

It’s a state that hasn’t voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since Lyndon Baines Johnson in 1964, so it’s not surprising that Hoosiers are a bit taken aback by the attention suddenly showered on the upcoming May 6 Indiana primary.

… But as the competing campaigns of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton shift their focus from Pennsylvania to the next key state, Indiana Democrats are starting to relish the prospect of playing a rare key role in the primary process. Jenny Weiser, the executive director of the state’s Democratic party, says she moved the May 4 Jefferson-Jackson dinner from an 800-seat ballroom at the downtown Indianapolis Marriott to the city’s convention center, where she expects more than 2,500 people will attend. In the last week, more than 1,000 new donations have come through the committee’s website, many from Hamilton County, the affluent, Republican-dominated northern Indianapolis suburb where Obama has been campaigning fiercely. Given the new donations, she says, "There’s going to be a lot of switchover voters, and that’s been bit of a hot topic."

… Obama appears to have a lead at the grassroots level, and his continued fund-raising advantage reflects that; in March, Indianans gave some $218,800 to Obama’s campaign, and $79,600 to Clinton’s. "Our goal is to create an army," says Troy Warner, 37, a South Bend electrician who over the last year has become a committed Obama activist, helping to recruit hundreds of volunteers and spread his candidate’s message. In February 2007, Warner’s wife prodded him to read Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope. Soon he was logging onto www.barackobama.com and creating a Facebook-like page, hoping to connect with nearby Obamanistas. There were few, so he set up a site on the campaign’s homepage for local union workers, and another one for any South Bend resident.

Warner’s only political experience was making phone calls for a few city council candidates. But by summer, he was organizing a debate party at his home in the city’s German Township neighborhood. Twenty people RSVP’d, and only one showed up. Still, he kept pushing, and today he manages Obama supporters who on Saturday afternoons walk door-to-door, drumming up volunteers. His first neighborhood captains meeting drew just 5 people. Last week’s drew 160.

… [Jennifer Peck, a 30-year-old teacher turned stay-at-home mom and part-time waitress] may be an ardent Clinton supporter, but she says she is ready to work for whichever Democrat wins the nomination. If Clinton fails to get the nod, Peck says, "I’ll be the first person to walk into Barack Obama’s campaign office and say, ‘What can I do to help?’" She adds, "And I hope they’d welcome me."

From Billboard:

Superchunk will join its Merge Records labelmate the Arcade Fire to perform at "early vote rallies" next week in North Carolina for presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama. The shows will be held May 1 at the Greensboro Coliseum parking lot and May 2 at the Carrboro Town Commons.

Tickets can be picked up at a number of locations beginning tomorrow (April 24).

… "I don’t think I’ve ever been particularly excited about a presidential candidate," Superchunk frontman/Merge co-owner Mac McCaughan tells Billboard.com. "While I’ve always voted for Democrats, none of them have ever seemed too different from any other politician."

For McCaughan, that has changed with Obama. "Hillary’s main argument seems to be that she knows how to ‘play the game’ in Washington and that’s not interesting to me," he says. "Obama seems capable of changing the game."

The shows aim to encourage voters to take advantage of North Carolina’s "One Stop Early Voting" process, which allows non-registered voters to register and vote on the same day, at the same location.

Read more about this story…