Good Thursday morning. With the NCAA tournament back in action tonight, keep an eye on West Virginia, the long shot with the best chance of making it to the Final Four. Of course, Xavier's going to have something to say about that prospect. Here's what Washington is watching this morning:

-- The Senate meets in pro forma session to prevent President Bush from making recess appointments, while the House remains out on Spring break. Meanwhile, Capitol Police take time this evening to hold a ceremony honoring officers who are getting promoted and who merit awards. President Bush makes remarks on the war on terror at the Air Force museum in Dayton before attending Republican fundraisers in nearby Bellbrook and in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, a Pittsburgh suburb.

-- In a highly unusual move, twenty major Democratic Party donors sent a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi yesterday urging her to get away from earlier remarks that super delegates shouldn't overturn the result of pledged delegates, which she made on ABC's "This Week," TPM's Greg Sargent and the Post's Dan Balz report. The donors, all supporters of Hillary Clinton, said they were all major donors to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, a not-so-veiled threat to Pelosi's campaign committee. Signatories included BET founder Bob Johnson, Bernie Schwartz, Steve Rattner and others.

-- Obama spokesman Bill Burton shot back, calling the letter "inappropriate" and urging Clinton's team to "reject the insinuation contained in it." Meanwhile, as Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen's idea for a super delegate primary gets play on cable news networks that do nothing but talk politics, Burton's candidate says he's intrigued. "I think giving whoever the nominee is two or three months to pivot into the general election would be extremely helpful, instead of having this drag up to the convention," Obama said aboard his campaign plane, the Times' Patrick Healy writes. Clinton, who had voiced interest in such a plan, may think twice about supporting it if Obama's so gung-ho about it. A super delegate primary is not something Obama will wade into with his eyes closed.

-- Obama and Bredesen want the game over. But the goal the letter writers sought and the goals of the Clinton campaign are one and the same: As conventional wisdom coalesces around the fact that Clinton faces, at best, a long-shot hard slog to the nomination, her team is doing all it can just to keep the game running. At times, that means fouling the opponent, or just arguing with the referee. Pelosi and fellow referees Harry Reid and Howard Dean can be the ones who decide when to call the game, and that time could be rapidly approaching. "Things are being done," Reid cryptically told Las Vegas Review-Journal's Molly Ball after speaking with Dean earlier this week.

-- Fouling her opponent is also costing Clinton, a new WSJ/NBC poll shows. Her approval rating has sunk to a new low, down to just 37% of voters who see her in a positive light, while 51% view her negatively, NBC's Chuck Todd and WSJ's Jackie Calmes write. The week after controversy over the Rev. Jeremiah Wright erupted, Obama maintains a significant 49% to 32% positive rating, down just a hair from two weeks ago, and John McCain is viewed positively by a 45%-25% margin. Bottom line: The fall out from Obama's speech on race and Wright barely touched him, while Clinton's best efforts to win are seriously hurting her. How many more hand checks before Clinton fouls out?

-- More bad news for the Clinton team: A federal judge threw out Michigan's presidential primary law yesterday, two months after the January 15 contest was conducted. As a result, Michigan Democratic Party chairman Mark Brewer said, any hopes of holding a new contest are finally, firmly dead, the Detroit News' Gordon Trowbridge writes. The ruling prevented the state from handing over voter lists to the party, which would prevent the party from making sure voters had not already cast ballots in the Republican primary, a violation of DNC rules.

-- On to the general election, and another surprising fact from the WSJ/NBC poll: More people have opinions about Obama than they do about McCain. After being the media's favorite Republican for the past eight years, McCain maintains a strong approval rating, but given that he's raising such a small amount of money compared with the two Democrats (who, combined, outraised him about eight to one in February), the eventual winner will have the ability to out-define him, as President Bush did to John Kerry four years ago. McCain's continuing biography tour helps that, as does the fact that Democrats are currently missing their opportunities to go after him, but if his opponents get their act in gear, McCain is going to need some help to define himself to the remaining 30% of voters who don't have an opinion.

-- Consider the probability, though, of a McCain-Obama matchup, and the race starts out a lot more even than one might think. Obama's argument that he can bring the country together has proven a powerful one in the primary, and 60% of voters say he can do just that. But 58% say McCain can, as well. Previous polls have showed more voters trust McCain to do a good job on Iraq, but, while some respondents probably aren't telling the truth, more voters say the country is ready to elect an African American president than a president over 70 years old. 72% say the country is ready for a black president, while only 61% say they're ready for an older president.

-- Fine Line Of The Day: Clinton isn't only in trouble with regular voters, she's also close to irritating super delegates, which might make Bredesen's concept even more dangerous for Team Clinton. NBC/NJ's Matt Berger says a final straw came for many when Clinton said Wright would not have been her pastor. Meanwhile, in Washington State, where Obama won both the party caucus and primary, Clinton-backing super delegates Senator Maria Cantwell and King County Executive Ron Sims, someone who has experience as a pastor in a predominantly African American church, are wavering, The Stranger reports. Is the dam about to break?

-- Today On The Trail: Obama delivers an address on the economy at Cooper Union in New York. Clinton has a speech on the economy as well, set for Raleigh, North Carolina. Later, she holds town hall meetings in Fayetteville and Winston-Salem, while Bill Clinton stumps in Pennsylvania. McCain's only public event of the day is a media availability in Denver.