COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- It will be a red-state Fourth of July for Barack Obama, who hopes to find votes as well as fireworks in places that blue-state Democrats often bypass in presidential elections.

During the long holiday weekend, Obama is making an All-American swing from picnics to parades in reliably Republican corners of the country, states such as North Dakota and Montana. Both have voted Republican for the White House by hefty margins for almost four decades. Neither state offers many electoral votes — three apiece — but appearances there give Obama the opportunity to argue that he can appeal to voters of all stripes.

"It may have been Woody Allen who said 90 percent of success is showing up," Obama told a small but enthusiastic crowd of donors at a fundraiser Wednesday in Colorado Springs, the conservative heart of conservative Colorado. "If I didn't show up, I wouldn't get many votes around here. If I did show up, I might get something going."

Upon arrival here in North Dakota on Thursday, he repeated the theme of the importance of showing up to play. "I believe the American people across ideological spectrum ... are hungry for something new," he said on the airport tarmac.

Sen. Barack Obama defended his patriotism Monday as he sought to inoculate himself from attacks for his lack of military service, complex biography and past incidents that have generated questions about his American values.

"It's worth considering the meaning of patriotism because the question of who is—or is not—a patriot all too often poisons our political debates," the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said in a speech at the Truman Memorial Building in Independence, Mo.

"I have always taken my deep and abiding love for this country as a given," he said. "Yet, at certain times over the last 16 months, I've found, for the first time, my patriotism challenged—at times as a result of my own carelessness, more often as a result of the desire by some to score political points and raise fears and doubts about who I am and what I stand for."

Obama, who has been the subject of false Internet rumors about his background and questioned about not wearing an American flag pin on his lapel, is expected to speak on the patriotism theme throughout this week.

By rights, a group that helped elect Bill Clinton president and counts Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton as one of its leaders should be hostile territory for Barack Obama. But members of the Democratic Leadership Council seem ready to embrace Obama rather than risk squandering an opportunity for victory this fall. "Ultimately, what I care about is putting a strong Democrat in the White House," said Phil Bartlett, a state senator from Maine who backed Clinton in the primary.

But many DLC members, meeting in Chicago on Sunday, argued victory will require following their centrist organization's philosophy.

They urged Obama to emphasize practical solutions to the problems directly affecting voters — gas prices, inflation, failing schools, job security. He can't let Republicans define him as a tax-and-spend liberal, they said, and he can't let the left push him toward a campaign based on retribution against the Bush administration. "We need somebody who can pull us together," said Sen. Tom Carper, D-Md., a DLC vice chairman. "Voters want us to be united and they want us to govern from the middle."

UNITY, N.H. — Rivals turned allies, Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton are making their first public appearance together since the divisive Democratic primary race ended.

They are making their show of unity in a hamlet named for it.

Some 6,0000 people were gathered to watch in one of the wide-open fields of the tiny town of 1,700. It's a carefully chosen venue in a key general election battleground state: Unity awarded exactly 107 votes to each candidate in New Hampshire's first-in-the-nation primary in January.

Democrat Barack Obama holds narrow leads over GOP rival John McCain in Colorado and Michigan, two of the most competitive states in two of the most competitive regions of the country heading into the general-election campaign, according to surveys conducted by Quinnipiac University for washingtonpost.com and the Wall Street Journal.

In two other states that were closely contested in the 2004 presidential election -- Wisconsin and Minnesota -- Obama holds double-digit edges among likely voters, an indication that these states may not be in the swing category this election. The Democratic Party's presidential nominee carried both Wisconsin and Minnesota in each of the last four elections, although Sen. John Kerry (Mass.) won each by slim margins in 2004.

The four surveys are the kickoff of a four-month effort to measure voter sentiment in key battleground states. They echo several recent national polls -- including surveys conducted for Newsweek and the Los Angeles Times/Bloomberg -- showing Obama with a double-digit lead over McCain, the GOP candidate. However, other national surveys -- including the Gallup daily tracking poll -- show the race to be much closer.

Democrat Barack Obama has opened a 15-point lead in the presidential race, and most of the political trends -- voter enthusiasm, views of President George W. Bush the Republicans, the economy and the direction of the country -- point to even greater trouble for rival John McCain.

Illinois Senator Obama, winning support from once skeptical women and Democrats, beats McCain 48 percent to 33 percent in a four-way race, a Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll shows. Independent candidates Bob Barr and Ralp Nader get 7 percent combined, with the remainder undecided.

Obama's margin and most of the poll's findings in other areas give the Democrats a commanding advantage more than four months before the November election, says Susan Pinkus, the Los Angeles Times polling director.

``The Obama voters are much more energized and motivated to come out to vote than the McCain voters; McCain is still struggling to win over some of his core groups,'' she says. ``The good news for Obama is also that he seems to be doing better on the issue that is uppermost in voters' minds, and that is the economy.''

Sen. Barack Obama has asked top contributors to help former rival Sen. Hillary Clinton retire the debt from her failed presidential campaign, an Obama campaign source said.

Obama and Clinton ran a protracted race for the Democratic presidential nomination that left Clinton with a campaign debt of more than $22 million when she bowed out this month.

About $12 million of that amount is money the senator from New York loaned to the campaign herself.

Obama asked members of his National Finance Committee to contribute to Clinton's campaign if they were so inclined, but he did not direct them to do so, the Obama campaign source said Tuesday.

Individual donors can contribute $2,300 to individual candidates. It would take 4,500 contributors donating the maximum $2,300 to pay off Clinton's $10.3 million in debt owed to vendors.

WASHINGTON - Bob Dylan. Yo-Yo Ma. Sheryl Crow. Jay-Z. These aren't musical acts in a summer concert series: They're artists featured on Barack Obama's iPod.

"I have pretty eclectic tastes," the Democratic presidential contender said in an interview to be published in Friday's issue of Rolling Stone.

Growing up in the '70s, Obama said, he listened to the Rolling Stones, Elton John and Earth, Wind & Fire. Stevie Wonder is his musical hero from the era. The Stones' "Gimme Shelter" tops his favorites from the band.

The Illinois senator's playlist contains these musicians, along with about 30 songs from Dylan and the singer's "Blood on the Tracks" album. Jazz legends Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Charlie Parker are also in the mix.

"Actually, one of my favorites during the political season is 'Maggie's Farm,'" Obama said of one of Dylan's tracks. "It speaks to me as I listen to some of the political rhetoric."

Barack Obama's decision to forgo public funds will bring joy to opponents of campaign finance reform. But to say that Obama has killed public financing is to miss the point.

The current system began to unravel eight years ago. George W. Bush became the first candidate since the post-Watergate reforms of the mid-1970s to decline public money in the primaries, thus avoiding the limits it imposed.

Bush's decision was the single-most important reason he defeated John McCain for the 2000 nomination because Bush was able to spend without limit to win South Carolina after his loss in the New Hampshire primary. John Kerry walked away from the public financing system for the primaries in 2004. Note that Kerry won the nomination, too.

Obama has heeded those lessons. Bush and Kerry paid no political price for opting out of the public money system in the primaries. And Kerry's political operatives argue that they would have been able to respond more effectively to the outrageous attacks on their candidate's Vietnam service record if they had not been hampered by their acceptance of public funds and spending limits for the general election.

This might be seen as a handy rationalization for the Kerry campaign's failure to take the attacks seriously early enough. Still, the Obama campaign wants to avoid falling into the same trap.

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Sen. Barack Obama's decision to reject roughly $85 million in public financing -- as well as the strict spending limits that would accompany those funds -- did not come as a surprise to most political observers.

The decision was criticized by his opponent, some Democrats and public interest groups.

But does the public really care? Probably not.

The presumptive Democratic nominee has smashed fundraising records this cycle by harnessing the power of the Internet to raise the once unimaginable sum of almost $266 million from more than 1.5 million donors through the end of April.

Obama's fundraising machine shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon. If anything, it will only pick up the pace now that a whole new pool of donors has been made available with the elimination of Sen. Hillary Clinton from the campaign.