Great!

Hillary and her 17 (nearly 18) million supporters will thank you when the Supers wise up and side with her in Denver. ;o)

Wow, did he really say that? Because if there's anyone who knows about giving Democrats huge electoral losses, it's Terry McAuliffe.

Oh, please. Yes.  If all the people who are not supporting the Democratic nominee went on strike, we could actually discuss the race against McCain.

If you don't think the DLC is perfectly happy with Obama as the nominee then you don't know much about the DLC. Half the guy's domestic policy staff are DLCers. The only thing they disagree on is Iraq, and foreign policy was never the DLC's strong suit.

They issued two press statements the day of the caucuses.

Just go read my other diary.  There's a link to one of them there.

It is strange but somehow compelling.

I agree completely.

It's like seeing someone on a bicycle pedaling toward the edge of a cliff. You feel you have to do something, but since nothing you say or do will stop it, all you can really do is stand and watch.

It's been a little horrifying.

I hope that, once the nomination is determined, the site is swept clean of these McCain trolls, and Jerome's little experiment in maintaining "fairness and balance" by protecting them will be over.

"It's demented and sad, but social." - Bender from the Breakfast Club.

There's nothing corrupt about telling SD's to vote this way or you'll get a primary challenge.  I was pointing out that the arm-twisting has gone both ways.

And bribes?  Hmm.  Do you have a link on that?  I have link for using leadership PAC's to curry favor in early voting states:

When Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) launched his presidential campaign in January, he stopped raising money for his Hopefund, the political action committee he used to raise millions for fellow Democrats in previous campaigns. But in recent months, Obama has handed out more than $180,000 from the nearly dormant PAC to local Democratic groups and candidates in the key early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, campaign reports show.

Some of the recipients of Hopefund's largess are state and local politicians who have recently endorsed Obama's presidential bid. Obama's PAC reported giving a $1,000 contribution, for instance, to New Hampshire state Sen. Jacalyn Cilley on July 25, six days before she announced she was endorsing Obama for president.

SNIP

Fundraising vehicles known as leadership PACs, which can raise money in much larger chunks than candidates can for their own campaigns, have been a frequent target for criticism by watchdog groups. They argue that leadership PACs allow candidates to skirt campaign contribution and donation limits.

Scott Thomas, a Democrat and a former FEC chairman, said "there's probably no doubt" the PAC donations were aimed at increasing support for Obama's presidential race. "But in my experience, the commission has not had the stomach to reach out and characterize those kinds of contributions as impermissible," Thomas said.

Kent Cooper, the FEC's retired chief of public disclosure, said the commission, if it chose, could declare that Obama's presidential campaign and PAC were "affiliated," meaning some activities involving the PAC could be declared in-kind contributions to the presidential campaign that would exceed current donation limits.

"At this stage of the race, for a presidential candidate, it is a brazen effort to use every avenue to influence an election," Cooper said. "I can't believe the Obama people can keep a straight face and claim these aren't part of the presidential race."

And here's another:

Democratic Sen. Barack Obama's presidential campaign helped recommend several of the donations his political action committee made in recent months to politicians in key primary states as the campaign was working to secure endorsements, campaign officials said yesterday.

The acknowledgment alters the campaign's original account of how donations were directed and raised questions among some legal experts about whether the presidential committee was using Obama's leadership PAC to benefit his campaign. The Obama campaign said it is confident it complied with the law.

Obama's Hopefund Inc. distributed more than $180,000 in donations to political groups and candidates in the early presidential voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and more than $150,000 to federal candidates in other states with primary dates through mid-February. The donations accounted for nearly three-quarters of the money the PAC has given out since this summer.

SNIP

Bauer said he is confident that the PAC and the campaign complied with rules the Federal Election Commission enacted in December 2003 governing how leadership PACs can operate when their candidate is running for office. "There's not even a remote question about whether this is legal," he said.

Campaign law experts, however, said they were less certain. They noted that the 2003 rules state that any leadership PAC expenditure coordinated with the politician's campaign should be treated as "in-kind contributions" subject to a limit of $5,000. The rules define a coordinated expense as any made in "cooperation or concert with or at the request or suggestion" of a campaign.

"I think this is something the commission should look at. If the money was, in fact, used to help the campaign, was requested by the campaign and coordinated with the campaign, then it could be considered an in-kind contribution," Lawrence Noble, the FEC's retired chief counsel, said.

Former FEC chairman Scott E. Thomas, a Democrat who served on the commission when the 2003 rule was approved, said the FEC at the time was focused more on how to keep PACs from subsidizing presidential campaigns by picking up the costs of polling, salary and other goods and services.

"He is clearly pushing the envelope, no doubt," Thomas said. "I would clearly recommend the commission take another look at this to see if there is some reasonable line that can be drawn so presidential campaigns aren't directing donations from the PAC a few months before the primaries."

So a handful of donors threatened to cut off money if Pelosi didn't stop pushing SD's to Obama?  Oh, that's way worse than threatening a elected officials with a primary challenge.