Clinton paid Penn a total of $8.9 million for direct mail, according to CQ MoneyLine. She paid Penn for polling, at $2.8 million. She even paid Penn $160,000 for consulting about polling, which presumably involved his telling her what an excellent pollster she'd hired. By Feb. 29, she also owed Penn's firm another $2.5 million for "consulting/polling," federal records show.

... versus ...

Penn's counterpart as chief strategist on Barack Obama's campaign, David Axelrod, has seen at least $1.2 million paid to his Chicago-based firm, where David Plouffe, Obama's campaign manager, was a partner until he left to go work for the campaign. (Plouffe makes $12,000 a month in salary.) Obama has paid his chief pollster, Joel Benenson, $635,000 so far.

Hillary was touted as "the presumptive Democratic nominee" just a few months ago. The nomination was hers to lose. And with Penn's help, she did.

Looks like Obama gets a better deal for less money. Yet another point in his favor.

Too many of us have already decided there are really only two choices in this campaign: Hillary Clinton and John McCain.

-- lolcait

Well, how lucky you must feel. Whoever wins the Dem nomination, you won't need to change your vote. That gives you time to try to cause all sorts of mischief, don't it?

Nothing like letting "reporting" confirm your pre-existing biases.

Oh, so true. Mr. Koppelman should have begun this with a blatant disclaimer. Maybe something like:

It wasn't a scientific poll, and it's just one report about a relatively small number of U.S. troops ...

That would've made a difference. (Though, of course, anybody eager to whine about biases would probably have just ignored it.)

LIEberman post-Lamont is a significantly different senator than the pre-Lamont version. Prior to his loss in the Democratic primary, Lieberman was a reasonably sufficient moderate voice. But after that loss, he went into scorched earth crazymode.

I strongly disagree. Lieberman was well into crazymode before 2006, which was why he lost the Democratic primary. Fewer people noticed before that, is all.

Long before he joined the campaign, Mr. Garin argued that her route to success lay more in presenting her strengths than in assailing her opponent.

Hmmm. That might've even have worked, if they'd taken that route in the beginning. But now? It's several months late and tens of millions of dollars short.

If it's a lie

Then why be so specific?

If you can safely assume that nobody will fact-check you -- or that those few who do will be ignored -- then adding details makes it sound more real. Unfortunately, it wasn't unreasonable for Mukasey to make that assumption.

If anyone outed this guy, it was the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Though really, the guy outed himself.

Jay Carson, a spokesman for the Clinton team, alluded to a meeting between Obama's chief economic advisor, Austan Goolsbee, and Canadian governmental officials that occurred back in March. Goolsbee purportedly voiced Obama's support for NAFTA ...

Um, didn't the Canadian government officially knock down this story? Or is it still truthy enough to use?

How 1970's of him.

Oh please. If you were to play that sort of grossly-exaggerated -- and partly simply dishonest -- guilt-by-association game with any white male candidate for President in the last hundred years or so, you'd have a list several times as long.

The fact that Obama's opponents have to try so hard to get even this little so-called "dirt" on him amuses me. If this is all oppo research can get on him, I'm even more impressed with Obama than I was before.

As a fellow Obama supporter, I have a favor to ask of you.

Please lay off the "Klinton KultWack" thing. It's lame.

I love how quickly -- and loudly -- many of the actual elites tried to tell the "rubes" what their reaction to this is. Who is arrogant and condescending?

It's also worth noting that DDT-resistant mosquitoes exist because DDT use was so widespread. If it had only been used to carefully target specific populations of mosquitoes, it'd still be useful for disease control.

But measured, careful use of chemicals isn't as profitable as trying to hose the planet with them.

And then again, put the ball back in their court by asking, "What does this have to do with the job I intend to perform if elected?" Or "I think that if Republicans aren't expected to answer, or even to be asked in the first place, then these types of questions have no place in our public discourse."

It isn't until someone confronts their subtle mendacity head on, that anything will likely happen to make it change.

That's a fine idea with one problem: The media wouldn't report the candidate's actual response, they'd merely report -- loudly -- that s/he "... refused to respond to questions about [x]."

I'm sure you can write the rest of that script.

Goose, Gander, etc.

I'm just guessing here, but probably the DNC is on record arguing strenuously that Kerry should not be forced to release his rich wife's tax returns in 2004. So this story will get zero traction.

-- mattcliff

Republicans and their media is definitely on record arguing that Kerry's wife should release his rich wife's tax return.

Of course, that also means this story will get zero traction.

Maybe Obama is right, and Jon Stewart should run the next debate. No stupid questions, and no one gets away with anything.

Oh, there'd be a few stupid questions. But the important difference is that those few would be intentionally stupid, for the laughs.

... is playing the "playing the race card" card. Again.

Funny how the Clinton campaign mentions race far more often than Obama's does, but it's always how Obama's campaign is supposedly making a big deal of it. (Of course, they also mention gender a lot more than Obama's campaign does ...)