Bump and Update: ABC's Jake Tapper and Politico report Obama may be opting out of public financing.

Tonight at a fundraiser in Washington, D.C., at the National Museum of Women in the Arts -- at a $2,300-per-person event for 200 people held before a $1,000-per-person reception for 350 people -- Obama previewed his argument to justify this possible future discarding of a principle.

We have created a parallel public financing system where the American people decide if they want to support a campaign they can get on the Internet and finance it, and they will have as much access and influence over the course and direction of our campaign that has traditionally been reserved for the wealthy and the powerful," Obama said.

Is he breaking a pledge?

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Original Post

By all accounts, Barack Obama raises a lot of money in small donations. But he also raises big bucks from the wealthy. Here's a photojournalist account of his fundraiser at the Getty Mansion in San Francisco this week -- one of four such events that day.

The photos alone are worth the look -- this one is my favorite for how it so captures San Francisco.

I don't really have a political comment here -- all campaigns need the wealthy donor parties -- but the blogger spent all day capturing the scene and did a very good job of it.

If you missed the story back in 2006 about Joe Lieberman campaign's allegation that the Ned Lamont campaign hacked his website the day before the CT primary, Crooks and Liars has a good rundown from the day the Lamont Campaign was cleared following an investigation by the state attorney general's office and the U.S. Attorney's office.

Today the Stamford Advocate releases an e-mail it obtained via a FOIA request showing the FBI's conclusion that Lieberman's campaign was responsible for the crash.

The FBI office in New Haven found no evidence supporting the Lieberman campaign's allegations that supporters of primary challenger Ned Lamont of Greenwich were to blame for the Web site crash.

Lieberman, who was fighting for his political life against the anti-Iraq war candidate Lamont, implied that joe2006.com was hacked by Lamont supporters.

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By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only

In a uniformly awful piece by Mark Leibovich, an "Ode" to Chris "Tweety" Matthews, we find demonstrated everything that is awful in the Media. The emptiness, the unwarranted arrogance, the banality, the silly insidery gossip and the just plain bad reporting. But I got a big kick out of this line:

Matthews’s bombast is radically at odds with the wry, antipolitical style fashioned by Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert or the cutting and finely tuned cynicism of Matthews’s MSNBC co-worker Keith Olbermann.

(Emphasis supplied.) Olbermann's finely tuned cynicism? Lack of bombast? As Tweety himself might say, Ha!

By Big Tent Democrat

Speaking for me only

The most galling aspect of what I have seen happen to the so-called progressive blogs is the shameless hypocrisy. More . . .

By Big Tent Democrat

More polling data to support Hillary Clinton's big contested state electability theory:

If the election for President were held today and the choices were John McCain, the Republican, and Hillary Clinton, the Democrat for whom would you vote?

Hillary Clinton 45%
John McCain 42%
Undecided 13%

If the election for President were held today and the choices were John McCain, the Republican, and Barack Obama, the Democrat for whom would you vote?

John McCain 48%
Barack Obama 41%
Undecided 11%

This is a poll that shows Obama within 5 points of Clinton in the primary. It is thus a relatively favorable poll for Obama. Florida, Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania. These are states where Clinton has a clear general election advantage. This is getting impossible to deny it seems to me. Of course Obama can win Pennsylvania, Ohio and perhaps Michigan. Florida I believe is not within Obama's reach. Of course, Obama can win Virginia, Colorado, etc. whereas Clinton can not. There are two distinct and valid electability arguments now. That seems impossible to deny. Here is the RCP average if you want more evidence.

Elizabeth Edwards has joined Center for American Progress, (home to the excellent Think Progress blog) as a Senior Fellow on health care issues. She'll also be blogging as part of their rapid response team at the Wonk Room.

While she's not endorsing either candidate, she tells Good Morning America tomorrow she prefers Hillary Clinton's health plan to Obama's:

In an interview with "Good Morning America's" Robin Roberts, airing Wednesday, Edwards — who recently began work as a senior fellow at the liberal think tank, the Center for American Progress — said she believed Clinton's health care plan was more inclusive than that of the Illinois senator.

"You need that universality in order to get the cost savings ... I just have more confidence in Sen. Clinton's policy than Sen. Obama's on this particular issue," she said.

Welcome, Elizabeth.

How many Americans have finished dinner and turned on the TV? Millions. How many are watching the cable news coverage of today's Iraq hearings? How many are watching Dancing With Stars?

Since I got nothing from my perusal of the coverage of the three cable news networks other than McCain flubbed by mixing up Sunnis and Shiites, which he's done before and today corrected immediately, and Hillary and Obama asked a few questions, I'm watching Dancing With Stars (with Sheryl Crow) tonight.

For those of you following the real news, here's a place for you. Please do better than the cable news networks.

Big Tent Democrat wrote earlier about today's SUSA PA poll showing Hillary with an 18 point lead over Barack Obama.

Why is it that the 3 MSNBC shows I caught a few minutes of tonight only mentioned the Quinnipiac poll showing her winning with a lesser margin, going with the meme that Obama is closing the gap big-time? None of the shows even mentioned the Survey USA poll.

From Survey USA: [more]

Via The Tartan, the student newspaper for Carnegie Mellon on a Michelle Obama campaign rally in PA:

While the crowd was indeed diverse, some students at the event questioned the practices of Mrs. Obama’s event coordinators, who handpicked the crowd sitting behind Mrs. Obama. The Tartan’s correspondents observed one event coordinator say to another, “Get me more white people, we need more white people.” To an Asian girl sitting in the back row, one coordinator said, “We’re moving you, sorry. It’s going to look so pretty, though.”

“I didn’t know they would say, ‘We need a white person here,’ ” said attendee and senior psychology major Shayna Watson, who sat in the crowd behind Mrs. Obama. “I understood they would want a show of diversity, but to pick up people and to reseat them, I didn’t know it would be so outright.”

The politics of theater. Can you imagine if a similar request for African-Americans was made by the Clinton campaign? It would lead the evening news. [Hat tip Instapundit.]

By Big Tent Democrat

The new world's greatest pollster, SUSA, has a new North Carolina poll:

Four weeks to the 05/06/08 [NC] Primary, Barack Obama is 10 points atop Hillary Clinton, exactly where Obama was two months ago, according to a SurveyUSA tracking poll . . . [r]emarkable stability within the sub-populations. Among men, over the past 2 months, Obama led by 18, by 13, and today by 15 points. Among women, Obama led by 2, by 3, and today by 6 points. Among whites, Clinton led by 19, by 17, and today by 22 points. Among blacks, Obama led by 65, by 61, and today by 75 points. . . .

(Emphasis supplied.) Again, feels right to me. But I know much less about North Carolina than say, PA.

Barack Obama explained to a fundraising crowd in California this week why his VP nominee would not need extensive foreign policy experience. It's because he has it. Was he joking? No.

Not only that, here's how he described and differentiated his experience from Hillary's to conclude he's more experienced than Hillary or McCain:

"It's ironic because this is supposedly the place where experience is most needed to be Commander-in-Chief. Experience in Washington is not knowledge of the world. This I know. When Senator Clinton brags 'I've met leaders from eighty countries'--I know what those trips are like! I've been on them. You go from the airport to the embassy. There's a group of children who do native dance. You meet with the CIA station chief and the embassy and they give you a briefing. You go take a tour of a plant that [with] the assistance of USAID has started something. And then--you go."

"You do that in eighty countries--you don't know those eighty countries. So when I speak about having lived in Indonesia for four years, having family that is impoverished in small villages in Africa--knowing the leaders is not important--what I know is the people. . . ."

"I traveled to Pakistan when I was in college--I knew what Sunni and Shia was [sic] before I joined the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. . . ."

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By Big Tent Democrat

Glenn Greenwald, Marcy Wheeler and mcjoan have been all over Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey over a phantom phone call Mukasey has been referencing in arguing for telecom immunity in FISA. Greenwald reports a major development:

I just received the following statement from the Vice Chairman of the 9/11 Commission, Rep. Lee Hamilton, in response to my inquiries last week (and numerous follow-up inquiries from readers here) about Attorney General Michael Mukasey's claims about the 9/11 attack and, specifically, about Mukasey's story that there was a pre-9/11 telephone call from an "Afghan safe house" into the U.S. that the Bush administration failed to intercept or investigate:

I am unfamiliar with the telephone call that Attorney General Mukasey cited in his appearance in San Francisco on March 27. The 9/11 Commission did not receive any information pertaining to its occurrence.

Mukasey has some splainin' to do.