Campaign News

With the general election officially underway, I thought I'd take a look at some miscellaneous campaign stories.

One of the more underreported stories of the week, in my opinion, is the fact that Sen. Obama becoming the nominee makes him the de-facto leader of the DNC. Howard Dean will remain chairman, of course, as there's no need to replace him and both he and Obama share the same 50-state strategy vision, but Obama staffers are moving into key DNC positions. The biggest change Obama made right away is a very welcome sign-

Barack Obama's consolidation of the levers of Democratic party power continue: the Democratic National Committee says it will no longer accept donations from lobbyists or members of political action committees. "We are trying to be seamless with the Obama campaign," a party official said. The official said the decision was jointly made. Previous contributions from PACs and lobbyists won't be returned; future ones will...

...Obama aides say that they expect fundraising at the DNC to pick up dramatically as Obama and the campaign begin to raise money into the joint fundraising accounts.

Obama's fundraising powers, of course, make taking lobbying $$$ unnecessary.

Meanwhile, in a sign of good faith, Sen. McCain has decided to join Obama in his work on a bill "opening federal government contracts to public scrutiny".

And that's not the only area where McCain is looking to ride Obama's coattails. He's also co-opting Obama's campaign slogans and logo designs on his website. Now that's imitation you can believe in!

Sen. McCain also has a new TV ad. It turns out... he totally doesn't love war at all!

Finally, Fox News is just really running on fumes at this point.