Alongside the aura of invincibility, the Clinton team projected something else [to fund-raisers]: a tacit message that it was time for big-dollar Democrats to choose between Obama and Hillary. On the bus or off the bus. No hedging allowed. And apostates would pay a price. For some in the party, the tactic struck a nerve. “It’s almost like a shakedown—you’re with us or you’re not,” Jim Neal, a North Carolina investment banker who was on an early conference call with McAuliffe, told the Times. “I find the squeeze, this early, to be quite vulgar … It’s a bullying tactic.”

Replace "fund-raisers" with "superdelegates" and you could have had that exact paragraph in a story last month. It's almost impossible to believe that we've been rethinking the same story lines for over a year now. In his Time piece, Klein rejoices that it's almost over: "A general-election campaign between John McCain and Barack Obama doesn't need any hype," he says. "It won't be boring." It's funny, we have no idea what boring is anymore.

Klein on Obama [Time]
Money Chooses Sides [NYM]

Photo illustration: Everett Bogue; Photo: Getty Images

• Jimmy Carter: In some ways he's the obvious choice. The last Democratic president save one, a respected party elder. But his recent meeting with Hamas coupled with today's gasoline prices, evoking the misery of 1979, make this unlikely.
• Nancy Pelosi and/or Harry Reid: They've stayed studiously neutral throughout the race, a few hints from Pelosi that she's a closet Obamaphile aside, but both said they are anxious to get the nominee race settled well before the convention. They have a new Congress to get elected, and all this focus on the presidential race is limiting their ability to do that.