Hillary who?

Good for Obama. There is only so long we can afford to ignore the general election. If we let McCain get a free ride for the next several months, we only make our work that much harder in the fall. Both Sen Clinton and Sen Obama should be training at least half their fire on Sen McCain by now.

I would keep hitting him on the Pakistan comment since it undercuts his national security bonafides AND chips into the notion that he's all "straight talk".

Another 'engagement': Op-Ed by Obama in todays USA Today re: his 'pledge' to accept campaign financing (copied below).

(How long has is been since I felt this spontaneous reaction of pride and approval at something a president has done or said? I honestly can't recall... pre-Monica, at any rate. But Obama has caused that reaction several times during this campaign. It's surprising ... and very, very nice.)

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I will seek a good faith pact that results in real spending limits.
By Barack Obama

In 2007, shortly after I became a candidate for president, I asked the Federal Election Commission to clear any regulatory obstacles to a publicly funded general election in 2008 with real spending limits. The commission did that. But this cannot happen without the agreement of the parties' eventual nominees. As I have said, I will aggressively pursue such an agreement if I am my party's nominee.

I do not expect that a workable, effective agreement will be reached overnight. The campaign-finance laws are complex, and filled with loopholes that can render meaningless any agreement that is not solidly constructed.

As USA TODAY has critically observed, outside groups have come to spend tens of millions of dollars "independently," while the candidates they favor with these ads "wink and nod" at this activity. There is an even greater risk of this runaway, sham independent spending now that the Supreme Court has wrongly opened the door to more of it in a recent decision.

I propose a meaningful agreement in good faith that results in real spending limits. The candidates will have to commit to discouraging cheating by their supporters; to refusing fundraising help to outside groups; and to limiting their own parties to legal forms of involvement. And the agreement may have to address the amounts that Senator McCain, the presumptive nominee of his party, will spend for the general election while the Democratic primary contest continues.

In l996, an agreement on spending limits was reached by Sen. John Kerry and Gov. William Weld in their Massachusetts Senate contest. They agreed to limits on overall and personal spending and on a mechanism to account for outside spending. The agreement did not accomplish all these candidates hoped, but they believe that it made a substantial difference in controlling outside groups as well as their own spending.

We can have such an agreement this year, and it could hold up. I am committed to seeking such an agreement if that commitment is matched by Senator McCain. When the time comes, we will talk and our commitment will be tested.

I will pass that test, and I hope that the Republican nominee passes his.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., is seeking his party's presidential nomination.

Good response to the attempt by McCain (and Hillary) to make him look bad on this.

Most interesting is he has dropped the qualifier about not yet being the nominee, not wanting to be presumptuous, etc. He's leaving Hillary in the dust. She's going to have to clamor more and more for his acknowledgement. In other words, he's making her look irrelevant.