Those who predicted that Hillary would hit Reverend Wright during her appearance on Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor were right.

Fox just aired a promo of the interview, which has been recorded and is set to air tonight, and in it, O'Reilly pushes Hillary to attack Wright -- and she obliges. Take a look...

More of the interview as we get it. Full transcript of this snippet after the jump.

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This is fun. A Democratic National Committee spokesperson confirms to me that the DNC, somewhat puckishly, asked Fox News if the network would run its ad attacking McCain over his 100-years Iraq talk -- and that Fox has agreed.

The reason this is amusing is that the Republican National Committee has been claiming that the ad is misleading and constitutes illegal coordination with the Dem campaigns, and has demanded that networks refrain from running it.

But the RNC's argument is apparently so specious that not even Fox accepted it.

So why did Hillary agree to go on The O'Reilly Factor and will she be taking on O'Reilly in some way, as Obama was criticized for not doing during his interview with Fox's Chris Wallace?

I just posed these questions to Hillary spokesperson Howard Wolfson. He would only say:

"We've had a standing offer from them for a while -- Hillary obviously doesn't agree with Bill O'Reilly on many issues, but he has a large audience of politically engaged people."

They may be politically engaged, but are they persuadable in any way? Some 2004 polling suggested that Fox viewers supported Bush over Kerry by 88%-7% and gave Bush more votes than conservatives, white evangelicals, gun owners, and supporters of the Iraq War.

Meanwhile, a senior adviser to Hillary, asked whether she'd be taking on O'Reilly in some fashion, said, on condition of anonymity:

"That's not the plan."

Late Update: MoveOn, a major Obama supporter that hit the Illinois Senator over his Fox appearance and has led the charge against Fox, emails over this response, complete with hyperlink:

"With no plan to call out Fox's Republican agenda, Senator Clinton's appearance on 'The O'Reilly Factor' does nothing more than legitimize a network that will then use that credibility to smear Democrats and progressive ideas in 2008. She's pandering to a small audience that is not persuadable."

The Fox News Sunday interview is over. And Obama didn't take on Fox at all in any meaningful sense.

On Friday, a senior Obama adviser responded to criticism of his decision to go on Fox with a bunch of tough talk, saying that Obama knew full well that Fox has been at the forefront of spreading "the most specious of rumors" (i.e., lies) about Obama and vowing that he would "take Fox on."

Well, it didn't happen. Obama definitely pushed back hard on some of Chris Wallace's questions, but at no point did he draw attention to Fox's spreading of lies about him or critique the network in a general sense.

Obama had a perfect opening to do this, too. Wallace pressed him repeatedly about Jeremiah Wright and the bogus "flag pin" nonsense -- a perfect set-up for Obama to point out that Fox had obsessed about both these issues to an obscene degree and that Fox had been at the forefront of spreading the Obama-is-a-Muslim lies.

To be clear, Obama wasn't obliged to go after Fox. But a senior adviser said Obama would, as a way of quieting criticism of him. And he didn't.

This will likely further dismay liberal bloggers who had worked very hard to get Dems to boycott Fox as a way of deligitimizing the network and who already criticized Obama for agreeing to appear in the first place.

Obama turned in a perfectly solid performance. He probably succeeded in making a positive impression on many voters he might otherwise not have reached. But the broadcast was clearly a big victory for Fox and Chris Wallace, too.

Indeed, at the very end of the interview, Wallace told Obama to not "be a stranger." Obama's response:

"I won't."

Late Update: Matt Stoller has some strong criticism of Obama's appearance.

Late Late Update: Several of you are arguing that there was something ambiguous about what the senior Obama adviser said on Friday. Here's what the adviser said:

"He is going on their Sunday show to take Fox on..."

Keep in mind that this adviser said this specifically to mollify critics who worried that Obama's decision to appear on Fox would help legitimize the network and hence hurt Dems overall. There's no ambiguity here to speak of: The adviser was telling these critics not to worry, that the reason Obama was going on was to "take Fox on."

And this just didn't happen in any meaningful sense. When Wallace brought up Wright and the flag-pin, for instance, Obama didn't point out that these bogus stories have been pushed relentlessly by Fox or that the network has pushed the Obama-is-a-Muslim lies. Again: Obama was not obliged to take on the network. But either way, the bottom line is that he didn't do it. Partly because of this, the interview -- which was a solid performance by Obama -- was also a victory for Fox.

In his interview with Fox News Sunday, which is airing right now, Obama said flatly that he didn't think there's been a deliberate effort by the Clintons to racialize the campaign.

Obama was asked by Fox's Chris Wallace whether he agreed with James Clyburn's recent criticism of Bill Clinton on this score, or whether he thinks there's been a deliberate effort by the Clintons in general to play the "race card" in the campaign.

"I don't think there's been a deliberate effort," Obama said, adding that he takes the former President "at his word."

Pressed by Wallace on whether Bill's South Carolina comparison of Obama to Jesse Jackson constituted racializing the campaign, the furthest Obama would go was to say that Bill was "somewhat dismissive."

Separately, recall that a senior Obama adviser promised that Obama would "take Fox on" in today's interview. It hasn't happened yet, but stay tuned.

It's starting. Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake, Matt Stoller of OpenLeft, and Joe Sudbay of AmericaBlog all blast Hillary for accepting an invitation to debate on Fox. She'll be taking a lot of criticism over this.

Obama won't say whether he'll be accepting the invite. "We'll figure out our schedule, including any debates, soon," Obama spokesperson Bill Burton tells me. What will Obama do? Nixing the debate gives Obama a big opening to outflank Hillary with the netroots, but Obama has already appeared on Fox, and this doesn't seem like the type of battle Obama likes.

It's worth noting that here's an instance where John Edwards' absence from the race will be felt. You can bet he'd be raising his voice against participating. Without a major, top-tier Dem candidate giving voice to the case against Fox, it will be that much easier for Hillary and Obama to both accept the network's invitation.

Fox News is not impressed by Mitt Romney's defiance of their edict against campaigns using Fox footage in campaign ads and Web sites.

The Huffington Post reports that Chris Silvestri, Fox's Vice President of Legal & Business Affairs, has responded to the Romney campaign's contention that their latest ad and others constitute fair use.

"The Romney campaign using footage as part of the 'Mitt TV' section of their website goes well beyond a 'Fair Use' exception to U.S. Copyright Law and we will respond accordingly," Silvestri wrote in a statement obtained by the HuffPo.

The Politicker asks the key question here: "Will the Romney campaign live to regret alienating Fox? Guess we'll find out."

Mitt Romney's latest TV ad breaks the edict from Fox News — it's using video from their debate two weeks ago, in which he quite pointedly likened Hillary Clinton's experience to that of an intern:

Romney, like all the candidates, got a cease-and-desist letter from Fox News in the wake of John McCain's ad, ordering the candidates to not use any Fox video content in their ads or Web sites.

This is interesting: A coalition of right-wing bloggers and MoveOn that helped force several networks to allow public use of their political debate footage last spring has just launched a similar campaign against Fox News.

Fox recently sent letters to all the GOP Presidential candidates "cease and desist" from using Fox footage in any way. In response, the right-wing bloggers and MoveOn are demanding that Fox rescind these cease and desist orders and allow public use of its debate footage.

In a press release just blasted out by MoveOn, RedState.com founder Eric Erickson, a prominent right-wing blogger, is quoted saying: "Already FOX is viewed as a partisan network by the Democrats, who will not use that forum for debates...Every other news organization has liberated their debate footage and FOX should either be no different or no longer have the privilege of airing debates."

The primary concern of the right-wing bloggers seems to be that if they can't use Fox debate footage on their sites, it hampers their ability to comment on the GOP primary and on politics in general. MoveOn, for its part, opposes Fox because its refusal to allow use of debate footage could "stifle debate."

One reason this campaign is interesting is that similar version of this alliance has had success before. After it launched a similar campaign last spring and gained considerable attention, CNN, ABC and NBC all agreed to allow use of its debate footage.

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