[Big_Monkey]

"Schmidt has “come out” recently. It is now obvious that this was all a joke on us.

I'm getting the feeling that a lot of these hired-gun, campaign managers aren't true-believers in either ideology, with perhaps the exceptions of Rove and Carville.

I don't know exactly how much Schmidt made, but it had to be north of $4 million. When Hilary fired Mark Penn in the middle of her primary run, she already owed him $8 million.

Schmidt in this interview all but says that Obama is dreamy. And as someone pointed "a fool in paradise" pointed out, Obama was anything but an organic, grass roots candidate. He was incredibly well funded, well scripted and had overt and covert peripheral support from sources both foreign and domestic. Schmidt is either too stupid to understand this, or too in love to care.

[exit82]

Agree on all counts.

[wideminded]

When Hilary fired Mark Penn in the middle of her primary run, she already owed him $8 million.

Apparently a lot of Democrat campaigns allow the campaign managers to take a cut of the total amounts spent on advertising. That was part of the downfall of Howard Dean. I never heard anything about the Obama campaign doing this though.