At this link, courtesy of the Detroit Free Press, you can see a panning 360-degree crowd shot from last night's Obama rally at Joe Louis Arena in Detroit.

Something that's neat about a panoramic view is that it cuts through all the stage management.  No one can say well, they arranged the cameras to avoid all the empty seats.  No one can say well, they strategically positioned the crowd to make it look more diverse in terms of race, age, or gender.  What you get is simple reality.

So you can draw your own conclusions.  For my part, I thought it was a pretty impressive turnout, the kind of numbers it usually takes a world-renowned megaband like the Decembrists to generate.  Truth be told, I barely noticed the crowd as I was too focused on all those beautiful Stanley Cup banners.

I have never seen such a self-destructive display in politics as what I saw today from the Obama campaign and the members of the RBC.

After all the self-righteous preening about "the rules," after Donna Brazile invoked her mother's lessons about how you have to play by the rules and how people who don't play by the rules are cheaters, she and the other members of the RBC proceeded to ignore every rule in the book.

Let me get some disclaimers out of the way up front.  First, I am a Clinton supporter.  Second, unless a comet strikes, I expect to be voting for Barack Obama in November.  Third, who Obama chooses as VP does not affect my vote; I plan to be blindly loyal to the Democratic Party regardless.

Fourth, this diary is not a joke.  I can already hear people saying, "Don't you realize Hagel votes with the Bush agenda 95% of the time???"  Yes, of course I do.  Let me explain why I don't think it matters, and why I believe Hagel would be Obama's smartest choice for a running mate.

Josh Marshall flags this eyebrow-raiser from John McCain's trip to the Middle East...

Speaking to reporters in Amman, the Jordanian capital, McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives "taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back."

Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was "common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that's well known. And it's unfortunate."

Did you know al-Qaeda is training in Iran?  Me neither!  In fact, I would have thought it highly unlikely that an extremist Sunni group like al-Qaeda would get much help from a Shiite nation like Iran, but what do I know.

Obama supporter Matthew Yglesias writes:

[Wright will] hurt him electorally because Obama's going to have a hard time explaining what I take to be the truth, namely that his relationship with Trinity has been a bit cynical from the beginning. After all, before Obama was a half-black guy running in a mostly white country he was a half-white guy running in a mostly black neighborhood. At that time, associating with a very large, influential, local church with black nationalist overtones was a clear political asset (it's also clear in his book that it made him, personally, feel "blacker" to belong to a slightly kitschy black church). Since emerging onto a larger stage, it's been the reverse and Obama's consistently sought to distance himself from Wright, disinviting him from his campaign's launch, analogizing him to a crazy uncle who you love but don't listen to, etc. The closest analogy would probably be to Hillary Clinton's inconsistent accounting of where she's from (bragging about midwestern roots when trying to win in Iowa, promptly forgetting those roots when explaining away a loss in Illinois, developing a sporadic affection for New York sports teams) -- banal, mildly cynical shifts of association as context changes.

I don't think this requires any comment from me, but the Clinton campaign makes its case here, here, and here.

On the blogs, the difference between our two candidates is generally obvious: one is good and the other evil.  But out in the real world, the difference doesn't look so clear to everyone.  In the debates, when the candidates are asked to talk about their differences, it's about the finer points of health care mandates and driver's licenses.  It's about a vote on the war from 2002 or a vote on credit card interest from 2005.

And certainly, there is no disagreement between the candidates as to the fundamental precepts of the Democratic Party: a belief in the common good and a belief in government as a positive force in people's lives.  Despite all the chatter about which of them loves Reagan more, obviously neither of our candidates would agree with Reagan's claim that government is part of the problem, not part of the solution.

But I think there is a fundamental, philosophical difference between our candidates, that was crystallized at one point in tonight's debate:

This weekend, famed outer of CIA agents Robert Novak dropped a juicy rumor:

Illinois Democrats close to Sen. Barack Obama are quietly passing the word that John Edwards would be named attorney general in an Obama administration.

Any truth to it?  As an Edwards fan, I'd love it.  But of all the people you'd want in the loop on this sort of thing, you'd think Robert Novak would be about the last choice.  So I certainly didn't take his word for it.