Democratic Party message discipline, as exemplified by defenses on Bain Capital and private equity.

President Bill Clinton

Cory Booker

Ed Rendell

Deval Patrick

Harold Ford Jr.

Let’s be clear. While these high level Democrats – most of whom are currently or have been in the past top-level surrogates for President Obama – are saying something different from the President’s re-election campaign, this is not an example of a lack of message discipline. Or rather, the lack of discipline is coming from the Obama campaign. These Democrats, as leading elected and former elected officials, know that private equity is a crucial piece of the funding infrastructure for the Democratic Party. These gentlemen will not bite the hand that feeds them. The Obama campaign is breaking with what is clearly the party’s orthodoxy on private equity and it isn’t even doing so that convincingly. But it has been enough to shake out the party stalwarts, even the Big Dog himself, to say that Obama is wrong and Bain is good and proper. It’s pretty sickening to watch.