Simply genius.

Via Oliver Willis and an Obama campaign email, Barack Obama and his supporters just blew my mind.

The Obama campaign announced this morning that it had raised a record $150 million last month, and had added 632,000 new donors to its total.

The amount shattered the campaign’s previous record from August. The McCain campaign also had a record-breaking month in August, but is now operating with the $84 million provided by public financing for the general cycle and assistance from the Republican National Committee under certain limits.

What is even more remarkable about this number is that the Conventional Wisdom, likely set by a brilliant whisper campaign from the Obama communications department, was that Obama had raised just over $100 million — a startling number in itself. The Obama campaign play-faked their September number for $50 million and it’s good for 6 points.

Simply amazing at every possible level of consideration — the volume of donors, the quantitity of donations, the brilliance of how it was revealed to campaign supporters in an email and video message from David Ploufe. Color me impressed.

Barack Obama roasts himself, John McCain, DC politicians, and, again, John McCain. Pretty awesome stuff.

Shorter David Brooks:

MoDo and Gail “Lil’ MoDo” Collins told me about this thing called pop psychology in which columnists with no backing in psychoanalysis nor psychotherapy pretend to know what’s inside the minds of politicians. Turns out they’re onto something.

I’ve avoided writing about the Democratic presidential primary for the better part of the last month. Staying out of daily pie fights has been good for my health.

I’m going to break that streak in reference to Barack Obama’s alleged insult of working class Americans in describing how they have been repeatedly disappointed by the political leadership they elect. It’s scary to think of how much ink and how many pixels have been spent on this comment, perceived by the press as a gaffe and the Clinton and McCain campaigns as an insult to working Americans. Amidst all the commentary on this I’ve read, I think Rafael Noboa has the best take on why this wasn’t an insult and why those suggesting are performing the real insult now. Raf writes:

You know what’s an even greater insult to them — hell, to me, because I am those folks?

Putting our lives on the line to fight a war that we never should have fought.

Keeping our lives on that line for no greater reason than…well, there’s no reason, really, just some sad and twisted contrivance that passes for a policy.

Choosing to adopt a law that makes it harder for folks to get financial relief when placed in hardship by factors beyond their control. My parents went bankrupt when my stepfather lost his job during the first Bush recession — did this make them less upstanding citizens?

Waiting not once, not twice, but three times to notice that American homeowners were in trouble and spell out a plan to help them out — and still failing to do so.

I could go on — flag amendment? torture? — but my point is clear. To pretend to be some sort of champion, some sort of tribune for me, my friends and our interests when time and again these folks have acted against those interests is, in itself, an insult to our intelligence and our integrity.

Right on. The rest of Noboa’s post is worth a read, as he contextualizes the real insult and pushes back hard on those who are infantilizing America’s working class in their attacks on Obama.

And with that, hopefully I can go another month without wading back into the presidential primary race.

I can’t decide if this quote, from a piece on Obama’s rhetoric, is monumentally depressing or incredibly patronizing.

“If you’re an unemployed steelworker, a former coal miner, you want to know about job training, who pays your health care,” Dr. Madonna said. “Obama’s speeches are uplifting but without much specificity, and that’s a tough sell for working people who don’t live in a world of ideas.”

I suppose it can be both.