The inevitable easy lay-up after yesterday’s turnover. Has anyone offered a solid theory yet for why Booker tried to call off the dogs on Bain, in a forum as prominent as “Meet the Press” no less? I realize that Democrats have a, shall we say, nuanced relationship with private equity, holding out their palms for donations with one hand while punching them in the face with the other. But Booker’s comments were wildly, wildly off-message, so much so as to draw a public rebuke from Axelrod and a thinly veiled one from The One himself. I assume his thinking was that, since he’s planning to run for higher office sooner or later, he should take advantage of his MTP spotlight to make a splash with potential Wall Street donors. He was bound to tick off a bunch of Obama campaign staff and other powerful Democrats in the process, but he knows they’ll forgive him soon enough if he looks primed to beat Christie or replace Lautenberg in the Senate. I wonder, in fact, if he didn’t intend to make that subsequent “hostage video” from the very beginning, knowing that it’d appease the O-bots but would also be seen by only a tiny fraction of the Wall Street crowd who watched him on MTP. Shrewd politicking, if so. According to Google Trends, a lot of people who didn’t know who he was yesterday are finding out today.

Two clips here, one of Romney’s ad and the other of Team Hopenchange’s tedious new six-minute epic about Bain’s rapaciousness. Exit question: Has everyone signed the RNC’s new “I Stand With Cory” petition yet? And who else thinks that might come back to haunt us when this guy is on the national ticket 12-16 years from now?