I think many HRC supporters would rather see Obama lay down and be bullied into disarming himself, rather than put up a fight to win.

Even if HRC herself doesn't buy into a "2012" strategy, I'd be willing to bet a good 75% of the Hillbots on MyDD are thinking about it.

BILL CLINTON was NOT a good president.
You don't have memories of him being a good president.
He wasn't a popular president.

Its like animal farm and 1984 decided to back Obama.

Obama didn't promise to do public funding
http://blog.washingtonpost.com/fact-chec ker/2008/02/the_obama_pledge_1.html

Duh Team Obama you forgot about the internet...

Barack Obama and John Edwards made campaign finance a critical element of their critique of Hilary Clinton. Obama's deal with McCain, referred to in that NY Times story, was Obama's attempt to further his attack on Hillary Clinton as corrupt and to one up John Edwards, who took public financing in the primary.

At the time Hillary Clinton argued that while she supports public financing no Democrat should unilaterally disarm financially, and that she could not make such a deal in the face of likely attacks from 527 groups. At the time Obama and his supporters attacked her reasoning as furthering a corrupt system.

Now, of course, all of that history is forgotten by Obama and his supporters. But this is par for the course for Barack Obama, he regularly makes strong claims on principle that collapse into equivocation on closer examination. At this point I have no idea what Obama's position on public financing is. He claimed he would fight hard for a publicly financed general election, used that claim to attack his opponents, but when faced with a Republican opponent in the general who plans to limit himself to public financing Obama decides that the fight is not worth it.

I do know Hillary Clinton's position, she said that while she supports public financing the current system is broken and she would not make a commitment she could not keep. As I said here when Obama was touting his pledge Clinton is the one showing integrity.

Question asked of Sen. Obama in a signed questionnaire:

"If you are nominated for President in 2008 and your major opponents agree to forgo private funding in the general election campaign, will you participate in the presidential public financing system?"

Answer:

"Yes"

In February 2007, I proposed a novel way to preserve the strength of the public financing system in the 2008 election. My plan requires both major party candidates to agree on a fundraising truce, return excess money from donors, and stay within the public financing system for the general election. My proposal followed announcements by some presidential candidates that they would forgo public financing so they could raise unlimited funds in the general election. The Federal Election Commission ruled the proposal legal, and Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has already pledged to accept this fundraising pledge. If I am the Democratic nominee, I will aggressively pursue an agreement with the Republican nominee to preserve a publicly financed general election.

So, does he make a pledge ? "Yes" and No.  

He does say "Yes", in response to the question...which is a pledge.  But then he goes on to use some weasel words:

(a) he points to Sen. McCain's pledge
(b) next sentence is about "aggressively pursuing" an agreement
(c) thus, the "yes, I will accept public financing if my opponents also do so", is watered down to "I will pursue an agreement to preserve a publicly financed general election"

My conclusion:

(1) Sen. Obama's response was written up by a team of very smart lawyers
(2) He is lying !!

I do not agree with you one bit on this, map.

This whole thing began at a time when Barack saw himself as the underdog.  He was not raising nearly as much money as Clinton.  So he (like Joe Biden and others) decided to incorporate public financing into his stump speeches.

He made a major point out of the notion that the only way we could ever truly cut ties with special interests was to move to public financing.  He was very clear on this.  He believed that anything less than public financing was tantamount to corruption.

It was in this context that he made his pledge, or very-strong-suggestion if you prefer to think of it in those terms.

At that time, we did not know Barack Obama very well, so the question was raised: is he just saying this because he doesn't have a lot of money?  Or is he truly the reformer he is proporting to be?

Once he got a taste of special interest dollars, we got our answer.  It was just Barack, the shrewd politician looking for a way to turn a weakness (lack of funding) into a strength (image of reformer).

When McCain agreed to take Barack up on his offer, the Obama campaign did not say "now wait a minute folks, we never pledged we would do that!"  On the contrary, they said that they hoped other candidates would take up the pledge too.

So..

I have respect for you and enjoy our conversations, and I understand that Obama is your man and so you have to make some cover for him by parsing the words.  We all need to do this for the politicians we love, from time to time.  But in this case history and context are everything.  I have absolutely no doubt that he made a pledge to accept public financing, at a time when it was politically expedient for him to do so.  Was it a legally binding, swear-before-god oath?  I guess not.  But it was pretty darn clear.