Yesterday, in response to the not-surprising news that Howard Dean will soon step down as Democratic Party chief, I wrote a piece suggesting that David Plouffe, who so competently and successfully managed Barack Obama's presidential campaign, should be Dean's replacement. After that piece came out, Plouffe said he won't be taking this job. (He declined to say what else he might be doing.)

So that brings us back to the question: who will head up the DNC? One name floated yesterday was Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri. I had noted that the party needed an uber-operative who could build a kick-asss operation more than an elected officials who could do well on the talk show circuit. Also, would being head of the DNC help McCaskill in her still (but barely) red state? As of yet, there's no telling if McCaskill is in serious contention for the position--or even really wants it.

A senior Democratic strategist tells me that the top priority of the new chief Dem has to be to "modernize and revolutionize" the party--especially the state parties. He calls the state units the "largest progressive assets that are underutilized in the country. We need an urban renewal program for them and the party." Moreover, he adds, the news of Dean's departure at this point in the transition "was not helpful. But when Rahm Emanuel became White House chief of staff it meant Dean was dead. Rahm hates Dean."

So who else may be in the running? Others mentioned so far include New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson and Virginia Governor Tim Kaine. Says this senior Democrat: "My sense is that nobody connected to the DNC really has any good ideas about what to do."

And this is not a job that can just be handed to someone. It's an elected position. The next chair (or co-chairs) will have to win over party committee members and state party chairs. Usually a president gets a big say in who leads the party. "But no one controls the DNC," this Democratic leader says. "It's a very unruly and decentralized beast." In 1993, Bill Clinton had a candidate to be party chair, yet five others ran. In the end, Clinton's man did triumph.

It might be best for Barack Obama and his crew to move quickly to pick someone who can easily win over the DNC. In the middle of a presidential transition, the Democrats do not want a messy transition at party headquarters.

Here's a dispatch I posted at MotherJones.com about a press conference held on Wednesday afternoon....

David Plouffe looks ready to roll. At a Washington, D.C., press conference, Barack Obama's campaign manager surveyed the general election political landscape for several dozen reporters, and he spoke confidently, like a man who will have the money to do all that he believes is necessary and optional. Which he is, because he can expect to have $200 to $300 million to deploy--now that Obama has decided to sidestep the public financing system (which awards $85 million to party nominees) and raise much more from individual donors.

Plouffe repeatedly noted that the Obama campaign will have the resources to challenge John McCain in practically every state and to pursue multiple strategies for victory. That is, the campaign can attempt to win by holding on to every state John Kerry won in 2004 and swinging only Ohio from R to D, or it could win by bagging Iowa plus Colorado and New Mexico. Or how about losing Pennsylvania but winning Virginia and North Carolina? Plouffe claimed that Obama was already competitive in states that are not traditionally Democratic in presidential races, such as Alaska and Montana and that he can make a run at McCain in Georgia (where Libertarian Party candidate Bob Barr, a former GOP congressman from Georgia, might draw votes from McCain). Plouffe has the money to invest in a number of game plans--to run ads and set up staff in various states. And as the election approaches, he will be able to determine which states to stick with or abandon. He's in a candy store with plenty of allowance.

How will he use the money? Plouffe told the reporters that a top priority is to "shift the electorate." He wants to spend a lot on registering African-Americans and voters under the age of 40 to "readjust the electorate" in assorted states so the voting pools in these states are more pro-Obama. "A couple of points here, a couple of points there," he says, and red states can go blue. Especially smaller states, where a swing of 10,000 votes could be decisive. And, he emphasized, his campaign will have sufficient resources to identify the people it needs to register, contact them directly, and mount targeted get-out-the-vote efforts. The campaign, he said, is not just going to set up registration tables outside community events.

And there's more. Plouffe boasted that Obama's campaign will not have only an edge in volume (more volunteers, more organizers, more door-knocking, more phone-banking, more precinct work, more advertising); it will have an advantage in quality. There's a "persuasion army" working on behalf of Obama, he said. He pointed to polls showing that Obama supporters and Democrats are far more enthusiastic about this election than McCain supporters and Republicans. Consequently, Obama persuaders--supporters who volunteer or merely talk up Obama among friends and relatives--are likely to do a better job than McCain persuaders. This is "a hard thing to quantify," Plouffe remarked. But he added, "we think it means a lot."

It was an impressive performance: more cash, more volunteers, more ads, more opportunities to go on offense, more enthusiasm, more...everything. And when I asked Plouffe about possible racial bias among voters, he said that based on the campaign's own research, "we certainly don't believe it will be a major impact....It's not a barrier for the people who will be deciding this election." In other words, voters who won't vote for Obama because he is biracial are the same voters who wouldn't vote for any Democratic nominee. Is Plouffe right about that? Well, he seemed confident. But, then, he seemed confident about everything. He did acknowledge that all elections have unforeseen twists and turns. Yet whatever comes, he and Obama will not have the excuse, "if only we had more money, we could have tried...." Plouffe essentially said that he is going to play every angle he can imagine. And that's not spin.

Updated with video below.

I'm not naive about how politicians use dramatic license to make a point. Earlier today, I noted that Barack Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, went too far in slamming Hillary Clinton by claiming she supports "George Bush's policy of non-engagement." Though she helped to enable Bush's war in Iraq, this just ain't so.

But Plouffe's truth-stretching is nothing compared to the whopper that Hillary Clinton has been telling about a trip she took to Bosnia in 1996. Days ago, she described the visit this way:

I remember landing under sniper fire. There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.

The "Factchecker" column of The Washington Post examined this claim on Friday--and showed it to be an outright falsehood. As in completely made up. As in a lie?

The problem is, the trip was covered by dozens of reporters, including the Post's John Pomfret, and none of them saw anything like Clinton reported:

A review of nearly 100 news accounts of her visit shows that not a single newspaper or television station reported any security threat to the First Lady. "As a former AP wire service hack, I can safely say that it would have been in my lead had anything like that happened," said Pomfret....

Far from running to an airport building with their heads down, Clinton and her party were greeted on the tarmac by smiling U.S. and Bosnian officials. An eight-year-old Moslem girl, Emina Bicakcic, read a poem in English. An Associated Press photograph of the greeting ceremony, above, shows a smiling Clinton bending down to receive a kiss....

You can see CBS News footage of the arrival ceremony here. The footage shows Clinton walking calmly out of the back of the C-17 military transport plane that brought her from Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany.

Others who were present--former Major General Bill Nash, comedian Sinbad--also recall that danger was not near during this event. And in her autobiography, Clinton did not mention such drama at Tuzla. The "Factchecker" awarded her four Pinocchio's for her claim. That's the most a politician can earn.

So why did Hillary Clinton make up such a tale? This is not an instance when a politician did not tell the truth in order to prevent disclosure of negative information. Such un-truthtelling--though not forgivable--are understandable. But to cook up a dramatic but easy-to-check story? There were scores of witnesses to the event. Did she think she could get away with her fiction?

This is different from saying (as Clinton has) that you were actually voting for diplomacy when you voted for the Iraq war resolution. That's spin. And what Plouffe said about Clinton in his fundraising letter was typical campaign BS. Clinton's Balkans tale, though, may be worse and even more troubling than such conventional political prevarication. Is she cracking under the pressure? Does she really believe what she said? Her supporters better hope not.

And here's the video:

During a conference call on Wednesday morning, David Plouffe, the campaign manager for Barack Obama, pointed to what he called a "warning sign" for Democrats: the exit polls from Mississippi, where Obama on Tuesday beat Hillary Clinton 61 to 37 percent. Plouffe noted that when Democratic voters who participated in this primary were asked "which candidate do you think is honest and trustworthy," 50 percent said Clinton was not. Seventy percent of the Democrats polled said Obama was honest and trustworthy. That's a 20-point integrity gap--and its among Democrats. Certainly, many Democrats elsewhere--such as in states where Clinton won big--do not share this distrust of Clinton. But Plouffe is right: numbers like these ought to give Democrats, be they voters or super-delegates, pause.

Another interesting factoid from the exit polls: who's the more vicious candidate. The exit pollsters asked Democrats in Mississippi if either Obama or Clinton has attacked "the other unfairly." Sixty-one percent said that Clinton has; 39 percent said that Obama has. So in addition to the integrity gap, there was a 22-point nasty gap. Again, Democratic voters in states that went for Clinton may not see this the same way. And given that the Mississippi Democratic electorate included many African Americans, this number may reflect a sentiment held more by black Democrats than white Democrats. (Remember South Carolina?) Nevertheless, all this is food for thought for Democrats: do they want a presidential candidate that many voters within their own ranks consider unfair and not honest?

For more of a breakdown of the Mississippi vote--particularly the racial component (short answer: Clinton won whites; Obama won blacks)--see my colleague Jonathan Stein's posting at MotherJones.com.