For you serious political junkies, The New Republic's Noam Scheiber has published a fascinating profile of David Plouffe, Barack Obama's publicity-averse campaign manager. You'd be excused for forgetting that Plouffe's the top guy, given the high visibility of "strategist" David Axelrod (Plouffe's colleague in pre-Obama political consulting); this inside-outside division of labor is a deliberate arrangement they worked out in advance.

Scheiber's take on Plouffe's key role focuses on the Obama campaign's success in organizing caucus states from Iowa on, and also on its efforts to make "pledged delegates" the key media optic for measuring success in the Democratic contest. There's not anything about Plouffe's general election strategy if Obama wins the nomination, but you have to give Scheiber a lot of credit for getting any sort of coherent profile done of an operative who refuses to be interviewed.