The first big piece of hype is at the HuffPo, where Sam Stein recycles some prior hype from Team Obama and the DNC:

Sixteen months after he launched his campaign for the White House, Sen. Barack Obama may, just now, be entering his campaign’s most perilous stage. Facing a rift of sorts within the Democratic Party and concerns over the scope of his political base, the Illinois Democrat is pursuing an unconventional path to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave: unlike those before him, he has pledged to redraw the electoral map by putting new, traditionally Republican states in play.

A slew of political factors will determine Obama’s success in turning red states blue. But the Senator, in no small measure, will be aided in his task by reforms that preceded his run for the presidency. For all of the hoopla surrounding the candidates, the 2008 presidential election will be the first truly national test of the viability and prescience of Howard Dean’s 50-state strategy.

Yet according to the L.A. Times (hardly an organ of the VRWC), “a wholesale recoloring of the nation’s red-and-blue electoral map is hard to fathom, strategists and independent analysts say.”  A look at the electoral maps posted at sites like Real Clear Politics, ElectoralVote and Hominid Views, and the analysis at Rasmussen Reports all tend to show a race not much different from the last two presidential cycles.  As noted here last week, the main differences are that Obama seems more competitive in the Mountain West (as Democrats have predicted they would generally, based on the changing demographics in the region), while McCain seems more competitive in the Upper Great Lakes.    Michigan has been in the McCain column for some time, but historically votes like Pennsylvania, which means the current state of play may reflect the mess that Democrats made of the Michigan primary, or perhaps the state’s poor economy is being held against incumbent Dems there.  Virginia — which has been trending Democratic in recent elections — is an opportunity for Obama.

Otherwise, the map is unlikely to be recolored in any significant sense.  Obama is the presumptive Democratic nominee in large part because his team knows how to pick its battles, and how to allocate its resources shrewdly.  Team Obama will likely focus on the states most likely to turn blue (and on weak spots in red states that could force the GOP to defend semi-marginal states).  If the overall politcal environment moves further to the Democrats, Obama may expand his target list, but he will likely be reactive on that score, not proactive.

The second big piece of hype is that Obama imposed on the DNC the same ban on money from federal lobbyists and political action committees that he has placed on his campaign.  As noted here on May 20, these rules still allow: “policy” and “campaign support” from well-connected Washington lobbyists; donations from their spouses; donations from well-connected state lobbyists and from people who work for Washington firms that do substantial lobbying; and millions upon millions from lawyers and lobbyists, the finance, insurance and real estate sector, and the healthcare sector.  Indeed, federal lobbyists are allowed to volunteer for Obama (and presumably now the DNC).  And the policy does not apply to indirect “astroturf” lobbying of the sort organized by Obama’s top strategist, David Axelrod.

The third piece of hype is Obama’s retention of Howard Dean as chairman of the Democratic National Committee, while installing another of his top strategists, Paul Tewes, to help expand the DNC staff and oversee party operations.  The spin that this is demonstrating a commitment to Dean-o’s 50 state strategy is bought by both Stein and the AP, but putting Tewes in charge of the nuts and bolts likely demonstrates a lack of confidence in Dean’s efforts to date.  Dean is left as a figurehead and will likely be assigned the role of public bad cop, so Team Obama can try to perpetuate the illusion that they are practicing some new form of politics.

(h/t Memeorandum.)

Update: The Obama campaign confirms that two other arms of the national party – the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee – will continue to accept lobby and PAC money this election. (h/t Ed Morrissey.)