Via Joan McCarter at Daily Kos, you should check out this nifty NPR interactive map of the small, incestuous world of “independent” organizations spending mega-millions to attack Democratic candidates.
The consultants who run these groups, and the donors who finance their nasty attack ads, constitute a self-appointed shadow political system that operates outside virtually all the rules that govern the parties and candidates. Some of the folks involved have backgrounds and views that belong at a Halloween Party rather than any conventional political party.
This is the sort of thing that political scientists will be studying about Campaign 2010 for many years to come.