Greetings from Berkeley, where I will appear tonight at a panel discussion on the Bush presidency — 7 p.m. at 155 Dwinelle Hall on the University of California Berkeley campus, open to the public, especially Corner readers.

Ben Smith at the Politico has a good story today about a $40 million plan by Democratic outside groups to attack John McCain in the coming months while Democrats try to get their act together. The plan will be headed by David Brock, the former right-wing hitman turned left-wing hitman. Smith reports that Brock and Paul Begala met this week with George Soros — he of wanting to “level the playing field” — at Soros’ Manhattan apartment to go over the plan. Brock is said to be able to raise money for the effort where earlier groups failed.

I worked at the American Spectator during Brock’s final months there, and the thing that has always impressed me about him was that he wouldn’t know a principle if it hit him in the face but he had a remarkable ability to convince people to give him money. In the early 1990s, after his Anita Hill and Troopergate stories, if memory serves, he got the Spectator to agree to a three-year, $500,000 contract — an unheard of amount of money for a magazine of that type. He then made good investments in real estate in Georgetown and the Delaware beaches. Then he got the Spectator to pay for researchers to help him write the book on Hillary Clinton that allowed him to work his way into Mrs. Clinton’s circle of operatives. Later, when he publicly turned left, Brock convinced a number of Democratic donors to put up money for Media Matters for America. I remember Suzy Tompkins Buell, a loyal 527 donor, telling me that Brock had won her over with his impassioned recounting of his time in the conservative world and his call for donations to fight right-wing media misinformation. And now, Brock has won over the big kahuna of Democratic outside groups, George Soros himself. I think too often conservatives viewed Brock as simply a traitor — not that there is anything inaccurate about that — but failed to see that his real talent was as a fundraiser and businessman.