Breaking now: Barack Obama, John Edwards, Bill Richardson and Joe Biden have announced they are withdrawing from the Michigan presidential primary. The primary is scheduled for January 15, and the Democratic National Committee has pledged to not seat any delegates Michigan chooses that day. Today was the deadline for candidates to decide if they wanted their names on the ballot for that January 15 primary.

As luck would have it, I was on the phone with a GOP strategist in Michigan when the news broke. His reaction: “I’m surprised they’re doing this. My prediction was that they would stay on ballot and not campaign there, but have 527s campaigning for them. The pullout tells me they don’t have confidence in their 527s. You know the Clinton one will be loaded for bear – she probably has an entire campaign off the books.”

“Local political blogs on the left do not appreciate that they’re raising money here but not campaigning here,” the strategist continued.

Could this have a long-term impact? “It used to be that the closest margin in a statewide race was 17,000 votes. Then we had an attorney general’s race decided by 5200 votes. Will this affect five percentage points? Probably not. But will 5,000 people be ticked off by this? Maybe.”