Zack Exley makes the case that the Hillary 1984 ad was the work of a professional campaign. His argument that the creator otherwise would have come to light strikes me as the weaker part of his argument, but it is interesting that the ad’s maker, as Exley puts it, “knew exactly what election law lines not to cross, stopping just short of express advocacy. Why didn’t the ad say, “Vote Obama”?”

Patrick Ruffini is a skeptic. “No campaign could have produced this. I don’t think David Geffen did either. It’s too subtle and under-produced by Hollywood standards. And that’s what makes it so deadly effective.”

It seems likely that since the debut of it on YouTube, every campaign has been looking at it and asked, “Hey, is there some way we can do our own version of that?”

David All, GOP tech-guru extraordinaire, is fairly certain it wasn’t a Republican. There’s an F-bomb laden response that refers to green footballs and red states, suggesting the creator is pretty familiar with blogs.

UPDATE: The mystery is solved. ParkRidge47 outs himself here.

He’s resigned from his employer, Blue State Digital, an internet company that provides technology to several presidential campaigns, including Richardson’s, Vilsack’s, and Obama’s. He insists the Obama campaign had no idea he created this ad. (His employer is telling ABC News that he was fired.)

Here’s an interesting question. If the most buzz-generating ad of the season was made as a volunteer effort, doesn’t that make one doubt the value of the professionals?

I love the comment from one of the HuffPo commenters: “So no, the future of politics is not in the hands of the general public. The future of politics is in the hands of website developers.”