Don't Tell Mama, Clinton-ites For Obama

But on the flip side of such a tight-knit team spirit is an apprehension in those who have moved on to greener professional pastures. The group has an ongoing joke that if any of them is ever found bound and gagged with an Obama t-shirt under three tons of garbage at Fresh Kills, the others will know who did it.

Behind the jokes, however, is a real fear of retribution. The former staffers all say even though they held relatively low level positions, they believe the Clintons and their senior advisors would remember a slight such as publicly supporting a rival, and potentially hold it against them in the future.

"[It's] the politics of persecution where if you stray, the iron fist is gonna come down on you," says P. "I've heard that if anyone speaks on the record against Hillary, they will not work on the Clinton campaign after the nomination. I know staffers who have volunteered at Obama events out of curiosity, and they received threats they wouldn't be hired ...I mean that's the way they roll . They value loyalty above anything else, above intelligence, anything else."

And yet many members of the Clintons' former team have publicly gone over to Obama's side and don't appear to have suffered consequences. They include longtime Clinton friend and lawyer Greg Craig, who now advises Obama, and former State Department official Susan Rice, now one of Obama's leading foreign policy advisors. Former Clinton Justice official Eric Holder, who supports Obama, told the Boston Globe in October, "I say this with sadness, but it is nevertheless a reality. My feelings of loyalty are outweighed by my concern about the world my kids are going to live in."

They seem to have maintained good relations with the Clintons. Nevertheless, would they be welcome back into the fold should Hillary clinch the nomination?

Candidate Choice

Although the debate-watchers admit to being turned off by the Clintons' aggressive campaign strategies in South Carolina and Nevada, it's not the couple's bare-knuckle style of campaigning that's led to their defection. As P. puts it, "I don't think any of us are sissies, we don't think politics is like touch football. We're not naïve, we understand it's a full body contact sport."