James Carville, Paul Begala, and Robert Zimmerman have lost their "analyst" spots on CNN, perhaps as a result of persistent complaints from the Obama campaign. Greg Sargent reports at The Horse's Mouth, a TPM blog:

I've just learned that CNN has told top Dem strategists James Carville, Paul Begala, and Robert Zimmerman -- who are CNN mainstays but are all Hillary supporters -- that they will not be doing any more political analysis on the network until the Democratic primary has reached a conclusion.

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Sam Feist, CNN's political director, also confirmed the decision to me. "As we got closer to the voting, we made a decision to make sure that all the analysts that are on are non-aligned," Feist said, adding that the decision had been made around the start of December. "Carville and Begala are two of the best analysts around and we look forward to seeing them on CNN plenty of times in the future, once the nominating process has ended."

Read the whole post at the link provided. They will be allowed to appear on CNN in the meantime, but only in the role of surrogates or spokesmen for the Clinton campaign.

What is most interesting is that they will be returned to their roles as "analysts" once the nomination is settled - meaning they will be presented as objective observers of the general election campaign. It's apparently okay to have "analysts" who are in the bag for Democrats, just not those in the bag for particular Democrats in the Democratic primaries.

CNN seems to have picked their candidate, given the recent sharper coverage of the Clintons along with the departure of these long-time Clinton allies (who have been presented to the public as "analysts" by CNN for years).