Upon Further Reflection

Driving home from pitching in for our friend, Ash Kalra, who won the Democratic primary for San Jose's 2nd Distr. City Council seat Tuesday night (congrats, Ash!), Moira and I listened on the radio to speeches first by Hillary Clinton and then by Barack Obama. Hillary's speech was so horrible that it ruined Barack's speech for me. I wasn't able to bask in the warm glow of this important, "cinderella story from nowhere," victory. I realize that this was my fault. Moira was able to put Hillary's non-conciliatory words behind her and focus on Obama's speech. But there I was, gnashing my teeth at her delusional, ungracious speech from a few minutes earlier, where she barely mentioned Obama and wanted to hear from her supporters ("on HillaryClinton.com!") before making any decisions, as if she had some to make.

Since then, of course, Mrs. Clinton was able to finally accept reality and is now waiting three more days to make her big farewell. And with a bit more perspective, I am now able to see that this final misstep by Camp Clinton was a perfect nail in her political coffin - we can finally put those VP rumours to bed (although I'm sure the media and her supporters will still be pushing for a doomed-to-fail "Dream Ticket" until Obama settles on a normal running mate). Even with 36 hours for me to calm down, I still think her Tuesday speech was such a poorly conceived idea, based on some bizarre, Mark Penn-like political calculus. And it reminded us again what a deeply flawed candidate she really was.

Salon's Editor-in-Chief, Joan Walsh, writes that "...after winning almost 18 million votes and essentially tying Obama in the popular vote, I think Clinton earned at least 24 hours to think about her next move." Perhaps, but there goes the talking point that Clinton has the capacity to make critical decisions of world import at 3 a.m.

According to Brendan Loy, "Hillary Clinton had one last chance, tonight, to exit the stage with dignity. She missed it." (And from his comments section): "Sometimes, sociopaths are quite good at making other people feel sympathy for them. Hillary will use this skill to make people think she "deserves" the VP slot."

Chuck Todd points out that "Since February 5, she (Clinton) secured fewer than 40 superdelegate endorsements... 40! No matter what the polls said or what her margins of victory were in Ohio or Pennsylvania or West Virginia, the party leaders would not allow themselves to be swayed away from Obama. Perhaps the Clinton hold on the party was gone a lot sooner than some of us in the media realized. These folks were simply looking for an excuse to dump the Clintons."

In the end, most rational people who follow this process closely (like the Superdelegates) were able to turn down the volume on Clinton's talking points but the reality is that there are still quite a lot of people who bought her bullshit hook, line and sinker. They actually believe that Clinton was robbed of this election because she was a woman and the will of the people was ignored, like some sort of Bush v. Gore II. For Obama's sake, and for the world's, Hillary has a lot of work to do with these people to erase the six months of complete crap she has been feeding them.