I was so tempted to call this post "Yes He Did!" but I guess I'll save that one for November. The word "historic" is being thrown around a lot this morning, as Barack Obama has the nomination of the Democratic Party all sewn up. For the love of God, can someone please put top Clintonista Terry McAuliffe out of our misery now? His forced excitement is freakin' annoying. Either Terry's deranged with some rare form of a manic delusional state or he does more cocaine than the entire Aerosmith road crew. He makes that shouting, bearded lunatic who sells Orange Glo on TV seem as calm as the Dalai Lama. Someone make him stop. Please.
Yesterday was a typical day for Team Clinton, with confused messages that suggested the left hand didn't know what the right was doing. While the Clinton campaign was busy putting down an Associated Press story that she was planning on conceding, Terry McAuliffe was all over the place saying that she would -- at least, under the right conditions. Asked on NBC's Today Show if Clinton would concede if Barack Obama hit the mark, McAuliffe told Meredith Viera, "Yes, I think if Sen. Obama gets the number, I think Hillary Clinton will congratulate him and call him the nominee."
Yeah, she didn't do that. Not only didn't she concede, she didn't even congratulate Obama on his victory. There are a lot of things you can call Hillary Clinton, but "gracious in defeat" isn't one of them. In fact, Clinton seemed to send the message that there was some way forward from here -- but the "Obama's the nominee" narrative left the station long before she stepped up to the stage. In fact, AP called it for Obama yesterday morning.
About that speech. It was nothing special. She left everything up in the air, neither conceding nor announcing she was going on what Al Giordano calls "a Kamikaze mission" of a convention floor fight. Giordano seems unconcerned. "Everything is good. She’s getting out," he writes. "She just has to negotiate her terms. But she stopped short of starting an internecine Civil War in the Democratic party. And nothing in her tone or words indicated otherwise."
Others were much, much less impressed. "I probably shouldn't write any more about this woman and her staff," said Matthew Yglesias in a very brief post. "Suffice it to say that I've found her behavior over the past couple of months to be utterly unconscionable and this speech is no different. I think if I were to try to express how I really feel about the people who've been enabling her behavior, I'd say something deeply unwise. Suffice it to say, that for quite a while now all of John McCain's most effective allies have been on Hillary Clinton's payroll."...
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