The biggest upset this year wasn't the Giants beating the undefeated Patriots in the Super Bowl. No, it was a freshman senator from the South Side of Chicago who beat Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton in the Democratic primary. This is my take on why she lost.

    Politico's Charles Mathsian and Amy Parnes have come out with their list of five top places Obama and Clinton should campaign together.  I would like to add ten more.

A friendly warning to everyone (including myself) who is celebrating the unprecedented success of the Obama money machine: be careful what you wish for.

So I understand that there are many people who are completely outraged by the treatment Hillary Clinton received in the Democratic primary.  There are accusations of sexism leveled at  the media and the Democratic Party as a whole.  I have to say I'm a little troubled by this because of where it seems to lead some people...

Thank you Hillary for all your achievements and for your endorsement of Obama and call for unity. Thank you Hillary supporters for your passion and hard work.

This diary is addressed to those Hillary supporters that are stating that they will vote for McCain because Obama and/or the DNC ‘stole’ the election from Hillary. Whilst I understand that you are hurting and grieving, I cannot understand the difficulty SOME of you have in your understanding that Obama won fair and square. Hillary has not had any election stolen from her!  

If the fact that your candidate has lost fair and square is the reason you can find it in your conscience to vote for McCain, instead of the person with policies most similar to your candidate, that is Obama, then perhaps you have some other prejudices about Obama that you need to examine because your vote clearly has nothing to do with policies.

Surely your vote is worth more than a wasted choice made out of spite and anger, or even worse by personal prejudices that have wounded, pained and divided Americans for so many years.

Ok, I over slept yesterday then worked, then drank. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. Today (thank you YouTube) I watched Hillary Clinton's concession speech and endorsement of Barack Obama. Had that speech (in a different format been given in Febuary, I truly wonder who the Democratic nominee would be today.

If there was ever redemption, yesterday saw it.

Kudos to Senator Clinton for her most eloquent endorsement of Senator Obama, but I think there's a certain degree of the metaphorical Emperor's New Clothes going on here.  Don't get me wrong, I know we'd like to give her the benefit of the doubt and the ability to revive her image, but do not forget that Senator Clinton gave only one classy, inspiring speech out of a thousand that were dry, dull, unimaginative, and more than a few that were offensive to the her opponent, the party itself, and the American people.  That this speech happened to be her final official act and a marked change from her previous conduct in a grueling campaign should not supersede her previous acts.

Before anyone can label me as sexist, in saying this, let it be known that there are any number of female Senators, Representative, Governors, and elected representatives who I would gladly give my vote to if they ran for President.  

From today's hillaryis44.com:

Saturday, June 7th, 2008
The Party’s Over

This column will serve as commentary on today’s events.

Our standing orders, as always: ORGANIZE.

In days to come we will announce organizational decisions (and infrastructure) being made, by groups such as Clinton Supporters Count Too. The fight for core Democratic principles continues even though The Party’s Over.

We will also continue our series discussing why Democrats should not vote for Obama - Voting For Barack Obama.

NOvember will come soon enough and we will vote for Hillary; No one else but Hillary. We will encourage others to do the same.

We won’t be alone in that decision- vote for Hillary - Not Big Media, Not Big Media Tool Obama. We will also NOT vote for any candidate who endorsed Obama over Hillary during the primary season. We will encourage as many Democrats as possible to follow our lead.

I recently sent a letter to Hillary's campaign using a form on her website.  I'm one of the 18 million folks who didn't vote for her, a woman who didn't heed the call to support her historic first, someone who felt that Hillary doesn't represent the best hope of the Democratic party in this election cycle.  

This diary isn't about that.

It's about an email from Maggie Williams, Clinton's aide de camp, the woman who keeps it real for everybody on the campaign (except maybe Terry MacAuliffe).  And, let me tell you, had I received a communication as warm, friendly and inviting as this earlier, it might have caused me to take a second look.

As we await Hillary's speech tomorrow calling for unity and for her supporters to support Obama, will the Hillaryclinton.com blog be part of that unity action instead of merely promotion for Hillary 2012, Hillary as an independent candidate, an extension of McCain’s website, promotion of Obama the antichrist, and the winner of my medal for the best site for 1001 ways to thrash Obama!

With so much at stake this election, it was a peculiar year for activists like Senator Carl Levin to intentionally break DNC primary rules to make the point that Michigan Democrats resent the advantage that New Hampshire and Iowa have in picking the Democratic nominee for president.

That said, Senator Levin has a point. At the DNC hearing recently he reminded us that the Democratic presidential nominee is usually picked by either NH or IA because they go first. The urgency to change the system could not come at a better time. The Democratic Party, thanks to the crises precipitated under George W Bush's two terms, has perhaps never been more engaged. It's hard to know whether Barack Obama is our nominee because he has engaged a new generation of voters or whether a new generation of voters plus the rest of us cried out for a candidate of Obama's talents and Barack answered that call.

So with all of us fully engaged, Iowa and New Hampshire no longer have the argument that they pay closer attention to what's going on. We're all paying attention.

    It would be very tempting for some Clinton supporters to walk away from this primary feeling that the Democratic nomination was somehow stolen from her.  We've seen surrogates like Terry McCaullife insist repeatedly that Hillary Clinton "won the popular vote."  Mr. McCaullife even went so far as to introduce Senator Clinton as "the next President of the United States" on Tuesday just as Barack Obama attained the necessary number of delegates to clinch the nomination.

    What this diary seeks to do is put all of Senator Clinton's supporters' minds at ease and to reassure them that Senator Obama did not only win the delegate count, but also the popular vote.  The statistics I will be using are the absolute most up-to-the-minute ones I could find.  This diary is just a trifle lengthy, so if nothing else, I hope people will read the last three paragraphs.

Yes, we can rally the party around Senator Obama, especially with the help of Hillary Clinton.

As brownsox just reported a little while ago, Hillary Clinton has emailed her supporters announcing that on Saturday she will "extend [her] congratulations to Senator Obama and [her] support for his candidacy."  

There were some low moments in this nominating battle, and some things said and done that many of us wish had never occurred.  But now, with Hillary Clinton signaling that she's prepared to unambiguously acknowledge that Barack Obama is the nominee, that she supports him, and that she wants her supporters to do the same, we should be able to start pulling together to do the work, in unity, that will lead to a huge win in November.  

Back in February, as Barack Obama racked up a series of big wins, I wrote a piece declaring the contest over, that Barack Obama had ensured that he would be the nominee.  There were  reports circulating that Mark Penn wanted her to run a scorched earth campaign, and as we've seen since then, the Clinton campaign heeded too much of Penn's advice.  In calling on the Clinton campaign to reject the scorched earth policy, I wrote this:

But the opportunity for Hillary Clinton to become a historic leader of the Senate is real.  As I've argued repeatedly, there are numerous and strong parallels between the election of 1932 and how this election is evolving.  This would provide Hillary Clinton an opportunity to take advantage of an opportunity to create parallels between 1933 and 2009.  After all, winning elections are great, but I doubt anyone is a Democrat because of our victories of 1932.  But generations of Americans have looked to the Democratic party to lead our country because of the legacy of the New Deal Congresses and Franklin Delano Roosevelt.  1932 was the opportunity.  But 1933 and afterward is what established the greatness of Franklin Roosevelt and the New Deal Democrats.  

If he wins in November, Barack Obama will probably never be considered as great a president as Franklin Roosevelt.  For everyone's sake, let's hope he and the country don't face the challenges FDR and the country faced in 1933.  But Hillary Clinton has a chance to be as great a Senator as Lyndon Johnson or Robert Wagner.  Let's hope she ignores Mark Penn, runs a dignified and positive campaign for the next twelve days, and then becomes Barack Obama's greatest ally.

In an unfinished novel F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote "there are no second acts in American lives."  Fitzgerald was a great novelist, but it's a dumb line.  Looking at Hillary Clinton's public life, we see she's already had more than one act.  After being her husband's First Lady in Arkansas and then in Washington, she's forged her own career in electoral politics, becoming a US Senator and finishing a close second in the battle for the Democratic presidential nomination.  Al Gore found a new path that led to the Nobel Peace Prize.  Richard Nixon reinvented himself about a half dozen times.  And the model that may be best for Clinton to follow is Ted Kennedy, who put behind him his 1980 primary loss to Jimmy Carter and devoted himself to a stellar career in the Senate, ranking him among the giants of the institution.  Let's hope Hillary Clinton finds the role that fits her best.  I think it's to become one of the leaders of the Senate.  Maybe she has something else in mind.  Whatever it is, she will probably be impressive and successful.  

But first, all of us—Obama supporters, Clinton supporters, Edwards supporters, people who were with another candidate and Democrats who didn't care all that much who got our nomination—need to applaud Hillary Clinton's move toward unifying the party.  As has been repeated here many times, Rahm Emanuel put it best:

The way the loser loses will determine whether the winner wins in November.

Today's message to her supporters is a promising sign that Hillary Clinton will help determine that Barack Obama will be the the winner in November.

Finally, a point about other blogs.  Some of us here have watched other political blogs and online communities known for being bastions of Clinton supporters.  Most of those blogs and communities will be fully on board with Obama, if they aren't already. At places like MyDD, the community, including most of the pro-Clinton folks, had already been pushing back against anti-Obama garbage for some time.  The folks at MyDD--many of whom also participate at Daily Kos--are Democrats, they know that Barack Obama needs their support, and he will have their support.  A few other bloggers are simply contrarian, and shouldn't be taken very seriously.

A few other blogs and websites that aren't obviously Republican have trafficked in extremist anti-Obama crap, and continue to do so.  Instead of expressing outrage about them, we should starve them of attention.    

Hillary Clinton appears prepared to give the signal that Democrats need to come together and do whatever they can to elect and support Barack Obama.  Some folks have no interest in joining with other Democrats, even at the urging of Hillary Clinton.  If they don't, even if they're on non-Republican blogs, they will demonstrate that they aren't really Democrats.  

For everyone else, however, it's important that we all realize that unity doesn't come about when only one side reaches out to the other.  Hillary Clinton has begun the process of bringing her supporters toward Barack Obama and his supporters.  For those of us who wanted Barack Obama to be our nominee, we must welcome the Clinton supporters, and do what we can to be modest winners, recognize that whatever differences we had in the nomination battle are tiny compared with our differences with the Republicans, and join together to build a stronger Democratic party and put our country on the path to a more progressive future.  

Listening to a Clinton supporter on The Daily Show last night, I have decided that some still have no idea what just happened and I fear they will use their confusion to justify some boneheaded decision like voting for John McSame.  So, for the sake of summarizing things chronologically so people don’t feel like Hillary Clinton had the nomination taken from her somehow, I will summarize it as succinctly as I can ... using the completely non-universal language of the boxing metaphor.

This is kind of long, but so was the contest.

The Story of Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Genie of the Lamp

In December 2000, after winning her first election to become the junior Senator from New York, Hillary Rodham Clinton was strolling alone on a beach in the Caribbean, thinking about her aspirations to become President.  As she neared the end of the beach, far away from her hotel, she noticed light reflecting off something rolling around in the surf.  She walked into the waves and picked up what appeared to be an old, rusted lamp, bearing an inscription of some kind.  As she tried to rub some of the rust off to get a better look at the inscription, the lamp suddenly spewed a great cloud of smoke that animated itself in the form of a Genie.  The following conversation ensued:

I did a quick look and didn't find this posted. I'll delete if there's a previous diary.

According to the Huffington Post, Hillary Clinton To Suspend Campaign Saturday

Other sources say Friday, as HuffPo notes, but this may be the real word:

The Clinton campaign issued a statement at around 9pm saying they will be hosting an event to announce her support for Sen. Obama on Saturday, as opposed to Friday:

Senator Clinton will be hosting an event in Washington, DC to thank her supporters and express her support for Senator Obama and party unity. This event will be held on Saturday to accommodate more of Senator Clinton's supporters who want to attend.

Crossposted at MyDD

"Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that." — Steve Earle.

I’m big fan of Townes Van Zandt.  Unlike Steve Earle, I never had the opportunity to know or play music with him. Anyhoo, I had to work late last night to meet a report deadline, so I did what I often do:  dialed my iPod to the TVZ collection and put it on shuffle.  For hours, many of Townes’ best tunes pumped through my headphones while I wrote the narrative sections of my scientific report and formatted table after table.  

More after the fold.

On Monday I posted a diary predicting that Hillary will concede the race. In fact, I went so far as to assert it was a prediction one could bank on. I want to take a moment to acknowledge that I got it wrong.