The bad guy here are actually bad GUYS, the Obama Campaign/Media/DNC triumvirate.

Just because the man gamed the system beautifully doesn't make the system any less gamey.

This is not a landslide victory for Obama. Clinton received HALF of the vote. This is just some political posturing requiring some give and take from the Obama campaign.

You're fanning flames here more than she was.

Beth, if you have a quarrel with the primary system, fine. But how does Obama's victory under the existing system make him a "bad guy"? What should Obama have done--tried to lose?

What else is new?
It's been three months since this moment became essentially inevitable. How much more do we owe Hillary Clinton?

This is such crap. All the insufferable talking heads have been talking about Obama as if her were the inevitable nominee for months. With all that support and all that money, Obama still hasn't sealed the deal. And he hasn't made a convincing argument that he can win the general election. There should be no rallying around Barack Obama. He is an ideologue just like George Bush. More of the same, more of the same. CHANGE would be American voters getting over themselves, stop insisting they deserve the next coming of Christ as their president, stop listening to people who base their political ideas on the Bible, and elect a candidate who has proven him or herself to be competent. Obama's campaign is the epitome of intellectual hypocrisy. It's an embarrassing day for Democrats.

that's right, for clinton supporters if you play by the agreed-upon rules and win, then you're gaming the system.

at this stage, clinton and her shock troops are way beyond the reach of nettlesome things like logic or the facts.

who knows what hillary clinton is really trying to do here. but it's hard to see how her speech tonight and its not so subtle message helps the party.

I am so amazingly sick of the clintons and their terminal 'boomer narcissism.

JT, you're a moron. Obama won the majority of the delegates which, here on the planet earth, is how the democratic party has decided to choose its nominee.

so, that makes Obama the, well, democratic party nominee. you may not like it, you may not like the rules, but that's the reality. for Clinton pretend otherwise and threaten to disrupt the convention is the height of selfishness. the time's come shift attention to beating McCain.

but if Obama loses to McCain in November, I'll be pointing the finger at dumbfucks like you.

I keep telling everyone, she's never going to stop. Never. We're just going to have to get used to it.

mencken, you're a moron. 2118 delegates are necessary for the nomination. Obama has won 1764. He needs superdelegates to win the nomination, and they don't vote until convention.

If Obama loses in November (and at this point, all indications are that he will lose) it'll be because once again, the Democrats have failed to put up a decent candidate.

Clinton supporters like JT are well on their way to becoming the Naderites of this election. They will refuse to vote for Obama and when he loses, they'll say, see what a terrible candidate he was? Ok, JT, humor us. Tell us what Obama can do to win your vote.

Actually JT, the pledged delegates don't vote until the convention either. So really the right way to think about this race is 0-0, with most delegates currently inclined towards Obama but probably willing to be persuaded to change their minds.

*rolls eyes*

In 1992, Paul Tsongas did not endorse Bill Clinton until one week before the convention and after two face to face meetings (focused on Clinton's commitment to deficit reduction). Jerry Brown did not endorse until the actual convention.
In 1980, Ted Kennedy did not concede/endorse President Carter until his speech at the convention.

If the talking heads were not focused on Clinton's speech no one would care. Why isn't MSNBC and CNN spending their time on on Obama's speech and his historic win?

This is the turn off to the Obama phenomenon: the assumption that Obama people are better and smarter than everyone else, more committed than everyone else. You aren't. At all. Alex, your contribution has zero value. My point, clearly, was that Obama has not yet won the necessary number of delegates, not which delegates vote when.

To "win" my vote, Obama will have to stop pandering to the religious sect, and indicate that he does not - like George Bush - defer to the word of God to make his decisions; he can stop speaking like a preacher; he can provide evidence of executive ability and he can stop blaming both parties for Republican failures; he can stop acting like he's the only person in politics who wants to do a good job; he can stop claiming ownership of the word change, and acknowledge that he has few new ideas, just a different proposal for pushing an agenda many of us share; he can stop dismissing valid questions of his ability to do the things he promises to do as mere cynicism, and replace the childish message of "hope" with one of dedication and perseverance; he can stop with the calls to unity as history has proven it to be a bad model. We don't need consensus of opinion - we need a rational model of reconciling our differences, and we need our leaders - especially our progressive leaders - to model and cultivate patterns of rational thought. In short, he will win my support as soon as he desists with the Bushian tactic of emotional manipulation, and shows he understands that being a progressive means more than having the right catalog of opinions.

This 'gaming the system' thing is one of the more ridiculous things to ooze out of the Clinton fever swamp How is 'he was able to understand and effectively use the system to his advantage and my disadvantage' supposed to be an argument against Obama?

And wasn't there a period within living memory when one of the arguments for Clinton and against Obama was that he was too high-minded to effectively campaign against McCain's Swiftboating army of Rove clones?

To be entirely honest with Clinton's supporters, who I have no little amount of sympathy for, that was a somewhat legitimate point. Hasn't Obama decisively answered it? Clinton was both out-high minded and out-politiced. Seriously, it's time to call it a day.

Let me see if I understand you, JT. You will happily vote for Obama so long as he totally drops the rhetoric and message that's gotten him this far, starts to ignore the elements of his history that make him the sort of leader (for better or for worse) that he is and will be, and generally abandons everything that we can possibly know about what he's like on the inside in order to better appeal to some specific voting demographic?

Or is there something I'm missing?

JT, I respectfully disagree. To my eyes, in this primary season, it hasn't been Obama who has relied on emotional manipulation to make her case; nor has Obama been the one to pursue a disturbingly Bush-like strategy to lose the nomination. I accept the reasons you list to withhold support from a candidate, but I'm left wondering why you would then apparently prefer Hillary Clinton to Barack Obama.

...elect a candidate who has proven him or herself to be competent.

If thats the standard, then the Clinton campaign has certainly failed miserably. This was her nomination to lose. And she did.

Obama supporters, keep in mind that the Hillary supporters are hurt. Their candidate has not let them know that it is ok to like Obama. She still wants to fight, so her followers will do so as well. Until Hillary starts talking to the Heads of the party will she start changing her tune and put her support to Obama. Until Hillary supports Obama no way will her supporters do so. She needs to work her a** off talking to her main supporters and bring them the story of Obama and stand with him on the issues which they are so very close on. The one thing we need to do is fill every blog we can find with information that are the differences between McCain & Obama especially how McCain stands on womens issues. Stay positive to Hillary supporters that is the only way we can bring them to back the Democrats. I can not do another 4-8 years of a Republican president.

John McCain, a man who has a 25-year history of voting against a woman's right to choose? A man who over the last eight years that NARAL has released a pro-choice scorecard has received a 0 percent rating (in his time in office, Obama has received a 100 percent rating)? A man whose campaign website says he believes Roe v. Wade "must be overturned"? A man who has vowed that, as president, he will be "a loyal and unswerving friend of the right to life movement"?

Did I say I support Hillary Clinton? I am decidedly anti-Obama, but not pro-Clinton. I do, though, trust she has the ability to navigate the current political climate better than any Democratic candidate.

If you could put the snark aside, NBarnes, I think there's a chance this exchange might be of some small value.

I want to cast a vote for the first Black president. With every fiber of my being, I want to cast that vote.

We have a problem with fundamentalism in this country, and a problem getting decent candidates across the board, and a problem hosting meaningful, informative campaigns. George W Bush should never, ever have been a contender for the office of the president. He won his position by appealing to regressive thought patterns that too many people find comfortable: they vote on one issue, they vote with their intestines, apparently, and all such nonsense. It has to stop. If we demand our candidates be messiahs and support them as if they are, we're going to get nothing but bullshit. In Hillary Clinton (no affection for) I see (saw) a chance to reject the BushCo blathering, the BushCo paternalism, the BushCo "He is The One", whereas the Obama campaign outdoes BushCo in this regard. I find it repellent. Our system requires our politicians choose between awful choices and slightly less awful choices, and I think we have to learn to handle that reality, stop expecting a flawless candidate, and stop holding against our seasoned politicians the era in which they acquired their skills.

Barack Obama is a windbag. The vehemence with which he speaks - as if his ideas aren't borrowed from people who have dedicated their entire lives to them - speaks to his ignorance, arrogance or both. It says nothing of his ability to actually do any of the things he claims he's capable of doing. This is a problem. Like it or not, there is a political establishment, and it requires skilled politicians. Of course, we can always go further along the Bush route, and give the executive more power to implement his great big ideas.

"Hillary tonight was a woman standing down more than half her party's supporters..."

Um, if this is a reference to the popular vote and Obama's percentage of it, then no, it's not "more than half"; it's about 48%. More than half of the voters in primaries voted for someone else.

Look, I'll be fine with Obama as the nominee. And no, I don't need Clinton to tell me to "like him." Indeed, I think the least productive element of the Obama-side hectoring of Clintonites is that merely agreeing to support him in Novemebr won't do - it must be mass love, and it must be now... or else.

Even on this, the ostensible last night, when literally nothing could stop him, Barack Obama still couldn't win two primaries. Is he the nominee? Sure, he appears to have the numbers for it. Should Hillary Clinton have just given up tonight... well, I don't think that timetable is anyone but hers. She goes to the convention with almost half the room backing her (though there will surely be defections), allowing her considerable leverage on things like future primary plans and the platform and other Party workings. That, alone, means a need for serious negotiations and a plan from the Obama team about how to bring the party together. That's their work, their job, and now it's their time. Beyond Dana's tetchiness, the point of tonight is that all of this is no longer about Clinton. It's about Obama and how he plans to wrap this up and deal with the woman carrying the other (slightly less than) half of the party's vote. We can come together... calmly. In time. Even if it won't be love, it'll be together. I suspect, though, that both doing it calmly, and over time (never mind without the love), won't be enough for many Obama supporters; and that's about his setting unrealistic expectations... not hers.

How much twisted logic can we take? The argument that Obama is not deserving of the nomination because he failed to win the last two contests proves that the Clintonistas have lost sight of even the most basic logic. Their argument is that Hillary deserves the nomination. But she has failed to close the deal either; she got whupped in Montana.

The truth is that when you have two strong candidates with different core constituencies, it is difficult, by definition, for either to win them all. It's like when two brilliant teams are in the World Series and it goes to the seventh game. No one says that the team that wins the seventh is no good, because that team did not sweep. Instead, you would say that that's one tough team, because even thought it gotten beaten a few times, it showed durability.

Both Barack AND Hillary have proven durable and tough. But only one can win, and Barack has won. (By the way, Obama's "limping" to the finish line is vastly overstated; he got 48% of the vote since the end of his massive 11 state winning streak - hardly an epic collapse. And he got 48% despite the later part of the calendar working more favorably for Hillary's demographics.

Now let's fight the common enemy: McCain.

Hillary's riling up her supporters??!!! You don't think that the press dissing her for the last several months, the votes taken from her, and the false charges of racism don't have even a little bit to do with it? This campaign was a blot on the Democratic party, and instant healing is not in the cards, I am afraid.

Their candidate has not let them know that it is ok to like Obama.

It appears since the Oborg mind controls all the actions of the hive, they believe this also applies to every other candidate and his or her supporters.

oh my god someone is fighting the establishment

FYI: more registered Democrats voted for Clinton. A percentage of Obama voters are not necessarily supporters of the Democratic party.

if hillary's ability to navigate the current political climate is so remarkable, why did she lose the nomination? what didn't she see? i understand and respect your discomfort with obama's rhetorical techniques. I understand how you could see him as a leader who appeals to the heart and not the head. In the abstract, that can smack of demagoguery. Despite your obvious frustrations at the electorate, it's hard to dispute at this point that both his style and his tactics were more effective than clinton's. She started out with The Name: she promised a return to the good old days of the 90's; he asked us to look forward. She played dirty, he kept it clean (for the most part).
Obama's principle virtue is also something of a stumbling block: he's very believable. Consequently, one tends to take him at face value, to see his apparent naivete, his idealism, his promise, ultimately, of nothing less than national redemption, as authentic. it's much more likely, in my mind, that his entire presentation of self is as much part of the larger strategy as his small state, delegate driven campaign. in this info-tainment media environment, in which elections are covered as sport, and so called journalists prove their 'insider' status by focusing on political gambits rather than policy, on entertaining gaffes rather than challenging analysis, i think obama demonstrated a real genius for operating within the current climate. He realized that what we are hungry for, what is required to win elections, are narratives. good stories. and he gave us one, not of xenophobic fear and hate, as we get from the right, not of boomer nostalgia, but of possibility, of renewal. He made himself a coherent symbol of the desires of many Americans. It would be nice if people would really compare the policy proposals, the voting records, the finer details. I happen to think that obama stands up quite nicely to that kind of scrutiny. In the end though, he just ran a smarter campaign. Part of Hillary's narrative, her self created myth, was that she was a smart politician, a politician who was seasoned by battle and knew how to "win elections." Unfortunately, while she was telling that story, she was losing to a politician who knew what it would take to win this one.

morgan,

Paragraph breaks are your friend.

Paragraph breaks are your friend.

Yep, long posts without paragraphs are unreadable. Consider this constructive criticism.

FYI: more registered Democrats voted for Clinton. A percentage of Obama voters are not necessarily supporters of the Democratic party.

I'm not sure if you're trying to make a point in Clinton's favor or Obama's here.

Ultimately, we're trying to elect a president of the United States, not just a Democratic nominee.

Just an historic note for those who chant "He couldn't close the deal" over Obama's failure to sweep the boards after he took his big February lead: on the day on 1980 that Ronald Reagan went over the needed number of delegates, he lost BOTH primaries -- in MI and MD -- to George HW Bush. This didn't seem to terminally weaken his candidacy.

"on the day on 1980 that Ronald Reagan went over the needed number of delegates, he lost BOTH primaries -- in MI and MD -- to George HW Bush."

And the reason why those sorts of things happen to Reagan and Obama, and I even think Clinton lost a primary to Jerry Brown in '92, is that the person who has the nomination wrapped up stops making the case against his opponent and doesn't focus his time and energy on winning particular primaries any more. How much time did Bill and Hill spend in SD compared to Obama?

Mike

"My point, clearly, was that Obama has not yet won the necessary number of delegates, not which delegates vote when."

And your point, clearly, is incorrect. Pledged delegates are no more "required" to vote for the candidate of choice than are superdelegates, which means that, using your logic, neither candidate has *any* delegates, which is, clearly, stupid. Obama has the votes; deal with it.

"and at this point, all indications are that he will lose)"

And this is just as stupid since there are really no indications at this time that he will lose. That does not mean that the contest is going to be a cakewalk; just that statements like this are foolish.

Substantive disagreement is a necessary, if often noisy, component of free and open democratic processes. Nowhere is that more on display than during the elective process. There have been nasty things said on both sides of this divide. Bill suggests Obama uses surrogates to do his rhetorical bidding. That may or may not be true. But Bill and Hill have not needed others to do their dirty work. They have displayed their own penchant for the despicable. Her RFK assassination gaffe (?)—twice repeated and oft referenced (as reported in blogs) by Bill; coupled with his statement that the best pathway for Hillary’s ascendency to the Oval Office is as VP—is the most heinous of observations.
First, how many times does a gaffe get to be repeated before it becomes intentional? Second, had Obama made anything remotely as ghastly as that, can you imagine the shit-storm of protest he’d be facing? Thirdly, Keith Olbermann’s presentation may have been over the top, but the substance of it is hard to take exception with. Is that kind of maniacal indifference to the consequence of the spoken word, intentional or otherwise, what we want from the person occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?
I, for one, am befuddled that there as not been more indignation expressed against her at this and an insistence that she apologize to Barack Obama, his family and to the millions of Americans who lived through the pain of the politics of murder and the sordid fashion in which it played out its ugly hand in the history of our nation. But, then again, you would think a woman who claims to have wept on the occasion of the assassination of The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. would require no such reprimanded.
So if she can get a virtual pass on that, why not hold out the possibility of a Denver onslaught? I am not as disappointed in her refusal to concede the election as the tone of defiance she struck in her speech. David Gergen’s comment on CNN that had she won Puerto Rico’s primary by 500,000 votes—which she had expected—her plan was to be even more combative and another’s claim that folks in her campaign thought this was to be “her night” gives you a tiny though clear glimpse of the insular world that the Clinton campaign has locked itself in. “Deranged narcissism,” Jeffrey Toobin quipped, while other quickly disavowed. Yes or no; something is badly amiss in Clintonville and we all are held hostage by something no one is quite clear how to deal with.

(In case my previous post got eaten, which it appeared to be...)

Hillary Clinton claims 18 million 'invisible' voters for her. Let's make that 18 million minus 1 - me! I voted for her in the NYS Primary, but now I support Obama - and have since early April.

I think there are more people like me out there & speaking for myself, I am really offended that Hillary is using me as an excuse to stay in the race and make it hard for Obama.

I realize Hillary and Bill are concerned about their legacy, but part of their legacy is Clinton fatigue, and if they don't stop soon, that will be the ONLY legacy they have left.

"David Gergen’s comment on CNN that had she won Puerto Rico’s primary by 500,000 votes—which she had expected—her plan was to be even more combative and another’s claim that folks in her campaign thought this was to be “her night” gives you a tiny though clear glimpse of the insular world that the Clinton campaign has locked itself in."

Bill and Hillary Clinton want to do a lot of good things for America. But the most important thing to both of them isn't that good things are done for America, it's that Bill and Hillary Clinton do them.

Mike

My in a nutshell poem:

Last night
"I, I, I," said HRC
BHO said, "We, we, we."

Obama people: stop acting like you're smarter than everyone else. PaulB - no one said anything about "required"! My point is valid - pledged delegates get WON and are tallied under the WON heading. YOU are being argumentative for the sake of being so. Stop the nonsense. Obama did not and has not WON enough delegates to secure the nomination. The superdelegates will decide it. That is the case - Obama will squeak out a nomination, despite months of talk of inevitability. It's clearly something to consider when calling for unity.

Morgan, thanks for the thoughtful comments, and I didn't even miss the paragraph breaks. Unfortunately, where you see "believable" and smart campaigning, I see the George Bush method, and consequently no way to defend supporting Obama without being called a hypocrite. The fundamentalists have put the progressive party in check by dictating the tone of the conversation, even when they should be irrelevant. These lofty calls to "believe" are baseless, logically indefensible bullshit, and worse, they leave the door open for fundamentalist campaigns in the future. It's not a good way. And I think it's a little creepy that this time around, the Republicans rejected all the religious fundamentalists and instead nominated a man who doesn't even know what religion he is, while Democrats nominated a man who went after the religious voters, and to that end, adopted regressive, fundamentalist rhetoric.
And the more I'm attacked for insisting that logic be our common method of reconciling differences, the more creeped out I am by what I consider to be an utterly bizarre ascension of an utterly unremarkable Democratic candidate. That Obama has not shown himself capable of implementing any sort of change whatsoever needs to be addressed, for the sake of party unity.

"Obama people: stop acting like you're smarter than everyone else."

Stop making stupid statements and we'll stop "acting like we're smarter than you." It's really that simple.

"My point is valid"

No, actually, it's not. In fact, your "point" is completely nonsensical.

"pledged delegates get WON and are tallied under the WON heading."

So? What difference does that make? They are no more required to vote for that candidate at the convention than are super-delegates, which means that there is no meaningful distinction between them when it comes to deciding whether a candidate has "won" enough delegates to claim victory.

Both the pledged delegates and the super-delegates have announced their support for Obama in sufficient numbers that he can claim victory in this campaign, as everyone but die-hards like you acknowledge. He has, indeed, "won," by any reasonable definition of that word. The distinction you are trying to make is a distinction without merit.

"YOU are being argumentative for the sake of being so."

ROFL.... Pot. Kettle. Black.

"Stop the nonsense."

Funny.... I was just going to say the same thing to you.

"Obama did not and has not WON enough delegates to secure the nomination."

Yes, actually, he has, which is why he has claimed victory, why the Clinton campaign has conceded defeat, and everyone but a few die-hards like you has acknowledged it.

"The superdelegates will decide it."

Why yes, in fact, they did, just a couple of days ago. Where were you?