The morning after

We hope Team Obama got to sleep in today. The press didn't: today's prints are full of day-after port-mortems of the she-Clinton's latest Norma Desmond moment. "In Defeat, Clinton Graciously Pretends to Win," is Dana Millbank's headline from last night in the bunker. ("A crew from "The Daily Show" joined the party, and, hoping to keep Clinton in the race, struck up a cheer of "Four more months!"). The Baruch College gym's subterranean location may have been why Senator Obama called her twice last night and only got voice mail.

Marbury, another I know America better than Americans do Brit (see actor Rupert Everett's latest outburst here) said of last nights bunkerspeil, "Clinton may be underestimating the impatience of the party leadership and the media to turn the page on this chapter in the election. Fairly or unfairly, if she's not careful she will end up being widely portrayed as crazy." Full props to him, however, for captioning this shot of the Obamas watching Hillary's non-concession speech:

i'm so not looking forward to this conversation...

Others think the First Couple's already headed for the Psychoneurotic Institute for the Very, Very Nervous: "CNN's pundits, on the other hand, were pretty much agog. Gloria Borger related an email from a Hillary supporter explaining why she had not conceded her loss or endorsed Obama: "This needed to be her night," she quoted. To her left, Jeffrey Toobin's jaw pretty much hit the dais desk (Update: corrected erroneous furniture reference)—"What?!" he interjected, suggesting that the night arguably belonged to the candidate who, you know, won, then going on to rant about "the deranged narcissism of the Clintons." (This morning, in a conference call, Congresswoman Nita Lowey, whose ambitions have been sublimated to those of Hillary's for a decade, explained, "The reality, she said, is that the party has to unify, but Hillary needs some time to adjust... maybe even two weeks.") Andrew Sullivan, who visited the she-Clinton's website- their teleport to Planet Clinton- found, "She invited comments. But you can't actually ask her to quit. The email form on her website begins: 'I’m with you Hillary, and I am proud of everything we are fighting for.'" John Aravosis, who's been rabid on Hillary for weeks, sums up his view by calling for Dr. van Helsing: "She's not going away. And she won't, unless and until you call the cops, have them drag her kicking and screaming out the door, pull down the curtains, change the locks, change your phone number, and move. Holy water and a string of garlic are optional."

The Boston Globe was more technical: 'At a social event last spring at the home of Mark Penn, then Hillary Clinton's chief strategist and one of the most prominent and well-compensated Democratic consultants in the business, a fellow Democrat wondered aloud if freshman Senator Barack Obama might wrest the nomination from the well-connected New York senator.

'Penn, the dinner guest said, waved his hand dismissively. "Flash in the pan," Penn said.'

'...More damaging, critics say, is that the veteran staff was operating from an old playbook, misreading the mood of the country and the new makeup of a 21st-century Democratic electorate.

'With her promises to wage war on the enemy - be it Republicans, pharmaceutical companies, or oil interests - Clinton made a textbook appeal to the Democratic Party of old: working-class white Americans, union members, and senior citizens. Obama, however, picked up on the physical and emotional exhaustion many Americans felt after the bitterly partisan Bush and Clinton years, and built a new Democratic coalition among young, educated, and independent voters."

WashPo gets really granular, analyzing how Obama's people flew under the MSM radar in states no one had bothered with in the past, and that The Clintons' once their dinosaur campaign brains began to register some stimuli, responded to by sending Chelsea, or Bubba the Big Dog.

Maureen Dowd hews to the view that it's all about tearing down Obama in the end: 'Either way, by broadcasting that she’s open to being Obama’s running mate, she puts public pressure on him similar to the sort of pressure Walter Mondale was under from rampaging feminists when he put Geraldine Ferraro on the ticket. Mondale ended up seeming henpecked, as Obama would seem if he caved to the women who say they will write in Hillary’s name or vote for anti-choice McCain before they’d vote for Obama.

'For months, Hillary has been trying to emasculate Obama with the sort of words and themes she has chosen, stirring up feminist anger by promoting the idea that the men were unfairly taking it away from the women, and covering up her own campaign mistakes with cries of sexism. Even his ability to finally clinch the historic nomination did not stop her in that pursuit. She did not bat her eyelashes at him and proclaim him Rhett Butler instead of Ashley Wilkes.

'She just urged her supporters to keep the dream alive, and talked privately about what she would settle for. She has told some Democrats recently that she wanted Obama to agree to allow a roll call vote, like days of yore, so that the delegates of states she won would cast the first ballot for her at the convention. She said she wanted that for her daughter.' (Inexplicably, The Times of London continues to pitch Chelsea as a future candidate while cadging its bets: " America seems keen to break from the ruling dynasties of the recent past - although conjecture of this sort is loaded with pitfalls. Hillary Clinton could choose to run again." Of all the Oedipal Clinton psychoses, Hillary v. Chelsea comes closest to a Godzilla movie).

And what of her base, the hard working white voters of Appalachia? Jesse Taylor pulls back the curtain at Pandagon: "Geraldine Ferraro had one thing right - there is a lot of racial resentment on the part of many white voters towards black Americans, based in no small part on the idea that if black people insist they’re lower on the ladder than white people, any black person being ahead of any white person is de facto evidence that black people are whiny victims and white people are the true downtrodden in America.

"This is indelibly stupid. But it’s also a powerful argument.

"Obama is going to become Blackazoid, the Nubian Avenger, here to right all the perceived wrongs black people illegitimately feel were heaped on them since we solved racism in 1963. Reparations? He wants them. Islam? Prepare to pay a prayer mat fee for your kids’ next school year. I can’t wait to hear the shit we didn’t even know was racist - did you know Obama wants to put elastic bands on all our pants? And ban straws?

"Blackness is about to become the best privilege imaginable, and stories of disadvantaged white people the new currency of the Republican realm.

"Michelle Obama engaging in an alleged rant against “whitey” is just the tip of the iceberg - learn now to fear your new Negro overlords. "

And what of Grampa Simpson?

"I think my favorite 'look on the bright side' moment from the Fox News contributors' reaction to the McCain trainwreck was when Fred Barnes said how Gerald Ford actually ended up becoming a better speaker over time."