Hillary ran a very competitive race

[youknowmenotdlc]

I had a chance to watch Hillary give a speech in West Virginia, what she DIDN'T say spoke volumes.

She deviated quite a bit from the tone of her recent speeches and more importantly she refrained from challenging or attacking Obama. Furthermore she changed her position on the gas tax holiday instead saying that "Oil companies should pay the gas tax currently placed on the consumer".

These are important signs and they show me something that is very encouraging regarding our party's chances come November. Hillary knows the score, she will stay in the race for the time being for the purpose of bringing the intensity and high profile coverage of our paty's nomination process to the remaining states, during this process she will slowly turn from not criticizing Obama to helping her supporters see that Obama is the better choice come November versus McCain.

After all in the end Hillary is a Democrat and just like all of us she wants a Democrat to prevail in November so it appears she is transitioning from a competitive shot at the nomination to starting to heal the party.

Good for her and it's time we also started to welcome her back and be glad we have a strong Democratic Senator like Hillary Clinton fighting for us.

GOBAMA!
GO DEMS!

[LVjinx]

1. Agreed... Hillary won't attack Obama anymore.

I think she's in this for the party now. Last night was a wake-up call for all of us who believed in her. I just hope divisions can be healed, if supporters on both sides will allow them to.

[peace13]

2. I say that Obama and Clinton should get back to work now!

We need to stop the funding of this war. How many more need to die while we drag out this primary. OK primary away, but get back to work!

[calimary]

3. There's been a noticeable change in timbre in her speech-making lately. She's leashed up

the attack dog. She's started dropping in the statement about how she will work her heart out for the Democratic nominee, because we have to win in November.

I think she's smart enough to see that there are several payoffs here. One, probably being able to catch her breath and step off the treadmill. If indeed we're noticing a deliberate effort on her part to pull her punches, she may have recognized it would be better for her political longevity, and her conscience, if she started - what? Easing away? She knows it's far more preferable to exit with grace and on your terms if you have to exit, rather than having somebody come after you with The Hook. You know she calculates things. Her moves and decisions are all very carefully thought out. That brain just won't ever stop. She's one of those. She may also see the wisdom in stepping down so she can interface and have an impact up the road, when running mates are chosen, department head positions are filled, and maybe there might even be a conversation about - hey, look, when I get in, how 'bout the first Supreme Court opening that comes around, you're it if you want it? Hey, who knows? Anything could happen.

I saw one of the TV analysts - A.B. Stoddard of The Hill - talking about how Clinton might be able to go out a winner if she stays in the game til Kentucky and West Virginia that she's expected to win handily. She could leave with grace, according to her newly-stated objective "to stay in until we have a nominee" "...and go on to unite the party." She could thus remake and rehabilitate her image and take on a new persona as the one who's taken the big conciliatory step of sacrificing the campaign and the ambitions for the sake of bringing the party back together. I think that makes a lot of sense. She adjusts her campaign slightly and carries on to some nice victories coming up in the next two weeks, proves she fought valiantly so she can hold her head high (especially if she ends up not trashing Obama any further) and then bows out gracefully after Barack's numbers cross the finish line. Stoddard said there is not a reasonable path for her any longer, to become the nominee. I think she's correct.

---

And here's another thing: Clinton's being in this race along with Obama has served to REINFORCE the idea that The Last Glass Ceiling is very breakable, and breakable now! Obama would have embodied the idea single-handedly, of course. But so would she. She brought yet another angle to it. BOTH women and African Americans proved it's a highly plausible thing. We've never experienced that before. Especially when it's publicly demonstrated and proven that there are SEVERAL viable ways to break that Last Glass Ceiling. It could be broken by anyone in society. It wouldn't be JUST blacks. It wouldn't be JUST women. Either could do it and either would play a part in it.

BESIDES: That Last Glass Ceiling is in your mind. It's in the thinking of Americans, deeply rooted in traditions and conventions and years lived and environment lived in. And it's now thinkable in the minds of a LARGE over-grouping of Americans - that this can and inevitably will be done. WE DEMS have been the ones to lead on this history-making charge forward. We're changing the national mindset, and opening it up to a new era in which all colors and both genders are commonplace on that presidential debate stage and nobody even takes note. We won't have a "the first (fill in the blank here)" anymore. We've already done that now. We're veterans, old hands at it now. We've evolved. We've grown up. We're a different America than this gawd-awful bush era we're thrilled and grateful to be leaving behind. And more people will feel that way than EVER before. It's a cataclysmic moment in our history - a change of national mindset. A change in the national zeitgeist or whatever.

We could even view it as a formal, if somewhat delayed, opening of the 21st Century. We are NOW entering a new century in American history, in the most profound sense of the word. Sounds to me like EVERYBODY'S a winner here.