At Long Last

I'll round out day one of SullyDogBlog with a stab at politics.

Today, Hillary Clinton suspended her campaign and endorsed Barack Obama's candidacy for President. And the whole nation exhales.

Even John McCain had to be getting sick of this. Far from propelling his candidacy, the ongoing primary battle between Barry and Hill showed every sign of toughening Obama up for the general, and was sucking all of the media oxygen away from the dyspneic McCain campaign. Still, it goes without saying that Obama, who has arguably been the inevitable nominee since Wisconsin, couldn't get his campaign rolling until Hill had been dispatched. And for a while there, some on the left (like me--might as well get that out there right now) were worried that Hill just wouldn't die, and would prefer to split her party, cripple Obama, and start planning for 2012 rather than endorse the democratic nominee. Her non-concession concession on Tuesday night felt to some of us like the first step of the descent into that nightmare scenario. Talk about bitter.

Well, it isn't going to happen, and in retrospect, of course, it never would. Hillary Clinton isn't stupid, and she knows what would have happened to her political future in that scenario. Her speech today, while tinged with regret and subtle angling for the second slot, was nevertheless a full-throated endorsement of Obama.

At times, Hill's speech today was almost soaring--especially when she was beseeching her supporters to follow the Obama standard. Gone was the shrill, fingernails-on-a-blackboard timbre of her earlier speechifying. And I couldn't help thinking: what if her speeches leading up to Iowa, New Hampshire, and Super Tuesday had been more like this one? Things might have turned out very differently.

If Hillary can get a sizable enough fraction of her major constituency--working class white women--to follow Obama, and if Obama doesn't stumble, there's a better than even chance, I think, that John McCain is going to have a very bad year.