Bill hates to lose. Hillary hates to lose. They are as tough as they come and have forgotten more about this game of campaigning than Karl Rove ever knew. My take here is that if this were any other kind of campaign where we aren't debating the fundamental shape and identity of our country, Hillary would be the hands-down, odds-on favorite. But comes now this man Barack Obama who simply by his very presence seems to be shaking up the status quo among the electorate and the very way that campaigning is done. The only other example of this kind of campaign that relies on the "politics of hope" in modern times is the one run by the new MA governor, Deval Patrick. Right now, Gov. Patrick is battling an old system that has very entrenched ideas and practices. A system that went big for Bill Clinton in the 90s. A system that bought Clinton's idea of "change". This is what Obama is facing. The people who literally invented progressive politics are feeling the heat of the next generation of progressivism and they clearly don't like it. A clear example of this: Hillary had a chance to be gracious in SC and chose not to be. Bill Clinton's testiness in NV is also illustrative of ambition trumping common sense. What the Clintons, particularly Bill, have a tendency to do is allow their iconic influence to overshadow their clearly good ideas and intelligence. Any campaign would be thrilled to have their brain trust, but they tend to get in their own way and get a little full of themselves. I've not heard the humility from Hillary on the stump that I've heard from Obama, nor the candid assessment that changing the way Washington works will be anything but a cakewalk. Leave aside cleaning up the destruction wrought by the current administration.

I'm not suggesting that Hill should campaign any less vigorously, nor that Bill shouldn't used his outsized presence to help, but there should be at least an acknowledgement that change is in the offing and that it may be embodied by a tall, lanky, junior senator from IL who happens to be black and who may be the most unifying figure this country has seen since, gasp, Bill Clinton in 1992, and who would seem to have the very anointing of MLK himself. Acknowledge that the torch may be about to be passed to Barack Obama, and take this loss of the nomination, should that happen, with a bit of grace and embrace the future. Again, Hillary should be as she said, "in it to win it", but a bit of realism and humility would be welcome. They've started something incredible in the Democratic Party and they shouldn't be so blinded by their desire to win that they don't at least recognize that what they began some 15 years ago could well be bigger than their ambitions.

I am in awe this morning. Last night, I went to the polls and voted for Barack Obama in MA, knowing that he probably would not win here. He didn't. But even here in Blue liberal Massachusetts, there's a feeling that Obama could win the nomination and indeed, the White House. To those cynics posting here who refuse to name themselves, I will only say this: in the space of a single generation, from the time the Voting Rights Act was signed into law by President Johnson, and renewed this past year by a Republican Congress and re-authorized by President Bush (arguably the WORST PRESIDENT EVER!) we have a viable female candidate and an equally viable black male candidate for the highest office in the nation. Barack Obama won in places that are as red as you could ask for including....UTAH! IDAHO! NORTH DAKOTA! It's not just that he won 14 states, it's WHERE he won. How on earth can anyone not understand that either way this goes, history is being made RIGHT NOW and the landscape has been altered significantly? All the forward movement we've seen and the backlash by conservatives (read: bigots and chauvinists and depraved religious folk) have led us to this. When a woman in a convenience store tells me she would be fine with either Hillary or Barack, you know that something BIG is up. This is more than just the end of a conservative era. This is a wholesale change in the mindset of the USA.

John McCain must be shitting his Depends.

He must know on some level that he is fighting something much larger than him and the old soldier won't win this fight.