There's no asterisk attached to Obama's victory: yes, it was close, but he's now the leader of the party. As winner, he's now in control of the party, at least through November.

On the other hand, it's likely that he won't be making major changes to the DNC, other than relatively minor ones (like having the DNC stop taking contributions from lobbyists).

Dean's approach to politics is close to that of Obama; had Clinton won, Dean would be replaced (and it would have been Clinton's right as winner to do so). Even though as DNC head Dean remained neutral during the campaign, he and Obama are natural allies.

Carville's opposition to Dean had to do in part with how the money was spent; the old approach lavished money on the DC-based consultants, people like Carville; Dean's approach, as well as Obama's approach, spends the money at the state level, even in red states, meaning people like Carville make less money.

Certainly there was plenty of misogyny during the primary campaign. There was also plenty of blatant racism. But the candidates were not otherwise interchangeable; we didn't have the choice of two otherwise identical candidates who were, respectively, a mixed-race man and a white woman.

One candidate supported the Iraq war and, like the current occupant of the White House, was a close family member of a previous president. The other candidate opposed the Iraq war from the beginning, and had a funny name. Both candidates were very impressive, and conducted highly skillful campaigns for the most part (other than February where one side, overconfident of victory, found itself badly positioned and lost a huge number of contests all in a row). Factors other than racism or sexism dominated the outcome.

Not only do I not believe that misogyny hurt Clinton, I think it was the only thing that made the race as close as it was. Backlash against blatant misogyny helped Clinton win New Hampshire; had she lost that one along with all her other February losses she would have been out long ago. Likewise, her strong support from older white women, a larger chunk of the Democratic electorate than any other, wouldn't have been available to a male candidate with similar skills and positions on the issues. The Democratic electorate was mostly female. Exit polls showed a lot more whites admitting they voted on the basis of race, than men admitting they voted on the basis of gender.

But all that's over; now Democratic women need to decide whether to vote for someone who shares almost all of Hillary Clinton's political beliefs, or to vote for someone who opposes everything Hillary Clinton stands for. I was a strong Howard Dean supporter in 2003; I was really angry at John Kerry. I got over it, and contributed money to him and urged people to vote for him. It wasn't enough, but this time it has to be enough.

There are a lot of wounds from the primary campaign on both sides.

By November, the decision will be clear, and the vast majority of those who supported Hillary Clinton will do as Hillary herself has asked them to do, and support Barack Obama.

Already the polls are showing that women in general are heavily favoring Barack Obama. For the passionate supporters, it's going to be harder; I was a Deaniac in 2003-4 so I know how it feels. Early on, I loathed John Kerry because of some of what took place in the primary, but what was I going to do? Vote for George Bush?

Well, if anything, John McCain is worse than George Bush in many respects. He makes Bush look like a dove. He's 100% anti-choice. He's against everything Hillary Clinton stands for. Really, the choice is not difficult.

These women endorsed Joe Lieberman over Ned Lamont, even though Lamont was completely pro-choice and Lieberman supported hospitals that wanted to deny morning-after contraceptives to rape victims, saying that the rape victims could find another hospital (not to mention his fights for every authoritarian anti-abortion judge).

They've also consistently endorsed northeastern "moderate Republicans" over more strongly pro-choice challengers, despite solid support by these "moderates" for anti-choice judges. It's all because they're playing a power game, in which access to the halls of power matters more than the abortion rights issue.

While Obama's backtracking on FISA pissed me off, claims that he is anything other than pro-choice are destructive to the cause, but might still be valuable if you want the candidate to appease you by hiring a bunch of your friends. Jane Hamsher's been writing about their power games for years now (back through 2006).

Claims that Obama has flipped on Iraq are wrong; he's consistently stuck to his formulation of withdrawal with adjustments based on the situation on the ground and military advice forever, likewise on several other issues.

However, there's no question that he's flip-flopped on FISA: he explicitly pledged to filibuster telecom immunity back in February, and today he voted for cloture. He's wrong, and it hurts. I'm with Greenwald on this one.

But McCain, who flip-flops every time he opens his mouth, is in no position to talk.