AKA Smorf: "Everyone knows exactly what Obama could do to unify the party. He doesn't want to do it. Oh well. His choice. ... However, he will have no one to blame but himself if he doesn't unify the party. ... If he doesn't want to ask more of Hillary Clinton, that's his choice. ... However, he may suffer very real consequences for not asking more of her. His choice."

Just one question, AKA Sniff: Is it Obama's choice?

AKA Snorf: "I think she will do fine continuing in the Senate or maybe running again in 2012. If she does, that racist crap won't work anymore should Obama choose to compete again."

What racist crap are you referring to?

AKA Smurf: "It was not about his black voters. It was about white racial guilt."

Yeah, I vividly recall that speech Obama gave where he told white people that if they didn't vote for him, it would prove they were racist scum with no interest in taking responsibility for 200 years of oppression. That was one of Obama's finest speeches. (My favorite part was when he kept saying, "Yes we can, if not held back by the Man.")

Where have they said that they don't want the party to unify? In fact, Hillary Clinton has said quite the opposite quite often. She has called for her supporters to vote for and even contribute to Obama repeatedly.

Neither have said that they blame Obama for the fact that so many of his supporters were so eager to label them as racists. (Although what their private thoughts may be, who knows?)

You don't seem to understand something. I ceased to be a Hillary Clinton supporter when she endorsed Obama. Hillary Clinton, despite all her best intentions, doesn't tell me how to vote. What do you suggest she do? Hold a gun to my head?

I was truly thinking of voting for Obama until his FISA vote. That's when I decided on the Green Party. I like their platform.

However, just because I support the Green Party does not mean that I don't have my right to make personal observations about the election as a whole.

It is my belief that it is in Obama's hands to unify the party. Clinton has done all that she can do.

So why do you persist in blaming her for his failing?

Where to start?

Most whites aren't "sheltered and privileged." For Christ's sake! Almost everyone's catching hell out here! People are living from paycheck-to-paycheck. Homeowners with bad mortgages are finding solace in default! The most benighted, racist redneck has more in common with the oppressed minorities of this land than they do with the "sheltered and privileged." They're made to think, feel, and act against their own interests by a concerted, insidious campaign to distract them from the real authors of their misery: The Sheltered And Privileged.

I'm only one black person, but I didn't and don't call Bill Clinton a racist. But Bill Clinton is a consummate politician; he knows when and how to play the race card with the best (or worst) of them. When he derided Barack Obama's primary win in South Carolina, even Jake Tapper caught Bill's drift in comparing Obama's victory there to Jesse Jackson's. Boy, I can't understand why anyone would think the Clintons are running a race-baiting campaign, Tapper said on his Political Punch blog. The implication is clear: If that n***** did it, how hard can it be? Bill is a Southerner. He knows the language--spoken and unspoken. And so do we.

Face it: Obama hustled while Hillary Clinton was fantasizing about the rug she'd have in the Oval Office. She ran a fat, dumb, and lazy campaign. By the time she woke up and ran as she should have from the beginning, it was too late. That is the source of The Clinton's chagrin and anger. That is "what might have been."

I still believe--fervently--that Al Gore is the best candidate for president Democrats could put forward. But Barack Obama has displayed the discipline, the leadership, the patience, and the smarts to become our nominee. He showed and is showing a deference to the Clintons that wouldn't be there if she had gained the nomination. If Barack Obama had lost, I'd hold my nose, back Hillary Clinton as our nominee, and STFU. Not increase the chance that John McCain will win. And that's exactly what this unseemly cry for "validation" is doing.

People are suffering. People are losing their homes and their jobs. People are dying. We can't afford another year of Republican malfeasance. That means electing Barack Obama president. I had hurt feelings in 2000 and 2004 and there was no one around demanding that my pain be validated then. Validation is a luxury--a province of the sheltered and privileged. Times are too hard and the stakes are too dear for a luxury like that.

@BrianNelson

I happened to be home watching CNN on the day they played Bill Clinton's entire comment regarding how "Obama says that he was always against the war when in fact he voted exactly the way Hillary did on every bill for funding since he became a senator." That was the fairytale, Brian -- not the fact that Obama was running for president. The media never played the whole comment again for the entire week that this bullsh*t was going down.

I waited for our hero to take the high road that week, but he never said one word. Not. One. Word. He just let it spin. And that's why Bill Clinton is pissed, and I don't blame him one bit.

Apparently Obama supporters like you are still banging that drum because it makes Clinton look like a racist. And South Carolina is why Obama said NOTHING when the media cherry picked the fairytale end of Clinton's comment.

Obama played the race card, the media made it possible, and they all let Bill Clinton swing in the wind. For votes.

It's a fact, Brian. Deal with it.

First of all, there's a big difference between racist views personally and using race to advance one's campaign. From everything that I know, John McCain is not personally a racist either but there is no doubt in my mind that he has and will use race in many ways to diminish Obama's chances. That is exactly what the Clintons did as well--with Hilliary's talk about the "hard-working white voters" who were in her camp and Bill's dismissiveness of the result of the SC primary, given that Jesse Jackson had won there previously and had gone no where.

Secondly, you're way off the mark when you say that white people are not subject to ethnic abuse and stereotypes as well. I'm of Scandinavian and English heritage but I can remember being deliberately rammed by a bicycle and called a "dirty bohunk" by a kid who had obviously absorbed the hateful lessons of his parents all too well. The Irish, the Italians, the Poles, and many others all have nasty sobriquets attached to them. While the situation may have improved, Jews and blacks are not the only ones who have suffered discrimination.