One of the reasons we as a nation cannot sensibly discuss the abortion issue is that most people don’t know what the bleep they are talking about. Most American adults seem to know next to nothing about the physiological realities of pregnancy and gestation. They know there is sex at one end of the process and a baby at the other, but what goes on in between is, um, hazy.

Today there’s much hysteria coming from both Left and Right about some statements made by Barack Obama over abortion. Since what he said pretty much squares with my own opinion going way back, I’m having a hard time seeing the Big Bleeping Deal. However, when people like Jeff Fecke, who is normally fairly sensible, makes statements like “So Obama went and said third-trimester abortions shouldn’t have legal protection yesterday,” then I despair of ever having a sensible conversation with ANYBODY on this issue.

Obama essentially said he agreed with the Roe v. Wade guidelines, with one exception. That is, while Roe v. Wade allows for a physical and mental health exception to third-trimester abortion bans, Obama said maybe there shouldn’t be an exception for “mental distress.” And that’s it. But to read some people you’d think Obama just joined the Right to Life movement.

But here goes … Quoting Obama from an interview in Relevant Magazine:

Strang: Based on emails we received, another issue of deep importance to our readers is a candidate’s stance on abortion. We largely know your platform, but there seems to be some real confusion about your position on third-trimester and partial-birth abortions. Can you clarify your stance for us?

Obama: I absolutely can, so please don’t believe the emails. I have repeatedly said that I think it’s entirely appropriate for states to restrict or even prohibit late-term abortions as long as there is a strict, well-defined exception for the health of the mother.

Now we have to stop and define “late-term abortion.” What is “late-term”? During their long fight against intact D&E abortions, the Fetus People conflated intact D&E with “late-term abortion,” even though D&E is mostly a second trimester procedure, which in my book is MID-term. In fact, to a lot of Fetus People and even normal people, “late-term abortion” is a synonym for what the Fetus People call “partial-birth abortion,” even though there are other procedures that can be used to terminate a second- or third-trimester pregnancy.

So our first source of confusion is, exactly what does Obama mean by “late-term abortion”? When I use the phrase I mean third-trimester abortion, regardless of the method used. Since the interviewer had just mentioned third-trimester abortion, I’m going to assume that’s what Obama meant by it.

If so, what Obama said basically confirms the Roe v. Wade decision. Roe v. Wade permits states to ban third-trimester abortions, as long as there’s a “life and health” exception made for the mother. As I wrote in a couple of posts last year (“Late-Term Confusion” and “More Late-Term Confusion“), most states have had such bans on the books for a long time, and NARAL has been OK with this, because it conforms to Roe v. Wade guidelines.

And I suppose I had better explain trimesters, because based on comments flying around the web today I’m the only bleeping woman on the planet who has ever been pregnant and knows what trimesters are. A pregnancy is nine months long, right? Stages of pregnancy are divided into three three-month periods. Months 1-3 are the first trimester, months 4-6 are the second trimester, and months 7-9 are the third trimester. There are medical and physiological reasons these three stages are distinctive; they are not just arbitrary divisions the Supreme Court thought up. I will get into more of these distinctions later.

Now, I don’t think that “mental distress” qualifies as the health of the mother. I think it has to be a serious physical issue that arises in pregnancy, where there are real, significant problems to the mother carrying that child to term. Otherwise, as long as there is such a medical exception in place, I think we can prohibit late-term abortions.

This is a departure from Roe v. Wade, because Roe v. Wade allows for a mental health exception as well as a physical health exception in third-trimester abortions. The question in my mind is whether a third-trimester abortion might be helpful for a woman experiencing emotional or psychiatric stress. My thoughts:

There are many reasons third-trimester abortions are different from first- and second-trimester abortions. One big difference is that once the pregnancy has entered the third trimester there’s a likelihood the fetus will be viable, meaning it can survive outside the womb. Most of the time if a third-trimester pregnancy has to be terminated because of the mother’s health, every effort will be made to save the baby. It is unusual, although not unheard of, for the baby to have to be sacrificed to save the mother.

On the other hand, until very late in the second trimester there is zero possibility a fetus will survive outside the womb. From about the last week of the second trimester until about the end of the seventh month — well into the third trimester — survivability is iffy, but possible. After that the odds the baby will survive improve considerably. So are we straight on this point?

The problem with terminating a third-trimester pregnancy because the mother is emotionally or psychologically stressed is that you’re probably going to end up with a live infant, but one with more medical problems than it would have had if the pregnancy had gone full term. And this could cause the woman more stress in the long run. This is not sensible.

Regarding “mental distress” — as someone with intimate experience with severe postpartum depression, I appreciate mental distress as well as anyone. But by the third trimester it’s too late to avoid the physiological effects of pregnancy and childbirth, and if we’re talking about a purely psychiatric condition I suspect, medically, it would be extremely unusual for termination of pregnancy to be necessary or even helpful.

On the other hand, if it is discovered that the fetus has an anomaly that is “incompatible with life,” as the med journal articles put it — meaning there is no way the fetus will survive more than a few hours after birth — and the mother wants to terminate rather than live with the heartbreak, I say let her terminate. That’s a point that needs to be clarified.

Also, please note: In the case of elective abortion — meaning, IMO, a woman aborts because she doesn’t want to go through with the pregnancy — by the time you hit the beginning of the third trimester, you’re too late. You are as pregnant as anyone ever was. You’ve probably put on most of your pregnancy weight. You’ve gone through all the physiological and hormonal changes. Your innie is now an outie. And abortion at that point is a big bleeping deal medical procedure every bit as difficult as childbirth itself.

I’m explaining this because remarkable numbers of people don’t seem to understand why defending a right to elective abortion in the third trimester is insane. No woman in her right mind willingly carries a pregnancy that far and then decides to abort. Doctors won’t perform such abortions, anyway. Even Roe v. Wade permits states to ban third-trimester elective abortions.

And NARAL, please note, is fine with states banning third-trimester abortions as long as the “life and health” exception provided by Roe v. Wade is included in the ban. Again, most states have had such bans on the books for a long time.

However, I believed back in the 1970s that NARAL made a big mistake by not supporting some clear legal gestational limits for elective abortion based on the Roe v. Wade guidelines. Without such clear limits, the Fetus People have been able to market many urban legends about women in their ninth month of pregnancy suddenly deciding to “kill their babies” and terminate a healthy pregnancy. Most states eventually adopted gestational limits, but people are so confused about what’s legal and what isn’t that the urban legends seem credible.

Well, back to Obama —

The other email rumor that’s been floating around is that somehow I’m unwilling to see doctors offer life-saving care to children who were born as a result of an induced abortion. That’s just false. There was a bill that came up in Illinois that was called the “Born Alive” bill that purported to require life-saving treatment to such infants. And I did vote against that bill. The reason was that there was already a law in place in Illinois that said that you always have to supply life-saving treatment to any infant under any circumstances, and this bill actually was designed to overturn Roe v. Wade, so I didn’t think it was going to pass constitutional muster.

The various “born-alive” bills are based on the common Fetus People fantasy that infants aborted in the second trimester might live if only they had some medical care. They won’t, until possibly the very last week of the second trimester. Until then, any infant born by any means, gentle or otherwise, will die.

Ever since that time, emails have been sent out suggesting that, somehow, I would be in favor of letting an infant die in a hospital because of this particular vote. That’s not a fair characterization, and that’s not an honest characterization. It defies common sense to think that a hospital wouldn’t provide life-saving treatment to an infant that was alive and had a chance of survival.

Of course it defies common sense, and I very much doubt it ever happens, law or no law.

So that’s what Obama said, and according to RedState Obama is “rejecting at least some of the extremism of NARAL, Emily’s List, and other radical abortion organizations.” The only place where Obama and NARAL actually may part company is on the issue of mental distress, and in that case I might lean in Obama’s direction myself, as I said.

And for the record, I support elective abortion for any reason until about 20 weeks’ gestation, and all data for years have shown us that nearly all elective abortions in the U.S. are performed by about 15 weeks’ gestation.

I’m damn tired of reading variations on this story. I endorse this rebuttal.

About time.

Michael Finnegan writes for the Los Angeles Times that women voters overwhelmingly prefer Obama to McCain.

An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll found a wide gap last week: Women favored Obama over McCain, 52% to 33%.

The survey also found that voters who cast ballots for Clinton in the Democratic primaries preferred Obama over McCain, 61% to 19%.

Over the weekend, Frank Rich argued that the groundswell of female Clinton supporters moving to McCain was mostly a myth, based on anecdotes not supported by data.

How huge is a 13- to 19-percentage-point lead? John Kerry won women by only 3 points, Al Gore by 11.

The real question is how Mr. McCain and his press enablers could seriously assert that he will pick up disaffected female voters in the aftermath of the brutal Obama-Clinton nomination battle. Even among Democrats, Mr. Obama lost only the oldest female voters to Mrs. Clinton.

But as we know from our Groundhog Days of 2008, a fictional campaign narrative, once set in the concrete of Beltway bloviation, must be recited incessantly, especially on cable television, no matter what facts stand in the way. Only an earthquake — the Iowa results, for instance — could shatter such previously immutable story lines as the Clinton campaign’s invincibility and the innate hostility of white voters to a black candidate.

The problem with these artificially created narratives is, of course, that many in the electorate buy into them. For example, “everyone knows” that Republicans are better on national security than Democrats. History says otherwise, but no one argues with The Narrative. Thus old propaganda perpetually re-seeds itself.

So, there probably are some Clinton-supporting women out there who have switched to McCain, in part because they’ve inferred from media that’s what they’re supposed to do. That’s why it’s so important to get the fact about McCain out to the public and not allow right-wing “swift boat” games to overwrite the facts.

For example, Michael Finnegan writes that many people don’t realize McCain opposes reproductive rights.

In the days since Clinton abandoned the race and endorsed him, the political arm of Planned Parenthood and other women’s groups have rallied behind Obama and joined forces to attack McCain. Among other things, they have highlighted McCain’s opposition to abortion rights. The Republican’s moderate image, they say, has misled many women into thinking he supports abortion rights.

“It’s astonishing the extent to which that’s just assumed about him,” said Hesla.

The argument that Obama must choose Clinton as a running mate or risk losing women voters has been rebutted by reality. What about those white working-class voters Clinton managed to win over in the waning days of her compaign? Thomas Schaller argues that having Clinton on the ticket would not help Obama win “swing” states.

With the notable exception of Arkansas and its six electoral votes, what state would Hillary deliver that Obama is not already going to win? Forget all this talk about the parts of the Democratic coalition to which she appeals. If he cannot pull together the elements of that coalition himself he’s going to lose anyway in swing states, whether those are states that he won in the primary, like Colorado or Virginia, or states that he lost, like Ohio, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania. Conversely, if Obama can reassemble the two halves of the Democratic coalition, he’s going to win the swing states and the election, despite the intraparty tensions that arose during the primary. (The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll seems to indicate he’s already made substantial progress.)

His fate in swing states does not hinge on having a polarizing figure like Hillary Clinton as his running mate. Whatever advantage she offers him in bringing in skeptical Democrats will be offset by losses among Clinton-fatigued independents and soft Republicans. Many despise her, and if they’re looking for an excuse to vote against Obama, picking Clinton as his running mate will provide it.

Then there are those three states where Hillary Clinton has personal ties. There’s no scenario in which Obama loses Illinois and New York and wins 270 electoral votes. Her help in two of the three states is moot. As for Arkansas, political scientist Jay Barth, an Arkansas native who teaches at Hendrix College in Conway, says the level of skepticism toward Obama is so high locally that an Obama-Clinton ticket might not take the state’s six electoral votes anyway. Put simply, Hillary Clinton is not this year’s version of Lyndon Johnson in 1960.

I’ve thought the Hillary as Working-Class Heroine phenomenon would likely be short-lived, anyway. In all her years in public life she had never been remarkably popular among white working-class voters. She managed to whip up some enthusiasm in that demographic through a well-targeted media campaign combined with the fact that her opponent is, um, black. I don’t see her owning those voters enough that she could deliver them in November, especially since the top of the ticket is still, um, black. Some of that innate hostility of white voters to a black candidate is not a myth.

Along with Schaller’s argument, Salon published a piece by Ed Kilgore arguing that Clinton should be Obama’s running mate. (Ed Kilgore is one of those “Democratic strategists” that many of us feel are more of a drag on party strategy than an asset, but he makes a good living.)

First, Kilgore argues that a “unity ticket” would bring the two feuding halves of the party together. Matt Yglesias demolished the “unity ticket” argument last May, and if anything the recent polls show us the two feuding halves are coming together quite nicely, thank you, without the “unity ticket.”

Kilgore also makes a lame “well, who else you gonna call?” argument. There are a wealth of veep possibilities, I say. They all have their minuses to go with the pluses, but then, so does Senator Clinton.

Tbogg snarks so I don’t have to.

[UPDATE: Greg Sargent has more on what a snake Lieberman really is.]

You may have heard of the recent encounter between Barack Obama and Joe Lieberman, in which the new leader of the Dem party let the former Democrat know that he was not pleased with the the “personal attacks and his half-hearted denials of the false rumors that Obama is a Muslim.”

Now the snake in the grass is fighting back, telling Mark Halperin of The Page that “If the Obama campaign thinks they are going to intimidate Joe Lieberman with these sleazy tactics then they are sorely mistaken.”

I agree with Josh Marshall:

…Lieberman’s days in the Democratic caucus, or more specifically, his days with a committee chairmanship courtesy of the Democratic caucus are numbered in months.

My assumption is that after the November election, regardless of the outcome of the presidential campaign, Joe will be stripped of his chairmanship. (This seems even more certain to me if Obama wins the general, but I suspect it will happen regardless.) Whether he’ll actually be expelled from the caucus I don’t know and probably doesn’t really matter. Once he’s stripped of the benefits he gains from it, presumably he’ll leave himself and become an actual non-caucusing independent or, more likely, start caucusing with the Republicans.

What that tells me is that Lieberman has no incentive not to make the maximum amount of trouble over the next five months both for his senate colleagues and for Sen. Obama.

Listen, Dems, we tried to tell you to support Ned Lamont. We almost got Creepy Joe out of the Senate for you, and you wouldn’t listen to us.

What’s even slimier than Joe is the fact that the Right is using this episode to add to their “Obama is anti-semitic” smear: “How smart is it of the Obama camp to antagonize a revered figure in the Jewish community?”

Shameless. And you know the righties won’t let go of this. They’ll be fabricating “evidence” of Obama’s alleged anti-semitism until the election.

Update: See also Jane Hamsher, “Lieberman Whines After Obama Kicks His Ass.”

Update: Have you heard about the “veep vetter” controversy? One of the members of Obama’s vice presidential search team is being linked to mortgage industry lobbyists because he took a loan from a mortgage company whose lobbyists contributed to the Clinton campaign, and Obama had criticized the Clinton campaign for taking the lobbyists’ contributions, and somehow this make Obama a bad person. I haven’t had time to check all the details out myself, but unless there is something about this story nobody is telling me, I concur with Mark Adams’s opinion:

Now just for the record, the head of Obama’s VP selection team didn’t hand out fraudulent loans or anything, right? He wasn’t a lobbyist for Countrywide, was he, or one of it’s executives?

He was an extremely good credit risk who took out some loans with the company, and paid them back. So WTF?

This morning I want to re-visit “identity politics” and why I hate it. But first, I want to clarify again what I mean by the term.

The Wiki definition of “identity politics” is “political action to advance the interests of members of a group supposed to be oppressed by virtue of a shared and marginalized identity (such as race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or neurological wiring).” That’s fine as far as it goes, but there’s a critical aspect of IP that this definition leaves out. And that is the tendency of IP activists to care and work passionately only on behalf of the marginalized group with which they share identity (hence the name, “identity politics”).

Why is this a problem? It’s a problem because the end result is a balkanization of advocacy groups that compete with each other for donations and attention and sometimes even work against each other. And that end result is one of the reasons the Right has been able to dominate American political discourse for the past quarter century or so.

I witnessed this splintering in the 1970s. Back then what was left of the old New Deal coalition broke apart, partly under pressure from the antiwar and various “New Left” liberation movements and partly because large numbers of whites allowed themselves to be race-baited into voting Republican.

The New Deal coalition had sustained the Democratic Party and constituted its soul for four decades. It was a broad, if flawed, coalition that successfully promoted progressive policies (see, for example, the Great Compression). Granted, by the early 1970s this coalition had gotten rigid and old and was not responding well to the challenges of the times. The time was ripe for a political realignment, in particular one that included minorities and women.

But when the New Deal coalition broke up, it left a huge vacuum within the Democratic Party, and the antiwar and various liberation movements did not form a new coalition to step in to fill that vacuum. Instead, young activists all too often remained in self-absorbed Identity Politics enclaves.

And divided, we were conquered.

In the 1970s, as the New Deal coalition was crumbling, a number of wealthy conservatives like Richard Mellon Scaife began to build the media and political infrastructures that have dominated U.S. politics since the 1980s. While too many progressive activists remained on street corners handing out xeroxed fliers for a narrowly focused cause du jour, a new right-wing coalition came together to dominate mass media and to drive their issues relentlessly.

And with no big coalition to support it, the Democratic Party had to turn to moneyed interests and corporate donors to get the funds to win elections. More and more, the Dems became indistinguishable from the Republicans. Progressives effectively were banned from power.

Fast forward to the 1990s. Bill Clinton won two elections not by challenging the Republican Power Machine but by finessing it. It was a remarkable personal performance that left the right-wing power infrastructure intact and did nothing to restore the Democratic Party’s lost soul.

I don’t fault him for that, because at the time Clinton was up against something that was, in its way, a lot more powerful than the presidency. Given the political culture and circumstances of the 1990s, his popularity and effectiveness were powerful testimony to his unique political skills.

But, ultimately, if we’re going to create a society and government that genuinely are open to progressive ideas and policies, the political culture has got to change and the right-wing power infrastructure has got to be pushed back hard. I don’t believe that was possible in the 1990s. Now, I think it is possible. Thanks to the colossal failures of the Bush Administration, and the new progressive infrastructure made possible by the Internet, we have an opportunity to effect broad, systemic change in American politics that will help all progressive causes.

This is an opportunity that must be seized now. A door is open now that might be closed to us by the next election.

Today, many of us are catching our breath hoping the Dem nomination battle really is over so that the general election fight can begin. But these past few months I’ve been dismayed at how quickly so many of us fell back into the old Identity Politics, equality for Me but not for Thee, patterns. Once again, we’re forming circular firing squads.

As a generic choice I don’t much care whether the First President Who Is Not a White Man turns out to be a black man or a white woman, or for that matter a woman of color were one running this year. When I look at senators Clinton and Obama, my questions are which one of these two gets it? Which one sees the possibility of creating a new political culture friendly to progressivism? Which one is more likely to walk through that door?

And the answer I come up with is Obama. I cannot say whether he will succeed. He is human and imperfect, not political Jesus. But his words and background and the way he has run his campaign tell me he sees the opportunity that I see and will, at least, try.

However, I don’t believe Senator Clinton sees the opportunity. My belief is based in part on her performance in the Senate, which on the whole has been disappointing, and on the way she has run her campaign, which has been the same old “finesse (but don’t challenge) the Right and divide the Left” politics. All her formidable political skills mean nothing if she doesn’t see that open door.

Yes, electing Hillary Clinton would make a grand statement for feminism. But then we’d sweep up the popped balloons and confetti and go back to Old Politics Business as Usual. And nothing substantive would change. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s how I see it.

Michelle Goldberg has a article at The New Republic called “3 A.M. for Feminism.” You should read the whole thing, but here’s a snip:

Hillary Clinton has lost the nomination, but some of her most ardent female backers seem unwilling to accept it. A strange narrative has developed, abetted by Clinton and some of the mainstream feminist organizations. In it, the will of the voters was thwarted by chauvinistic party leaders in concert with a servile media, and Obama’s victory represents a repeat of George W. Bush’s in 2000. It’s a story in which Obama becomes every arrogant young man who has ever edged out a more deserving middle-aged woman, and Clinton, hanging on until the bitter end, is not a spoiler but a feminist martyr.

This conviction, that sexism cost Clinton the nomination, is likely to be one of the more toxic legacies of this primary season. It is leaving her supporters feeling not just disappointed but victimized, many convinced that Obama’s win is illegitimate. Taylor Marsh, a blogger and radio host whose website has become a hub for Clinton fans, says she gets hundreds of e-mails from angry Democrats pledging not to vote for Obama. She’s started running posts from such readers under the headline DEMOCRATIC STORM WARNINGS. “I’m not saying that this is a huge voting bloc,” she says. “I’m just saying that there is a huge amount of talk and I’m convinced it’s a reality that needs to be addressed.”

Taylor — and let me say I’ve met Taylor and like her very much, in spite of, well, recent events — responded:

Michelle Goldberg’s subtitle couldn’t be more insulting: “Clinton dead-enders and the crisis in the women’s movement.” There’s enough anger and rancor. It doesn’t help. But not even progressives get it.

People just do not understand the rage.

I don’t understand the rage, and I’ve been as held back by sexism as much as most women my age, which is close to Taylor’s and Hillary’s age.

I’ve faced the harassment and double standards. I’ve watched incompetent men sail effortlessly up the management ladder while exceptionally competent women remained stuck in entry-level positions for year after year. I’ve had to train men to manage me who had half my experience. I spent years struggling with unequal pay while raising two kids by myself. I certainly understand being angry about that.

But, y’know what? People get shafted lots of ways. Lots of people other than women have good reason to be angry at the status quo. If we’re going to change the status quo, we need to stop shoving each other out of the way just to make statements. I’m done with making statements. I want change.

As I wrote a couple of days ago, equality by definition has no preferences. If you are fighting for equality only for your particular slice of the demographic pie, then you aren’t fighting for equality but for favoritism.

If we’re going to turn the nation in a more progressive direction, we must jettison Identity Politics and come together to work for Progressive Politics.

I know Senator Clinton complains that she’s been shoved out of the race. But in spite of a strong finish, she was mathematically out of the race weeks ago, and her “kitchen sink” dirty campaigning was only poisoning the water without changing the inevitable outcome. Further, the Florida-Michigan issue was nothing but a slick attempt by Clinton to pick up cheap votes, and the fact that Clinton supporters willfully fail to see this tells me they’ve got their eyes shut to reality.

You know what we’re really up against? Read carefully this opinion piece by Daniel Henninger at The Wall Street Journal.

The irony too bitter to swallow is that Barack Obama’s identity politics trumped Hillary Clinton’s identity politics. Put differently, what goes around comes around. …

… The hard version [of identity politics] introduced people, mostly college students, to an America partitioned into categories of race, gender, ethnicity and sexuality. The softer version has flown for 30 years under all sorts of euphemized banners – diversity, multiculturalism, celebrating our differences. Only one campaign is celebrating our differences this week. …

… After South Carolina, the campaigns accused each other of playing the race or gender card. Obama deflected this charge. “I don’t want to deny the role of race and gender in our society,” Obama said. “They’re there, and they’re powerful. But I don’t think it’s productive.”

I’m not convinced. I think Barack Obama is more inclined to interpret American life in the formal categories of identity politics than is generally thought, or even than would older “conventional liberals” like Al Gore or John Kerry. Legal theorists have been a main source of its ideas; it’s hard to imagine that Barack and Michelle Obama didn’t hear a lot about “marginalized constituencies” at Harvard Law School. Sen. Obama may not be so conventional after all.

Speaking last July about picking Supreme Court nominees, he said: “We need someone who’s got the heart . . . the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old – and that’s the criteria by which I’ll be selecting my judges.” This is the language of identity politics. It’s not just talk. It’s an ideology designed to produce . . . change. …

… John McCain by instinct, biography and upbringing is prone to see America as a common civic culture. The vocabulary of “unjust” class distinctions familiar to Obama is alien to the McCain worldview. Sen. McCain should think about this and figure out a way to talk about it. If Americans are going to affirm a president making appointments on the basis of race, gender, class and sexuality, they should know it in 2008, rather than 2009-2012.

To Henninger, any political activism that addresses the concerns of any demographic other than White Upper-Class Male is, by default, “Identity Politics.” White Upper-Class Male is the default norm that constitutes what Henninger sees as a “common civic culture,” never mind lots of us have been disowned by that “common” culture.

And as long as we keep ourselves divided into demographic splinter groups, and allow indulgent, self-centered anger to blind us to the bigger picture, Henninger wins.

[Update: I watched Senator Clinton's speech this afternoon and thought it very classy. She did a lot to rehabilitate her reputation, and I hope the majority of her supporters can take her advice and support Barack Obama for President.]

On the day after an African American became the presidential nominee of a major party, most of us are still griping about the loser. Yeah, me too. She’s turning into ripe road kill, which grabs your attention even as you wish it weren’t there.

Chris Suellentrop has a roundup of various reactions to Senator Clinton’s speech last night. Quotes range the gamut from “Outrageous, Delusional” (Noam Scheiber) to “utterly unconscionable” (Matt Yglesias). I will add to that Michael Tomasky:

Once again, it’s all about Hillary Clinton, who delivered the most abrasive, self-absorbed, selfish, delusional, emasculating and extortionate political speech I’ve heard in a long time. And I’ve left out some adjectives, just to be polite.

Last night I was listening to speeches with one ear while compiling a beginner’s guide to major Mahayana bodhisattvas. Talk about disorienting. I wanted to charge into the mess on the television screen waving the flaming vajra sword of righteous disgust.

Michael Crowley makes some good points in “In the Clinton Bunker.” The first is a point Keith Olbermann also made last night — [Crowley writes],

How fitting that, on the night Barack Obama finally claimed the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton delivered her non-concession speech from a concrete bunker. To reach the Baruch College gymnasium where Hillary spoke with such surprising defiance her supporters had to descend two flights below street level. The thick subterranean walls blocked out cell phone and BlackBerry signals, and no televisions were provided in the main event hall, thereby insulating Hillary’s cheering supporters (intentionally, some theorized) from the dispiriting events unfolding at the Xcel Center in Minneapolis.

That much insulation had to have been planned. The other point is one that occurred to me last night. She asked her supporters to go to her web site and tell her what to do next, to which I wearily responded, “She wants her groupies to go to her web site and beg her to keep fighting. Best interest of her party, my ass.” Michael Crowley writes,

And so Hillary is embarking on yet another listening tour. She is asking her determined followers—like the one here wearing a “REAL MEN vote Hillary” pin—what she should do next. The kabuki listening tour is a hoary old Clinton device. When Bill Clinton ran for re-election as governor in 1990, he promised Arkansans not to run for president before his term had ended. Two years later, he was touring the state, asking for their “permission” to break his pledge. As luck would have it, Bill got the answer he was looking for.

And so will Hillary. Attending an event like tonight’s helps to explain how Hillary carries on in the face of it all. She spends her days surrounded by people who believe in her passionately–who “grab my hand or grip my arm, to look me in my eyes and tell me, don’t quit, keep fighting,” as she put it in a campaign email tonight–and all the moreso the more hopeless her cause seems. These people will undoubtedly tell her to carry on. That much was clear from the chant of “Denver! Denver!” which came up tonight, and which drew no strong rebuke.

Clearly, she is cynically manipulating the emotions of her followers to wring some concession out of Obama or the Democratic Party. Whether she still thinks she can be the veep — snowball’s chance in hell, I say — or whether she wants someone to pay off the $20 million campaign debt I can’t say.

Anyway, I went to her web site this morning to send her a message to QUIT NOW. But of course the site is set up so that you can only tell her to keep fighting. If you fill in the web form you are endorsing a statement that says “I’m with you Hillary, and I am proud of everything we are fighting for” (to wreck the Democratic Party?). So she’s not asking for opinions. She is gathering endorsements. Not that her groupies will notice or appreciate this distinction (and they say we Obama supporters are culties?).

However, there’s another web form on her site that doesn’t involve an endorsement. You know what to do. No threats, please. Here’s what I wrote, in case you’re at a loss for words:

You’ve lost. Stop destroying the country, the Democratic party, and what’s left of your reputation. Endorse Obama and go back to the Senate.

You can also send faxes to her campaign headquarters: 703.962.8600.

Update: See the Unapologetic Mexican:

REGARDING HILLARY CLINTONs odd non-concession speech last night: I do understand that Hillary, as a woman, feels she must appear strong to the end. And as a fighter, myself, I do respect that idea. And I do get that she is angling for cash and for a position in Obama’s administration. But I also know that a strong person, when beat fairly, can admit that they were bested. All else follows that moment of honesty and respect. For someone who loses to act as if they have not lost and then use that denial to lever goods or resources their way is not “feisty” or “strong.” It simply shows a lack of respect for the values that give weight to a “win” or “loss” in the first place.

I’m listening to Hillary Clinton speak, and she’s still arguing that she’s the stronger candidate and she got the most votes. Lies, but she’s in a groove.

She’s also implying that she’s the candidate of American values. Gag.

She says she’s committed to uniting the party.

She’s been fighting for a better health care system for 16 years, she says. Her followers cheer this. They don’t seem to notice that she failed.

She’s making no decisions tonight. No concession.

She wants her groupies to go to her web site and beg her to keep fighting. Best interest of her party, my ass.

Keith Olbermann points out that the venue of Senator Clinton’s speech has no television monitors or blackberry service and the people there might not know that some networks have already declared Obama the nominee.

[On to the Obama speech.]

“I will be the Democratic nominee for the President of the United States of America.” Nice.

Did you listen? Rousing speech. I’ve been writing all day and am pretty much keyboarded out, but do leave comments.

[Update: Associated Press -- Obama clinches the nomination.]

There is much speculation that by this time tomorrow Barack Obama will have enough delegates to claim the Dem nomination. There is also much speculation that Hillary Clinton will, finally, concede the race and support Barack Obama.

Regarding the latter: I’m not holding my breath.

Ben Smith writes that Clinton aides are rallying donors and telling them the fight isn’t over until August. Senator Clinton’s behavior in recent weeks has been so toxic there’s no way she publicly can support Obama without revealing herself to be an utterly cynical hypocrite. Some of her supporters are whipped up into such a frenzy of Obamaphobia they’re likely to turn against Clinton if she endorses him.

Of course, it’s possible the Clintons are still rallying donors because they want to reduce the $20 million or so debt they owe the campaign and will have to pay back out of their own pockets.

Josh Orton argues that Clinton will bow out gracefully. “I don’t think Clinton will divide the party further,” he writes. “As hard as it must be to concede that she lost a huge upset to a young up-start, I believe she’s more than capable of putting the party and country ahead of self-interest.” I’ll believe it when I see it.

On the other hand, Thomas Edsall says Clinton wants Obama’s help in raising the $20 million. Maybe there’s a deal in the works.

I’ll be reasonably satisfied if Senator Clinton suspends her campaign without conceding. What’s important now is to re-focus news media on the Obama-McCain contest rather than the Obama-Clinton contest.

Predictions? Will she concede?

Update: Noonish, there are news stories saying Clinton will concede when Obama gets the number of delegates he needs to win the nomination. Other news stories say she won’t.