"God bless their enthusiasm," said Pelosi of the effort. "These women are fabulous, and I know many of them very well." But, she said, while "we all want to see a woman president ... they want me to be the chair of the convention, who is neutral. And yet they want me to be for Hillary Clinton."

But the speaker said that activist women who make up Clinton's supporters, blue-collar voters and Obama backers will come together when they realize they "have the most to lose by a Democratic defeat."

And she said voters, too, will be energized by the party's "progressive economic agenda to grow our economy, for real initiatives on health care," education, infrastructure, housing and other key "kitchen-table issues."

on the seating of florida and michigan:

"For now, 2,026 is the magic number" of pledged and unpledged delegates needed by a candidate to win the party's presidential nomination, she said, but "if they decide to seat (Florida and Michigan) this weekend, there will be a new magic number."

While saying she believes those two states' delegates should be seated, Pelosi added that it must happen ''in a way that is not destructive to any sense of order in the party."

"If you have no order and no discipline in terms of party rules, people will be having their primary in the year before the presidential election," she said. "So there has to be some penalty."

She said the party committee will come up with a formula that is "fair and accepted by both campaigns," perhaps allowing the states 50 percent of their delegates. But "if the resolution is not appropriate, then it remains for the (Democratic National Convention) credentials committee to resolve it," she said. Then, "it will have to happen by the end of June" or she will intervene, she said.

pelosi also noted that there are a lot more democrats who are waiting on the sidelines -- many more than have been emotionally torn by the process:

"People are already saying to me: I'll be ready - as soon as we have a nominee - to come around."

pretty standard fare.  as a party, we need to realize that this bitterly contested primary will lead to some of hillary's most ardent supporters leaving the fold.  but those who leave the party are already being replaced.  the number of people who self-identify as democrats has increased dramatically since the last election:

The 40% Democratic identification figure is unusually high. The last time 40% of Americans identified as Democrats was August 2000. Before that, there have been just a handful of Gallup Poll telephone surveys -- going back to 1985 -- in which 40% or more of Americans identified as Democrats. The highest Democratic identification in a Gallup telephone poll was 42% in July 1987.

The gap between Democratic and Republican identification -- now at 14 percentage points -- is also almost a record high. The gap was higher only in December 1998 -- immediately after President Bill Clinton had been impeached by the Republican-controlled House of Representatives -- when 41% of Americans identified as Democrats and only 20% as Republicans.

The highest level of identification with the Republican Party, 39%, has been reached at three points: in May 1991 (a few months after the first Persian Gulf War), December 2003 (in a poll in the field at the time of Saddam Hussein's capture), and September 2004 (after a successful Republican convention at which George W. Bush was nominated for a second term in office).

[...]

There are several other indications that the Democratic Party is riding high at the moment. First, the percentage of Americans with a favorable image of the Democratic Party (56%) is significantly higher than is the case for the Republican Party (41%).

so while we have some hillary supporters who will vote for john mccain, the multitudes of democrats will be voting their democratic values for the democratic nominee.  we must accept the inevitable angst that comes from losing a hard-fought election for those who supported the loser of that election.  they may eventually come back.  but they will only come back in their own time.  in the end, the democratic tide makes their loss easier to sustain.  this is especially true since we have increasing ancedotal evidence that most of the hillarycrats who are swearing allegience to the republican nominee are in the bluest of blue states or the reddest of red states.  let's follow barack in conceding to hillary and her ardent supporters the space they need and focus our attention on winning in the fall...