Ok, flame me if you think I am late with this but yesterday I slept late, then worked, then drank and went to bed to go to work this morning at my part time job (and haven't had a damn drink yet today.....oh wait not yet noon). Anyways, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Kudos to Hillary for real.

Crossposted at DailyKos

"Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that." -- Steve Earle.

I'm big fan of Townes Van Zandt.  Unlike Steve Earle, I never had the opportunity to know or play music with him. Anyhoo, I had to work late last night to meet a report deadline, so I did what I often do:  dialed my iPod to the TVZ collection and put it on shuffle.  For hours, many of Townes' best tunes pumped through my headphones while I wrote the narrative sections of my scientific report and formatted table after table.  

I came to a good stopping point, and poked my head into MyDD for a quick peek around, knowing there would likely be some "interesting" diaries and comments in the wake of Senator Obama having secured the Democratic nomination for President.  Boy howdy.  The last thing I did before I finally went to bed last night was read a diary that described an (all but finished) Presidential candidate with a precious metals simile-- specifically, polished gold.

More after the fold.

My friends, today is a day of firsts.

Of course, we begin with the fact that the first non-white male in American history has been nominated as a major party candidate for the presidency of the United States.  Of this, much has and will be written or said.

Today, also, marks my first time ever posting a diary on MyDD, or indeed any blog ever.  I have been a devoted reader of this and other blogs for a long time but have never felt compelled to write anything.  Today is the right day to start.

I am young, African-American, and male.  And I have been a Clinton campaign staffer during this primary season.

I've been a very strong critic of Hillary Clinton's campaign tactics, and I was very dismayed by what I heard from her last night.  

Yet, as I see the events unfold today, I want to provide a more generous, positive interpretation of what Hillary is doing and what she really wants.  

Here's my theory - she gave her "victory speech" last night, raised the issue of being VP, threatened to use her 18 million supporters as a bargaining chip, as a clever way to unify rather than divide the party.  She's basically taking one for the team.

Does anyone else remember those Choose Your Own Adventure books?  The ones where you got to make choices and decide what the main character was going to do next (or to "choose your own adventure"). My favorite was one that had something to do with a bicycle and a cone-shaped machine that eliminated air resistance.

As a kid, I loved those books.  Thanks to those books and countless Hardy Boys, Tom Swift and Redwall books, I grew to love reading books and still do.  I'll read a couple of books a week if given the chance.

But now over at FiveThirtyEight.com, one of my daily must-reads, Nate (or as I like to call him, the Analyst Formerly Known as Poblano) has something suited for all of us -- a choose your own vote total counter.

Right now on the front page of MyDD, one can read the host of this site opining:

"One RCB [sic*] vote changed everything."

This analysis can only be described as either willfully ignorant or deliberately inflammatory -- because no single vote or event changed the outcome of this Democratic contest.

Such unitary theories are by nature reductive and misleading. As far as I can see, the only point of making such a statement is to generate false pity for the losing candidate, and to instigate phony theories that the election was somehow stolen from the candidate who once held all the advantages and all the cards.

That contest was won fair and square by Barack Obama -- with a lot of help from the inept Clinton campaign. So let me try to list just a few of the votes and other events which collectively "changed everything" for Hillary Clinton -- changed her candidacy from one of inevitability, to one that has embarrassed many who once supported both her and her husband's political careers...

1) Hillary voting to give Bush the power to wage a falsely-justified war;

3) Hillary deciding to neglect the Iowa caucuses, until it was too late, giving Obama a huge national burst of publicity and momentum;

More after the jump...

Sheesh.  How much longer can large portions of the MoveOn.org "crowd" put up with attacks like this?  

Bill Clinton blamed "MoveOn crowd" for a lack of superdelegate support.  Weren't these the same people who originally formed a political advocacy group to say we shouldn't impeach Bill Clinton and that we should MoveOn?

This quote is from Kenneth Vogel at the Politico.

<After rattling off a series of poll numbers showing Hillary Clinton faring better than Obama against McCain, Bill Clinton told donors: "We are in the strongest conceivable position electorally and not in a good fix with the superdelegates, because they have felt all the pressure from the Obama side, from the media, from the MoveOn crowd - who they think is an automatic ATM machine for everybody for life. So, they're reluctant to take on all that.<</p>

This is a brief note to my fellow Obama supporters.

I've noted in the last day or so a rising tone of panic and dread in some of you. "Hillary's going to take it to the convention!" you exclaim. "She's going to cost us the general election!" you lament. This weeping and gnashing of teeth has been exacerbated by an increase in Republican trolling on this site in the last couple of days, with truth-free Obama hit pieces coming at a more rapid pace.

To these Obamaniacs I say, "Chill!"