Mr. Obama's narrow victory came from a powerful combination of two constituencies. The first was white, highly educated, reform-minded Democratic elites. It's easy to forget how skeptical this bloc historically has been toward the Clintons, whom they view as slick and scandal-stained opportunists. They rooted for the improbable Paul Tsongas in 1992, and for Bill Bradley over Al Gore in 2000.

The second was African-Americans. Bill Clinton overcame political adversity in 1992 and throughout his presidency in large measure because of support from African-Americans, but this time they went for Mr. Obama.
A collection of Hillary Clinton's tactical campaign mistakes would be a thick book. But she lost the race because Mr. Obama summoned the support of one group that never much liked the Clintons -- and of another group that always did until now.

I hope the maximum amount of coverage is focused on how horse racing can be cruel. I think horse racing is an ok sport, but if you insist on running horses that are sculpted so thin as to break, and are run for money largely outside the transparent realm of independent judgment, that's not gonna fly as more and more horses fall on the track.

Now I'd best look for another site at which to comment (not that I ever had much time to comment here), since I can't support Senator Obama.

I hope I'm allowed to say, in parting, that I believe that voting for Senator Obama would be to:

• expressly accept the tactics used by his campaign in the primary season,
  
• approve of the behavior of the media during the primaries, and
  
• sanction the actions of the Democratic Party leadership in general and its RBC in particular.

And I have never believed him to be qualified.

To me, they both sound like two sides of the same coin--with the difference that Clinton was operating in a political (massive GOP majorities in Congress) and ideological (no post-Bush implosion, no blogoshphere/media critique) environment far less hospitable to the enactment of a progressive agenda.

While speaking well of Obama, Sarandon expressed dislike for the possibility of Hillary Clinton running for vice-president.

'That would be hypocritical, because he is for change and she is not, she is for power,' Sarandon said.

Can the Obama movement be any more divisive, and angry and moronic than it already is?  I don't think so.

He has belatedly recognized the cries of sexism, Mr. Dean said, particularly when a friend showed him a video compilation of broadcasters' comments about Mrs. Clinton.

If he is as honest as people used to claim in 2004 he would add this:

I was regrettably distracted from reading all the letters sent to my office by democratic women because I was busy fondling Barack Obama's donor list.

Come on by, even if it is MSNBC.  :)

Here is a YouTube of the 78 Belmont, a race for the ages.

"Hillary Clinton goes loudly as Barack Obama seeks to woo her supporters"

Obama's campaign enjoys a significant fundraising edge over that of McCain, 71, after raising $272m in the past 18 months.

The Obama and Clinton camps are tentatively beginning to merge their fundraising apparatuses after Hillary told leading donors on a conference call: "He needs to know all of you. He really needs your help."

She is planning to keep her core donor team in place, however, so she can control how to dispense the cash. Clinton's finance chairman predicted that her supporters could bring in a further $200m but warned that the amount could depend on whether Obama picked her as a running mate.

Clinton has not fully accepted her vanquished status, despite her eloquent speech. The New York senator merely suspended her campaign last night, ostensibly so that she could raise money to pay off her $30m debts. A transition team has been appointed to negotiate the terms under which she will campaign for Obama - a somewhat bizarre case of the defeated usurping the role of victor, since losers rarely get to set the conditions.

Robert Barnett, a Washington lawyer who handled Tony Blair's multimillion-dollar book deal, and Cheryl Mills, another lawyer and confidante, are expected to bargain hard for help with settling Clinton's debts, including an $11m personal loan that she made to the campaign.

Clinton is believed to be haggling over the extent to which she will be Obama's highest-profile campaigner against McCain, as well as over the guarantee of a star turn at the Democratic National Convention.