Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

He gives the appearance of a strikingly laid-back victor, this presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

On the day before the night he made history, Barack Obama shot hoops at the Back Bay Club in Chicago, and called the odd superdelegate or two. Then he and his wife, Michelle, kissed their daughters goodnight and, with a half dozen of their best friends, rode to Midway Airport to catch a flight to St. Paul to claim his prize. He sat on the plane, legs crossed, chuckling, chatting, giving little hint of what roiled within.

Mr. Obama has written of his "spooky good fortune" in politics, and vaulting ambition and self-possession define his rise.

. . . "I am like a Rorschach test," he said in an interview with The New York Times. "Even if people find me disappointing ultimately, they might gain something."

He is a liberal who favors regulating Wall Street and stanching housing foreclosures, negotiating with foreign enemies and disengaging from the war in Iraq. He speaks eloquently about America’s divisions of race and class, and says the old rhetoric of racial grievance has exhausted itself.

But his insistence that he can bridge the nation’s ideological chasms without resort to partisan warfare leaves some with the nagging sense that he makes it sound too easy, and that his full measure as a politician has yet to be taken.

-- MICHAEL POWELL

The lead story tonight - my "lede," as we spell it here - should have been about the remarkable fact that a black man has been nominated by a major party to lead a developed Western nation for the first time in the history of the world. A man - in whose lifetime people with his shade of skin were denied the right to vote and to use public accommodations - who is now on the cusp of the presidency. It says something good about America, and I would like to have been able to dwell on it.

But no. 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.

-- MICHAEL TOMASKY

I've wondered from time to time during the process what would have happened if Clinton had taken a page from John Edwards' playbook and acknowledged, long before the campaign began in earnest, that voting for the war was the wrong move. Edwards' candor and regret was seen as sincere, and he gained considerable credibility in progressive circles by proactively acknowledging his mistake, explaining why he made it, and arguing how he’d do better in the future.

Clinton never felt comfortable with this move. I think I know why — she didn't want to appear like a "flip-flopper," or someone the Republicans could characterize as "weak" when it came to the military and/or national security. But the result was an awkward dynamic in which Clinton wouldn’t say she was wrong, but couldn’t say she was right. Clinton became quite adept at dodging questions about what she would have done if she could make that vote again, but voters could tell she was being evasive.

It gave Obama an opening, and a chance to distinguish himself as the one who got the "big question" right from the start. That Obama and Clinton agree on practically everything else made this distinction all the more significant.

-- STEVE BENEN

I will enthusiastically support Barack Obama's campaign. Because I am not a bargaining chip. I am a Democrat.

-- HILLARY ROSEN

Just finished watching Hillary Clinton’s unconcession speech. I guess we should give her credit for the fact that her supporters now look sufficiently angry to set small brushfires.

. . . Unfortunately, I kept thinking of that "Gilligan’s Island" episode in which Ginger acts out an excruciatingly long and melodramatic death scene. You keep thinking her every last gasp is really it. But then she keeps rolling around and twitching because she's been peeking through her fingers all along and knows you're still watching.

-- DAHLIA LITHWICK

Over the course of this historic, thrilling, aggressive primary election, we've seen more female pundits than ever before writing and speaking about presidential politics. We've experienced unprecedented interest from male politicos in women's participation in the electoral process. And demands for women's leadership have been given their fairest hearing to date in the United States, with Democrats nationwide expecting Obama to give close consideration to female vice-presidential prospects -- not only because there are a few wildly successful and talented women who would be great at the job, but also as a gesture of good will toward the feminist energy that animated so many Clinton supporters.

-- DANA GOLDSTEIN

The question I have at this point is why the New York Mets are staying in the race. There's just no way they'll be able to make the math work out, and as they continue to trail, their fans will start to disappear and the money will dry up. And yet they continue to talk about staying in this race through September, praying for some kind of unlikely collapse by the Phillies. Maybe they're hoping that someone will offer them the wild card slot.

What do the New York Mets want, aside from more power for themselves?

Disgusting.

-- WILL BUNCH