Quotes From Around Yon Blogosphere

I have no idea what was said and would one day love to see a Mike Nichols recreation, but how canny for Obama to go to her house. The symbolism of deference, the crossing of her threshhold, makes for extremely good politics. And since she's the hostess, there are, even for a Clinton, some boundaries of manners. But having aired the idea as a way to bring the party together, I'm now entirely convinced by Clinton's behavior this past month and Obama's cool handling of the last few days that it would be a dreadful idea. He doesn't need her. And she could damage him.

-- ANDREW SULLIVAN

How fitting--even how poetic--it is that Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic presidential nomination during the week in which we mark the fortieth anniversary of the death of Robert F. Kennedy. This harmonic convergence has deep significance.

These events may come to be seen as the bookends of the second American civil war, a war that has divided the nation and been a dominant force in our politics for four decades. There is genuine reason to hope that 2008 will bring at last an armistice--maybe even a lasting peace--in America's Forty Years War, the internal conflict more commonly known as the Culture Wars, which began in 1968.

-- ROBERT S. McELVAINE

I continue to be somewhat dumbfounded by headlines like Ferraro wants Obama to pay Clinton’s debt and Lanny Davis leads a Hillary Clinton veep push. Even reading them from Europe, those types of headlines are so contaminated with Stupid that one has to wonder how stupid Stupid can get. I'm officially in the initial stages of the Bygones Phase of this primary, so I won't detail all the ways in which headlines like this are self-defeating for the Clinton Camp. Those that have been paying attention know that they ring about as hollow as Michael Richards demands that Fresh Prince admit that Seinfeld was the Bestest Sitcom Ever.

-- BOOMAN

As someone who has had to fight all her public life, from the 1992 health care fiasco through her husband's impeachment and a year and a half of brass-knuckles campaigning, who has had to show voters she is tough enough to be Commander-in-Chief, who has had to carry the accumulated anger and resentments of her gender, and now their bitter disappointment, is it humanly possible for one woman, however resilient, to turn away from all that and use her strength to bring peace to a fractured party?

-- ROBERT STEIN

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean and the Obama for America Campaign today announced that the DNC will no longer accept Washington lobbyist donations, making the same commitment as Barack Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president.

-- MICHAEL LINK

It's hard to appreciate the sheer size of the financial advantage Obama will enjoy over McCain. For Democrats, who're used to being effortlessly outspent, it doesn't even sound plausible. But McCain, with his lax fundraising and decision to accept public financing, will have about $85 million for the election, with another $40 million coming from the RNC, some of which will go to the McCain campaign, some of which won't. By contrast, a very conservative estimate for the Obama campaign's fundraising is $300 million. A high estimate, in which 2/3rds of his donors max out at $2,300, is $2.3 billion. And neither of these totals include the new donors he's likely to get, nor the pool of Clinton funders who he's going to begin hoovering money from. I'm expecting him to raise $500 million easily.

In a national election, money isn't everything. Free media matters too. That's why the McCain campaign is desperately pleading with the Obama campaign to do 10 televised debates and townhalls, the better to equalize exposure. But money is how you fund organization. It's how you fund field. It's how you fund ads. It's how you set the terms of the debate. It's how you make the other campaign spend defensively. Obama will be able to fully fund his campaign in every state he thinks he can win and most states he doesn't. And he'll be able to do so while raising the money passively -- unlike McCain, he won't have to waste flying around to endless fundraisers.

-- EZRA KLEIN

Call me disgusted, furious, and terribly disappointed.

Senator Obama, it seems, is off to a sad start. His first major speech as the Democrats' nominee-to-be was made . . . before the hard-line Israel lobby, AIPAC, a group that has consistently put its foot in the way of Palestinian-Israeli peace. And Obama, sounding more like a sleazy politician than a candidate of change, gave them exactly what they wanted: hawkish rhetoric towards Iran and, most astoundingly, a promise to ensure that Jerusalem remains undivided. He also indicated that the United States would be forthcoming with $30 billion dollars of aid (no questions asked) over the next ten years.

It's enough to make you sick.

-- JEB KOOGLER

Let's get something clear. I do not give a flying fuck if Michelle Obama did say "whitey" in some video tape from whenever and wherever and with whomever she supposedly said it. Period. I sincerely doubt that anything we finally see will rise to the level of what we have been led to believe happened. Furthermore, I do not care if Michelle Obama is unpleasant, nice as apple pie, indifferent to the world, filled with petty resentment, serene and loving, or anything else about the state of her psyche. I'm willing to wager she is all of those things depending on where she is and who she's talking to, just as every major public female figure I have read about has had her inner soul meticulously dissected before the public eye and has been found wanting. The assault on Michelle Obama is exactly like the assault on Hillary Clinton when Bill was running for the White House. It is mean, vile, sexist, crude, derogatory and beneath contempt.

-- ANGLACHEL

Like many senior citizens, McCain knows what he is talking about. A lot of young whippersnappers who grew up with calculators and studied New Math in school can barely count, and if you don't make sure you have the right change before you walk away from the cash register, they will accuse you of trying to cheat, so you have to count it right in front of them. And I don't think it is racist to point out that a lot of the hired help in stores these days are minorities, who have not gone to the best schools. McCain would be the kind of President who would count America's change and not be afraid to point out when we have been shortchanged, even if he has to ask the cashier to call the manager and make a scene.

-- JON SWIFT

Cartoon by Ben Sargent/Universal Press Syndicate