As readers know, I don't like Hillary Clinton, didn't want more dynasty, thought her comments about assassination, and obliterating Iran were not just poor wording but highly offensive. I do want to see a woman for president but not Hillary Clinton. Last night I was disgusted with how she worked to be as classless as possible. Instead of congratulating Obama on his win, because he now IS the presumptive Democratic nominee, (and heck, even President Bush and Condi Rice congratulated him this morning!) she treated her speech as if it was yet another in the race to the White House, another stump speech and another call, crassly for money support. The song "Won't Back Down" by Tom Petty played at the end, which, no coincidence, I'm sure, was the song that the movie "Recount" ended with in the credits, and yeah, it was PETTY for her to do that. She tried to strongarm Obama into putting her on the ticket as VP, which there's no way Obama will ever do, because it's obvious she represents all the old politics that he has moved away from.

Anyway, I was disgusted, but this morning I feel angry about her. Last night was her opportunity to prove that the Democratic party and unity amongst all the participants is the main goal and instead, it was all about her. Even when, as she must do, she concedes at some point (who knows when? I guess she wants to be on a permanent campaign even though she's not going to be covered seriously after this point) she blew her chance to show herself to be a 1 statesman, magnanimous, generous, and uplifting for Americans. You know how, in Ecclesiastes, one of the verses says that there is an appointed time for everything ... a time to tear apart and a time to sew together. Her time to do that was last night and by not doing so, she showed her 1 purpose.

Some links from the internet.

Not only did Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-NY, not concede tonight, she didn't even congratulate Sen. Barack Obama, D-Illinois, for having secured the Democratic presidential nomination. Which he did at 9 pm ET, when five delegates from South Dakota pushed him over the top, giving him the 2,118 delegates the Democratic Party says is the magic number.

She said she wanted to "recognize" Obama and his supporters for all they have accomplished. She said Obama inspired Americans to care about politics, and empowered people to get involved -- but nothing about his rather historic accomplishment.*

She said she didn't want her supporters to be ignored or disrespected.

She continued to push her highly debatable  "popular vote" claim and declare that she's the strongest candidate.

Andrew Sullivan

The speech tonight was a remarkable one for a candidate who has lost the nomination, though not remarkable for a Clinton. It was an assertion that she had won the nomination and a refusal to concede anything to her opponent. Classless, graceless, shameless, relentless. Pure Clinton.

Her narcissism requires that she deprive her opponent of a night, or a second, of gratification or attention. And she has now won, in her Bush-like version of reality, 18 million votes. Her invitation for her supporters to email their suggestions to her website is pure theater, a way of keeping herself in the spotlight and maneuvering her delegates to demand a second spot on the ticket. The way she is now doing this - by an implicit threat, backed by McCain, to claim that Obama is an illegitimate nominee if she does not get her way - is designed to humiliate the nominee sufficiently to wound him enough to lose the election.

Either way, she is clearly intent on getting Obama defeated this fall if she is not offered the vice-presidency. And if she gets the veep nod, the way she has gotten it will allow her to argue that a November loss was not her loss. It was his. And she will run again in 2012.

and pushed normally temperate Fallows to type in caps:

You HAVE LOST the nomination. There are NO MORE primaries. And you're urging your supporters to nurse their bitter feelings on your web site, and keep selling their bikes to give you money that you'll spend on... what? The unseemliness -- and, yes, destructiveness -- of this is too obvious to mention, though perhaps not obvious enough to have occurred to you.

This is a new low.

Noam Scheiber:

So she's going to leave it to her voters to decide whether she should accept defeat after having, you know, lost? What if every losing candidate left it to their supporters to decide whether or not to accept the outcome of a race? Who would ever accept defeat?

What good could possibly come of this?

With Hillary proclaiming herself the legitimate winner, they're clearly going to say "keep going." If she actually does keep going, that's a disaster for the Democratic Party. And if she doesn't, you've just drawn a ton of attention to the fact that a large chunk of the party doesn't accept Obama as the legimiate nominee. No, worse: you've encouraged them to think that, then drawn attention to it.