Did Hillary Herd The PUMAs Home?

I must admit, I got a little caught up in the speculation that Hillary Rodham....Clinton was going to use the opportunity of her convention speech last night to slap Barack Hussein Obama with the snub to end all snubs.  No, I didn't think she was going to tell her party and the nation what she REALLY thinks of him (she already did that in the primaries, as McCain's ads so far this week helpfully reminded us), but the possibility of her doing a Reagan-in-1976 address that was more an announcement of her 2012 candidacy than it was anything to do with the current race and the current nominee was both tantalizing and mouth-watering.

Alas, she played the part of the good soldier instead.  Quite well, by all reports.  Which, I chuckled consolingly to myself, should be taken in the spirit of all Clinton speeches, to wit, with a grain of salt the size of the Chrysler Building.

Evidently, and happily for the Empress, her well-feigned Obamanational enthusiasm had all the staying power of cliched Chinese food:

Hillary Rodham Clinton’s most loyal delegates came to the Pepsi Center on Tuesday night looking for direction. They listened, rapt, to a twenty-minute speech that many proclaimed the best she had ever delivered, hoping her words could somehow unwind a year of tension in the Democratic Party. But when Clinton stepped off the stage and the standing ovation faded into silence, many of her supporters were left with a sobering realization: Even a tremendous speech couldn’t erase their frustrations. …

Despite Clinton’s plea for Democrats to unite, her delegates remained divided as to how they should proceed.

There was Jerry Straughan, a professor from California, who listened from his seat in the rafters and shook his head at what he considered the speech’s predictability. “It’s a tactic,” he said. “Who knows what she really thinks? With all the missteps that have taken place, this is the only thing she could do. So, yes, I’m still bitter.” …

Clinton’s performance fell far short of the panacea the Democratic Party had desperately hoped for, delegates said. Some worried that, after Clinton’s public withdrawal, more voters might defect for Republican John McCain or simply stay home. …

“I hate Obama so much that I’m going to devote as much time to McCain as I did to Hillary,” said Adita Blanco, a Democrat from Edward, Okla., who has never voted for a Republican. “Obama has nothing. He has no experience. The Democratic Party doesn’t care about us. You couldn’t treat [Clinton] any worse.”

I look at these reactions this way: Either Hillarynistas knew that their queen-denied was going through the motions and her extollations of BO were as ersatz as professional wrestling, in which case they weren't paying attention or heed to her ostensible words; or they were hanging on her every utterance and simply love her, and hate Obama, so much that not even their goddess herself can move them over the Ebony Apollo.

We'll know by the weekend what healing effect, if any, the Empress' "Bye - for now" address had on the Donk rank & file.  But if these anecdotal reports are any indication, the slow bleed of Lucifer's base support is in no hope of near-term staunching, and may become an outright hemorrhage:

The anxiety comes in several forms, but particularly common is the pained look, followed by the quick glance away and the lengthy pause, in the face of a simple question: How is Barack Obama doing?

“Ahhh . . .,” said Barry Bogarde, political director for the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees in Pennsylvania, a battleground state that the senator from Illinois needs to win. “Better,” he finally said. “He’s doing better.”

Asked how things are going for Democrats in New Hampshire, another swing state that the party carried in 2004, the state party chairman, Ray Buckley, did not even mention Obama’s race against Sen. John McCain. He talked instead about efforts to win a Senate race and hold two congressional seats.

Jim Beasley, the commissioner of Ohio’s Department of Transportation, did not have high hopes for Obama in his area of southern Ohio. “Ahhh, well. Rural Ohio will be difficult,” he said. “Rural areas are difficult for him.”

If Dem grassrootsers disillusioned by the spectre of what they've done to themselves (like the drunk who wakes up in an anonymous hotel room beside a skank he doesn't recognize after an all-night bender) buy into the meme of their Messiah "running out of gas long before November" and become sufficiently worried about the defection of "conservative" Democrats to fear not just an Obama defeat but an accompanying undertow that could cost their party the suddenly vulnerable center-right House seats they took from the GOP two years ago....well, does the old axiom "every man for himself" ring a bell?

I carried a mental image throughout the 2004 campaign of John Kerry on Election night, standing  with a microphone in an empty auditorium, his campaign signs and buttons overflowing trash cans and strewn about, discarded, on the floor.  All his supporters and sychophants and hangers-on had left to drown their sorrows or drown in them or fantasize about George Bush's assassination.  As the building super turns out the lights, Lurch forlornly mutters, "But I served in Vietnam...."

I now picture False Messiah in the equivalent setting, only in a toga, wondering where all his friends, Romans, and worshippers went.

It might get awfully lonely for Barack Obama over the next couple of months.  But as I concluded last night, Mrs. Clinton has ensured that her fingerprints won't be found anywhere on his political remains.

UPDATE: Michael Barone thinks I was right in the first place:

My bottom line reaction to Hillary Clinton's speech Tuesday night: Good, but not quite very good, for Barack Obama in 2008. Even better, if things should turn out like they might, for Hillary Clinton in 2012....

In contrast, the argument for supporting Barack Obama was far more abstract. Clinton voters supported her because she could help those unfortunate souls out there (the requisite lugubrious stories follow). Barack Obama would help those unfortunate souls, and John McCain wouldn't, not at all. He'd just be four more years of George W. Bush. Ergo, logic requires you to support Barack Obama. But Clinton's affect was chilly, or at least seemed so to me; I could see the back of her head as she spoke from my press seats and could watch the Fox News feed on Chris Wallace's TV on the podium two rows in front of me. Yes, she smiled, but not a lot, and at moments when it was she (or her husband) she was spotlighting.

What was missing was much in the way of description of Barack Obama. What kind of man is he? One who supports the same positions she does. Has she looked deep into his heart and found something worthy? No evidence here that she had. Would he be a good commander-in-chief? Not a word on that, as the McCain campaign quickly and gleefully noted.

In short: "Okay, Barry, I did what you asked, I said what you wanted.  I told my supports to support you.  But giving them reasons WHY they should support you?  Sorry, but that's above my pay grade."