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I’m really pissed off at Hillary Clinton right now. In the last hour or so Barack Obama has finally clinched the Democratic Party nomination for President. So what would you expect her to do in her speech afterwards? Well, first of all she’d concede and congratulate Obama. Then, she’d start the work of reunifying the party. Disturbingly large percentages of her supporters have said that they’ll vote for John McCain rather than Obama in the general election. So, of course she should take this opportunity of intense media coverage to point out that her policies are incredibly similar to Obama’s, and a world away from McCain’s. She’d point out that she’d much rather see a Democrat in the White House than a Republican. She’d sing Obama’s praises and start setting him up for a great win in November.

So, did she do any of that?

NO SHE FUCKING DID NOT!

She continued to campaign! She continued to make her claim that she has more of the popular vote. That claim requires you to ignore the caucus states which do not release official vote totals. The claim isn’t accepted by anyone outside her campaign, but she refuses to stop making it. She continued to make her case that she’d do better in a general election. That claim doesn’t have any merit either, because, as the pollsters themselves say, polls five months before an election are not predictive. Even if it did have merit, it doesn’t matter! She lost the primary! At one point her supporters started chanting “Denver! Denver!”, indicating that she should continue to campaign all the way to the national convention in August, trying to change the minds of the Super Delegates who could still theoretically change sides. Did she calm them down and say that she wouldn’t dream of being so silly? Nope! She just smiled!

I can’t believe how stubborn Clinton is being. It’s a huge missed opportunity. It’s disgustingly ungracious. She said that she’s not making any decisions tonight, but there isn’t a decision to make! When the referee blows the whistle and you have less points, you don’t get to decide if you lost or not! You get on with it and shake hands with the winner… unless you’re a complete asshat.

GRRRRRRRR!

Calming thoughts… calming thoughts…

But let’s look on the bright side. Today is the first time that a black candidate has been nominated for President by a major American political party. That’s a wonderful achievement that will be remembered for a long time. If Obama goes on to win the general election (and he could use a little help, Clintons!), then that will be remembered forever.

Okay… probably not. But still, this interview really does help to assuage the fears that I hinted at the other day.

The U.S. presidential election nomination process is pretty much over. Barack Obama now leads by every single measure and it would more-or-less take a miracle for Hillary Clinton to win at this point.

Over the last few months Hillary Clinton has been running what her campaign has called a “kitchen-sink” strategy, whereby she has thrown everything she could think of at Obama, in the hope that something would stick. At times that has meant going very close to the line of what is acceptable to say about someone on the same team as you, and sometimes it meant blatantly crossing that line, like when she suggested that the other party’s nominee John McCain is more qualified than Obama (43 second video).

Well, guess what? That sort of thing works. Not well enough to win, in this instance, but well enough to galvanize her supporters sufficiently against Obama that over half of them said in the last exit polls that they wouldn’t vote for Obama in the general election. I was reading the user comments on an ABC News election article a few days ago, and some of the Clinton supporters are vitriolic about Obama. I probably don’t need to say it, but that’s a disaster.

So it seems to me that Clinton now wields an enormous amount of power. There’s no doubt that she’ll support Obama when he’s finally nominated, but I think the enthusiasm and believability of that support will be crucial. I really hope that she spends every day for the next six months telling the world that Obama is the best thing since sliced bread, because I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that her influence over her supporters could very well decide the result of the general election.