I think the thing that may have hurt Hillary the most (other than her position and her record on the war) was her obvious sense of entitlement. She clearly thought from the beginning that there was simply no way she could not end up being the chosen Democratic candidate for president...and then the president. It was already a foregone conclusion in her mind, and that was pretty obvious. That annoyed a lot of people, and it turned a lot of potential support away from Hillary Clinton at various stages in the campaign. Then the Clintons pulled a few really dirty tricks on Obama...which naturally delighted people who wanted to see Obama go down...but it alienated a lot of other people at the same time, specially in the Black community. In the past the Clintons were always able to count on the support of the Black vote in America, but not this time. This was, I think, a most unexpected situation for Hillary to find herself in...so she turned to the other constituency where she was potentially strong: working class White democrats who would fear the Blacks as a united force and who would resent any candidate who they thought wasn't "one of them" (in whatever sense...class, attitude, intellectual credentials, race, etc).

The ironical thing is...Hillary and Bill are not "one of them" either, if you know what I mean. ;-) Hillary and Bill Clinton are just as much if not more people of the social elite as Barack Obama is...but they have posed themselves as heroes of working class America. Ha! That is amusing to me.

And it's interesting, because the White working class demographic they were aiming at pretty much bought it. That just goes to show, I guess, both the power of the media machine in general and the willingness of people to suspend reality and believe whatever they want to believe.

Wishful thinking.

Now the question is, how much of Obama's support will also turn out to be wishful thinking of a different sort? How will he address the tremendous hopes he has raised, if elected? How can he? I really don't know. I'm not sure one way or another about Obama's real values and intentions, though I do admire his speaking ability and his personal presentation a lot. He's a very fine orator.

If he gets elected...then we see. The proof is in the pudding.

One other comment. Hillary's speech on Tuesday night was one hell of a good speech. She was evasive, or coy, in that she never suggested conceding defeat to Obama despite the fact that it was basically inevitable...but just as a political speech, period, it was one hell of a good speech. I was surprised at how good it was.