So it's Barack

As we all pretty much knew it would be.

The only question, credibility-wise, was WHEN you knew. Some people seemed to figure it out after that string of victories after super Tuesday. Some ON super Tuesday. Some couldn't accept it until yesterday.

Me, I knew after Iowa. While Clinton was going to be a combatant, it just seemed that Obama and his people knew what they were doing, knew the fight they had to fight, knew how to play up Obama as a candidate, and knew how puddle-deep Clinton's support was. I'd been saying that for a while, that Clinton's support was "ocean-wide, puddle-deep", but I didn't put two and two together and realize that he was absolutely going to crush the caucuses.

The SMARTEST were the ones who knew he was going to win prior to this election even starting. Honestly, I might have been there. He's had this aura of destiny and inevitability around him since before he even went up against Keyes. (Why do you think they put Keyes up against him in the first place?) Clinton's "inevitability" was just carefully manufactured spin and the careful grooming of the ultimate triangulator over the period of 6-7 years. Obama--though a bit of a triangulator himself--had it more because of who he already was, rather than who he was made to be.

It was a change that ill-suited her. I liked her a LOT when she was a passionate, progressive first lady, and never liked what she turned into when she became The Senator From New York. That's what bothers me about a lot of the Clinton defenses out there; they defend the former, while ignoring the changes made to become the latter. I would have GLADLY supported Hillary from the 90's, but apparently she wouldn't. That's not sexism, unless triangulation in the hunt for the presidency somehow makes you MORE of a woman.

Anyway, it's Barack. And what does this mean? Well, it isn't even really about the general per se. That's its own beast. And it isn't about sexism either. What it means is that the Machine lost, and lost big. And that's welcome news. It's that machine that bloggers et al have been fighting against since this whole thing first started in 2001 or so. Kos, especially, has been constantly going on and on about "crashing the gates" and the ineffectiveness of Democratic insiders and Democratic campaigners. Now he has his proof. Everybody who was pushing for Clinton as the "inevitable" nominee was really saying that she was "the nominee of the Powers-That-Be" in the party, and they were wrong. They can't browbeat other Dems anymore, and can't hold the threat of being kept "out of the loop" over them either. That was the threat they held over Obama supporters, and they lost. Their credibility isn't quite shot, but it's damaged as hell, and outsiders have a lot of sway now that they didn't before.

(And yet the insurgent candidate in question hates blogs. Ah well.)

So the question now is whether the party can come together. Maybe. Maybe not. McAuliffe appears to know what time it is, but then you've got people like, say, Larry Johnson.

(No, seriously. What the HELL happened to Larry Johnson? He has, in the vernacular, "completely lost his shit" over this. I've seen some nutty Obama supporters, but I've never seen a professional lose it so thoroughly from supporting Obama like Johnson has from opposing him.)

But in many respects it's understandable that the Hillary supporters feel as they do, and it's the job of Obama's supporters to try to bridge the gap. It's going to be rough, there are a lot of hurt feelings, and there are some people that maybe you're just better off ignoring, but that is your job now.

And then get ready for the general, because if you thought the racist dog-whistles were bad BEFORE...