Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) accepts his party's nomination at Invesco Field, Denver. (Getty Images)

Denver–It was hovering all week. Whispered over drinks at the after-parties that have gone into the early-mornings. It’s been floated by those having their first cup of coffee in the well-heeled corridors of the Brown Palace and the Ritz and during impromptu lunches in the restaurants on the 16th Street Mall. It was a feeling in the gut among many Democrats assembled here that perhaps they’d made the wrong pick when they could least afford it. Had they gone with their hearts in selecting Sen. Barack Obama when the path to victory might have been with the safer choice — Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton,

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Those of us who’ve bought homes–I’ve owned three in three different cities — know the feeling of buyer’s remorse. It must be universal. No mater how passionate you are about your initial choice. It’s that feeling, walking into your new home, seeing it forlorn and empty, all the cracks and scuffs revealed, that make you think, no matter how briefly, that you’ve made a bad decision, that you should have bought the other place, or even never have bought at all. And now you’re stuck.

This was exacerbated by Clinton’s spirited speech on Tuesday night that aimed to unify the party– but also offered a glimpse of what could have been. She offered a kind of clarity of purpose in fighting for those in need. We knew the causes this woman had fought for and would continue to fight for. She was a known commodity.

Entering his speech tonight, one could argue that Obama remained a murky figure for many Americans–a person painted as a great orator without the experience or heft to do more than inspire. Since Obama’s whirlwind trip overseas, the McCain campaign has done what Republicans have done best: Turn a candidate’s great strength into his great weakness. Yes, they said, he’s popular and well-spoken, but could he lead? Through this week, little was done to explain fully who Obama was. Yes, Michelle Obama and the kids had been darling Yes, Sen. Joe Biden laid out the party’s commitment to its blue-collar constituency. But by Thursday evening, if ever a man was in need of self-definition, it was Obama.

On Thursday night, simply put, Obama retook his story and grabbed with both hands the direction of the campaign. When he stood before the 75,000 84,000 at Invesco Field in Denver, he did so as as a progressive pragmatist, someone willing to hit back with full force in defense of his patriotism and ideals and the things he plans to do should he win in November. To those undecided, he reminded them of everything they lost and suffered during the eight years of the Bush administration and how closely McCain has been willing to follow that tattered playbook. He methodically explained his plan for change– everything from health care to the tax system to his plans for restoring the United States leadership abroad. Meshing jokes and serious directives with the kind of eloquence that drew millions to his cause, Obama showed his fellow Democrats why he won the nomination and why they should be confident following him in the weeks and months to come.

“I was amazed,” said Cliff Young, 71, a retired schoolteacher from Denver. “He gave me direction, hope for a strong United States, a strong work ethic — I thought it was all there There’s that deep-belly fire I saw in him. He’s very committed to what he’s saying. The heart of this country is the middle class, and for eight years they’ve been let down. It wasn’t just what he said, but how he said it. You don’t practice that. It’s just there.”

Going into his address, even Debbie Dingell, super-delegate from Michigan and member of the Democratic National Committee said, “Tonight for what has to happen is a nuts-and-bolts speech. He has to give a detailed, more nuts-and-bolts specific speech that tells us what a Barack Obama White House would look like and what policies he would implement. He needs to talk about the economy, about getting out of the war in Iraq and what he plans to do with Afghanistan.”

At approximately 8:11 local Mountain time in his own Western setting, surrounded by thousands of people in the open air it was time for Obama to define why he should be the man chosen to lead this country into the next stage of American political life. Following a stirring biographical film made by the director of “An Inconvenient Truth,” Obama stood before more than 70,000 people and tactically began his moment of self-definition, first by acknowledging the campaign of his arch rival.

Then Obama proceeded to outline the problems as another insipiring young senator, John F. Kennedy once did, saying that “for 232 years, at each moment when that promise was in jeopardy, ordinary men and women – students and soldiers, farmers and teachers, nurses and janitors — found the courage to keep it alive. We meet at one of those defining moments – a moment when our nation is at war, our economy is in turmoil, and the American promise has been threatened once more.
“Tonight,” Obama said, “more Americans are out of work and more are working harder for less. More of you have lost your homes and even more are watching your home values plummet. More of you have cars you can’t afford to drive, credit card bills you can’t afford to pay, and tuition that’s beyond your reach. These challenges are not all of government’s making. But the failure to respond is a direct result of a broken politics in Washington and the failed policies of George W. Bush. America, we are better than these last eight years. We are a better country than this.”
And then came the attack. Mixing in humor and folksiness, as he had in town halls across America, he went after McCain, not Obama, as the candidate for presidency being the one who was out of touch. Widening his focus, he struck directly at the trickle-down economic principles that have defined the Republican economic model since Ronald Reagan took the oath of office in 1981. And then, in a direct response to McCain’s attempt to define him as a celebrity, Obama reminded the American people of his own humble beginnings, of his American story — deemed the “upward climb” by the founders, as the historian David McCullough wrote

But, perhaps most important, as if he was speaking directly to Dingell’s sentiment, Obama, stepping away from more grand rhetoric, Obama said, “Let me spell out exactly what that change would mean if I am president.” He talked of ending tax breaks to corporations sending jobs overseas while eliminating capital gains taxes for small businesses; and extending tax cuts for working and middle-class families. He spoke directly about how he would change the dependence of foreign oil within 10 years through clean coal, safe nuclear power and new sources of renewable energy that would create more jobs, as well as his plans to create universal health care.

“Now, many of these plans will cost money,” Obama said, “which is why I’ve laid out how I’ll pay for every dime – by closing corporate loopholes and tax havens that don’t help America grow. But I will also go through the federal budget, line by line, eliminating programs that no longer work and making the ones we do need work better and cost less – because we cannot meet 21st-century challenges with a twentieth century bureaucracy.”

Later, in an almost direct shot against those who’ve called his foreign-policy weak and “naive,” the 47-year-old junior senator, in an attempt to define what was now his Democratic Party said, “We are the party of Roosevelt. We are the party of Kennedy. So don’t tell me that Democrats won’t defend this country. Don’t tell me that Democrats won’t keep us safe. The Bush-McCain foreign policy has squandered the legacy that generations of Americans — Democrats and Republicans – have built, and we are here to restore that legacy

“As commander-in-chief, I will never hesitate to defend this nation, but I will only send our troops into harm’s way with a clear mission and a sacred commitment to give them the equipment they need in battle and the care and benefits they deserve when they come home,” he continued. “I will end this war in Iraq responsibly, and finish the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan. I will rebuild our military to meet future conflicts

But I will also renew the tough, direct diplomacy that can prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and curb Russian aggression. I will build new partnerships to defeat the threats of the 21st century: terrorism and nuclear proliferation; poverty and genocide; climate change and disease. And I will restore our moral standing, so that America is once again that last, best hope for all who are called to the cause of freedom, who long for lives of peace, and who yearn for a better future.”
It was a speech that did what he needed to do: define what he meant in his mission in change; tell his story and reaffirm what he saw as patriotic duty and vision, show toughness on foreign policy, while, at the same time, maintain the emotion that has so embodied his campaign. It was an unusual setting for a most unusual campaign with the kind of candidate America had never seen before.

In the bright aftermath, Ernie Reichert, from Longmont, Colo., said, “It was a tremendous speech. I can’t envision anyone else standing up there for an hour and doing what he just did.”

“I think he did a good job,” Julian E. Zelizer, a professor of American history at Princeton University, and co-editor of “Righward Bound: Making America Conservative in the 1970s,” said in the moments after. “He went after Bush and McCain, so he showed what he was against. The second part was almost a laundry list of polices and the kind of issues he would be look at from tax breaks to lowering health-care premiums. And then he came back to the promise of post-partisan politics which we haven’t heard about for awhile. He did a better job of defining himself than the Democrats have. But he still has a lot of work to do. One speech doesn’t define a candidacy.”

One speech could do a lot though. Just consider another young senator whose detractors accused him of inexperience and fluff. Like Obama, in 1960 John F. Kennedy chose to accept his nomination not in the confines of the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena, but in the vast Los Angeles Coliseum. Standing before between 50,000 to 80,000 people, Kennedy did what he needed to do. He addressed the concerns held by many Americans about his Catholic faith. He went after not only his Republican opponent, Richard M. Nixon, but the Republican ideals he represented. He spoke with authority about the need to stand up to the spread of communism across the globe, to begin to end the racial discrimination that would prove the next great battleground of the 1960s.

Late in his speech, Kennedy would find words that would define him as the best man to lead America into the 1960s.

“I stand here tonight facing west on what was once the last frontier,” Kennedy said, in words that would resonate through the decades. “From the lands that stretch three thousand miles behind us, the pioneers gave up their safety, their comfort and sometimes their lives to build our new West. They were not the captives of their own doubts, nor the prisoners of their own price tags. They were determined to make the new world strong and free — an example to the world, to overcome its hazards and its hardships, to conquer the enemies that threatened from within and without.

“Some would say that those struggles are all over, that all the horizons have been explored, that all the battles have been won, that there is no longer an American frontier,” Kennedy continued. “But I trust that no one in this assemblage would agree with that sentiment; for the problems are not all solved and the battles are not all won; and we stand today on the edge of a New Frontier — the frontier of the 1960s, the frontier of unknown opportunities and perils, the frontier of unfilled hopes and unfilled threats.”
Now, 48 years later, as delegates and Obama supporters filtered out into the Colorado darkness one felt the the second-guessing had yielded to a party ready to fight its way to the White House. As 10 p.m. approached, Clinton’s appearance receded into the darkness as a noteworthy event, but not one that would overshadow Obama tonight or haunt him going forward. Through harsh words and specifics, in unrivaled eloquence, Obama had reaffirmed the Democratic Party’ faith in its current leader. Now as he officially begun the general election, he’d showed the Democrats they wouldn’t regret their purchase, they had found a house to be proud to live in.

Mike Lillis contributed reporting from Invesco Field in Denver.

Democratic National Convention stage (Photo by: Jason Kolera)

So the Democratic convention has been about catharsis.

We’ve been told that this was what Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, her husband, former President Bill Clinton and the Clinton delegates were seeking — what they came to the Mile High City to get. As if the Pepsi Center needed to be fitted out with more than a thousand analysts’ couches — in addition to Arianna Huffington’s meditation-and-yoga oasis just outside the hall.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Harry Shearer, the host of the weekly radio show, “Le Show” is a writer, musician and actor. His new album is “Songs of the Bushmen.”

At an energy forum here at the Democratic convention Wednesday, the Texas oil tycoon took the stage with John Podesta, former Clinton administration chief of staff, and Carl Pope, head of the Sierra Club, to push his plan to cure the country’s addiction to foreign oil.

T. Boone Pickens (Photo by: Bob Spencer)

Under Pickens’ strategy, the country would transition from oil to natural gas and, eventually, to wind and solar as the primary means of generating power. Both Podesta and Pope endorsed the idea — though with some modifications — and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has expressed a great deal of interest as well.

Never mind that Pickens is the same guy who spent millions just four years ago to sink John Kerry’s run at the White House. Never mind that he spent thousands more in 2000 to keep the environmentally minded Al Gore out of the same office. Never mind that he’s given thousands to Sen. Jim Inhofe, the Oklahoma Republican who remains convinced that global warming is a dirty hoax. Never mind that he’s still pushing for unlimited offshore drilling and further exploration in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Suddenly, Pickens claims to know what’s best for the health of the country, and partisanship is a four-letter word.

Yes, this oilman has had an epiphany, and the Democrats are eating it up.

Oh, and for all the folks who are so quick to point out that Pickens is heavily invested in both natural gas and wind: Please, don’t be so cynical.

“I’m not doing this to make money for myself,” said Pickens, whose estimated worth hovers around $3 billion.

Right, Boone. Why would we even think it?

Well, the same vulnerability applies also to vice-presidential contenders — particular when they’ve been in Washington since 1973, as Sen. Joseph Biden has. Indeed, not a week has passed since Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama named Biden as his running mate, and the press is already digging through the Delaware senator’s long voting record. From today’s USA Today:

Sen. Joe Biden worked to defeat a bipartisan bill designed to curb asbestos lawsuits at a time his son’s law firm was filing them in Delaware and a former aide was lobbying against the measure…

This is an odd case because Biden had close ties operating on both sides of the asbestos issue. But in a White House contest boasting three sitting senators already, this certainly won’t be the last time we’ll see this past-voting theme surface.

Remember, for example, when McCain voted against Bush’s tax cuts?

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (Photo by:Jason Kosena)

This night was Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton’s. Eyes welled up as she appeared, luminous, still so strangely lit up with loss. There in the stands, gazing at her with adoration, was her husband — her complex, clearly emotional and, we are assured, still angry, ex-president of a husband — mouthing “I love you, I love you,” as she spoke. Their long, marital dance is just an inextricable part of our national political drama, as it was again this night, with those strange, mumbled endearments.

It looked as if she was giving it her all. It sounded like it, too. There was emotion, eloquence, even humor, an impassioned plea for all the assembled Democrats — and the millions of others out there listening — to get on board, to support the party’s presumed nominee, Sen. Barack Obama. It was even lovely sometimes, artful, way above the unusually banal language most of her cohorts and colleagues have been using these past talky hours. All right, we can exempt Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Michelle Obama from this criticism. (More about both in a minute.)

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Clinton’s task was obvious. To heal the party, bring to the fold her die-hard supporters, nearly a half of whom, according to today’s Wall Street Journal, say they still cannot see their way to supporting Obama and, 20 percent say they might stray McCain’s way.

Say it ain’t so, Clinton said directly to them. You must get on board. Were you in it for me or for the country? Be your better selves and support our party’s candidate, even all you disappointed women out there. My mother was born before women had the right to vote, she said. Now my daughter can cast a vote for her mother for president.

It was goose-bump time for many women — certainly women of her warrior generation who feel as if the torch has been passed right over their heads.

No question, it was a good speech, noble. Clinton was tucking her wounds away for the good of party and country. The ultimate team-player who didn’t want to be blamed for harming that party, the ultimate fighter who didn’t want to dampen her own viability should Obama fail this time. There she would be, ready to take to the battlefield again.

You can feel that, even as watching her, there is a sense that perhaps her true fate lies elsewhere, in the long, honorable road of Teddy Kennedy. He was a man who had to run for the presidency — by the dictates of family and fate — and, once rebuffed, settled into a long, serious career in the Senate, becoming the most revered of men and agile of legislators. It’s not the torch she wanted or is able to settle for right now. Perhaps later.

What’s clear is that there is still a bruised and restless positioning going on with her, as was evident in that speech. (For Kennedy, his 1980 run signaled a hard and irrefutable end of his presidential quest; too much stuff had come up.) Yes, she endorsed Obama—mentioning him at least a dozen times. But what she endorsed was the candidate — not the man. He had no flesh on him. He was the Democratic candidate, and that was enough for her.

There was no talk of Obama’s passions, his career, their shared goals and ideals. Of course, she reaffirmed the big “D” democratic values. We’re for the forgotten, the working class not the upper class. We’re for energy independence and a restitution of the respect America used to garner around the world, so squandered in the last eight years. We’re for health care and hope and change. That’s why I ran, she said—underscore “I.” She never said that’s why Barack Obama is running. It was a passionate but strangely impersonal—almost totally impersonal —endorsement.

In fairness, to Clinton, Michelle Obama didn’t offer a completely fulsome portrait of her husband either. She wasn’t able to put flesh on the political leader her husband has been and can be. He was a community organizer. OK—what did he get done, believe in? As a state senator? As a senator? He’s a good man, she says, a man who, with tenderness and caution, drove her and their newborn daughter home from the hospital, awed by the new paternal responsibility.

That was her task, granted, to humanize their family, make them seem like every other family out there. We are awfully touchy-feely now in our conventions, in our country. But there is still a strange absence in that hall in Denver.

In fairness, too, it isn’t Clinton’s job to fill that absence. She went as far as she could. That’s what it felt like. There was just something held back, something about Barack Obama she could not certify, could not delineate—could not or would not.

Yes, he’s no McCain, no George Bush. But she didn’t try to help define who he is, didn’t exactly speak to her working-class supporters and allay their fears about Obama, didn’t say to them — he is your man, he will look after you. I know him; I’ve been with him. He is a good man, a man of judgment and compassion.

She didn’t say any of that. She threaded a rhetorical needle Tuesday night.

There was much to admire, to resonate to in her speech. But, whether consciously or unconsciously, from will or wounds, there was still something missing: Obama himself.

Anne Taylor Fleming is a novelist, commentator and essayist for “The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer.” She is the author of a memoir, “Motherhood Deferred: A Woman’s Journey.”

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) (WDCpix)

DENVER — In a rambunctious press conference that could forecast the tone of the energy debate to come, House Democratic leaders clashed with Republican supporters in Denver Tuesday over each party’s approach to offshore oil drilling.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) plans to take up a sweeping energy proposal next month, emphasizing the importance of moving the country from foreign oil toward renewable fuels. But the (largely partisan) sticking point remains the issue of expanded domestic drilling — a dream for the oil companies and a nightmare for environmentalists. If Tuesday’s press conference is any indication, the already heated controversy has a way to go before it cools down.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

Even before the Democrats took the podium in front of Denver’s historic Union Station, dozens of GOP supporters started up with the drowning chants of “Drill Here, Drill Now” — a slogan that’s become a battle cry for Republicans on the campaign trail this year, most notably with GOP presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.).

Pelosi responded Tuesday with jabs of her own. (”You want to drill here?” she said to the hecklers at one point. “Let’s drill your brain.”) She even reiterated her statement about new offshore drilling being “a cruel hoax on the American people.” The issue has been a thorn in her side for several weeks, and appears set to remain there for several more — at least.

Gas prices remain well above $3.50 per gallon, pinching consumers at the pump and driving up the cost of food and other living expenses. In the face of rising costs — and with winter heating bills expected to be higher than ever this year — lawmakers face pressure to do something, anything, to bring those prices down.

As recently as last month, Pelosi was adamant in her opposition to a drilling expansion. If it were only Republicans pushing for new exploration, she might have held that ground until November. But national polls have revealed a bipartisan shift toward support for new drilling. Those surveys have caused Pelosi and other Democratic leaders to soften their anti-drilling posture for fear of it haunting the party in November.

On Tuesday, in their strongest words yet, the Democrats announced their support for new drilling. “We as a Democratic Party are for expanding drilling in the outer continental shelf,” proclaimed Rep. Nick Rahall (D-W.V.), chairman of the House Natural Resources Committee.

But, Democrats emphasized, such an expansion comes with qualifications. First, it must be accompanied by environmental safeguards; and second, it must come as part of a larger package that transfers billions of dollars in federal oil subsidies to the young renewables industries.

Pelosi pointed to an initiative pushed by former President Richard M. Nixon– called Project Independence — which aimed to free the United States from its dependence on foreign oil 28 years ago.

“Let this be our national goal,” Nixon proclaimed at the time, “at the end of this decade, in the year 1980, the United States will not be dependent on any other country for the energy we need to provide our jobs, to heat our homes and to keep our transportation moving.”

“It didn’t happen then,” Pelosi said, “but it will happen now.”

House Republicans are having none of it. “The Democrats’ energy record is one of empty rhetoric and broken promises,” House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-Ohio) said in a statement responding to Pelosi’s Tuesday press conference, “and that’s why they have no credibility with the American people.”

Boehner is pushing legislation that would open a far larger swath of the outer continental shelf, as well as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, to new exploration. Boehner says his energy plan is more comprehensive than the one the Democrats are offering, but the GOP strategy is to carve distinctions — not similarities — on an issue that Republicans are winning publicly.

The saga highlights how public perception, particularly in an election year, holds the power to sway a policy debate even in the face of evidence that the trailing side is probably right. Indeed, a year-old analysis from the Bush administration’s Energy Dept. — often cited by Democrats — found that increased drilling offshore would neither increase U.S. production nor lower fuel prices before 2030.

On Tuesday, as the GOP hecklers launched another round of their pro-drilling chorus, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), perhaps inadvertently, voiced the frustration of a party that has been unable to communicate that message.

“Sophomoric chanting,” Hoyer boomed, “will not make us energy independent in America.”

The DNC Committee hired a “director of greening,” Andrea Robinson, to cut down on waste, track and offset carbon emissions and promote local food.

Many attending the convention are looking for this kind of action on a larger scale. Americans waiting for comprehensive energy solutions hope Sen. Obama will address their concerns in his speech this week — and then by actually taking some action…whether he wins the presidency or continues his work in the Senate.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (Campaign Photo)

DENVER, Colo.–Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild sat in total darkness, the curtains of her downtown Denver hotel drawn closed. It was late in the morning of Monday, Aug. 25, a day before Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, whom de Rothschild had raised vast sums for as a “HillRaiser,” was slated to take the podium at the Democratic National Convention here. Clinton is to speak to the 18 million people who voted for her on behalf of the man who’d outlasted her during the Democratic primaries, Sen. Barack Obama

But de Rothschild was having none of it — none of the reconciliation efforts that had been going on since Clinton stepped away from the race; none of the measures the Obama camp had made to spotlight the Clintons during the convention, and none of Obama and his supporters within the Democratic Party.

Illustration by: Matt Mahurin

“It feels like this is the last big party before a general election that the Democrats are sure to lose,” said de Rothschild, who was wearing a button honoring Stephanie Tubbs Jones, the late Ohio congresswoman, and fervent Clinton supporter, who died last week from a brain aneurysm. “It’s the political equivalent of re-arranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic. It feels like that because of the polls. The pick of Joe Biden telescoped that Barack Obama knows his weaknesses. He doesn’t have experience in foreign policy and he does not connect well to ordinary people, and Joe Biden doesn’t fix that. He just magnifies the problem. He’s a fine guy. I want him to go back to the Senate.”

The fact that the rhetoric by de Rothschild and others like her remains so virulent exposes the obstacles that the Democratic Party faces as it tries to move forward to a historic presidential victory. As of this writing, Obama and McCain are in a dead heat. Now while some like de Rothschild find themselves at a loss at what to do, others have made the decision to move forward for the sake of the party or leave it to its own devices this time around.

This standoff might only be a fleeting moment–something Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, could wipe away with their appearances here at the Pepsi Center. As Obama demonstrated with his galvanizing speech four years ago, speeches can have great effect. Hillary Clinton could well display that same kind of power — and in so doing re-energize her supporters, commanding the different factions of her alliance to put aside harsh feelings and come together in support of Obama.

“I think the majority of Hillary supporters are coming back and coming home,” said David R. Gergen, director of the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, who has previously served as a White House adviser to Presidents Richard M. Nixon, Gerald R. Ford, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton. “The purpose of the convention is to help bring back that group who’s undecided since they’re persuadable. [Clinton] has to say in a full-throated, emotional way how strongly she feels about the party uniting.”

For quite some time now, de Rothschild and other prominent Clinton supporters — including Jill Iscol, the New York political fund-raising power, and Susie Tompkins Buell, the co-founder of Espirit and a power in her own right — had pushed hard for a place for Clinton on Obama’s ticket. It would unify the party, they said, and heal the wounds of what had been a vicious primary contest. Moreover, it would allow Obama to reach the millions of working-class men and women that Clinton had brought together during her campaign.

But with the selection of Sen. Joe Biden on Saturday, that dream is dead. Now, as delegates readied themselves for their four-day festival, de Rothschild was among the 27 percent of Clinton supporters still undecided about whether they should throw their support to Obama.

As much as anything, she represents a new, fundamental rift within the party that was no longer about Obama vs. Clinton, but about an existential crisis of Clinton supporters themselves. On one side, according to a recent Wall Street Journal Poll 52 percent of Clinton supporters polled now support Obama, just as Clinton had asked them to. But 21 percent had told The Wall Street Journal they would support McCain. Another 27 percent, like de Rothschild, were uncommitted.

“I didn’t think it would happen because it is not in the character of Barack Obama to admit his weaknesses,” de Rothschild continued, analyzing the Biden choice. “I think his ego is sooooo out of proportion — so he could not admit he needed her so. I never thought he would do it. He doesn’t even reach out to the largest Clinton fund-raisers — he doesn’t think he needs them. So he shouldn’t be surprised that they’ll write a check for him out of party loyalty — but they won’t work hard for him.

“Short of having her on the ticket,” de Rothschild noted, “the rest is window-dressing. He doesn’t like the Clintons. And the people in the smoke-filled rooms of the Democratic Party, the super-delegates, have given the nomination to Barack Obama. And people who are not going to agree with the choice of Nancy Pelosi and Howard Dean will do so because Hillary tells them to — because she loves the party. There’s no question that she loves her party.

“The loyalty of the Clintons to the Democratic Party is bullet-proof,” de Rothschild said, “They are showing more loyalty to this party than anyone could expect them to. The people who are disloyal to the principles of this party are Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi. Howard Dean did nothing to speak out about sexism during the primary. Howard Dean contrived a rules committee meeting that was the ultimate corruption. Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi took 18 million people and trashed them by saying, ‘You don’t matter. Obama is our man. The left-wing has won.’ So there’s no one more loyal to the Democratic Party than the Clintons.”
Historically, no matter how mad party members are, they’ve usually come back to their roots. But perhaps that era has passed. Beginning in 1980 with Ronald Reagan and the advent of the Reagan Democrats who were fed up with the incumbent President Jimmy Carter, we’ve seen a weakening of the traditional party system. More people consider themselves independents than at any time in U.S. history. As a result, Americans are much more drawn to the man or, in the case of Clinton, the woman, rather than which side of the isle he or she chooses to represent.

Yet as Clinton takes the stage tonight, and division within her party still looms, some of her major supporters have already accepted the party’s likely choice. Though they once worked closely with De Rothschild, they now stand on the opposite side. This includes well-heeled supporters like Bal Das, the New York attorney, and Christina Lurie whom, alongside her husband Jeffrey, owns the Philadelphia Eagles.

In a phone conversation Sunday evening, Das shared none of the animosity that de Rothschild expressed the next day. From the first conference call Clinton held with donors to implore them to support Obama, DAs has been the most-loyal foot soldier. He met with the presumed candidate when Obama visited New York for a fund-raiser and came away satisfied — his doubts about the young senator’s ability to govern gone. Das was further encouraged by Obama’s selection of Biden — a sort of older adviser and sounding-board, the Alfred to Obama’s Bruce Wayne.

“My own personal view,” Das said, “has been, up until the last minute Sen. Clinton would have — in one strike — added the most advantage to the Democratic ticket. That said, Obama had the advantage of having a selection of many very good people. Short of Sen. Clinton, I think Sen. Biden was the next best choice.

“I had the chance to meet him in June,” Das continued, ” and I think he is someone who has a wonderful life story and, more importantly, not only will help Obama as an experienced running mate but also will help Obama rebuild bipartisanship in Washington. There has been a small set of people who don’t believe this. But, as momentum begins to gather I think more and more of that sub-section will rally around Obama. When people begin to look at the positions of Sen. Clinton versus that of Sen. McCain,, I think they will find the similarities in positions between Sen. Clinton and Sen. Obama quite amazing.”

Lurie echoed that sentiment when she said, “I think picking Joe Biden is a very sound choice. He’s a sound pick. I think he’s a really decent person…. Obama picking him is reassuring. It shows that he’s surrounding himself with strong people.”

As for the split among Clinton supporters, Lurie said, “People have to decide what they want for the next four years. It is time to move on. This race is between John McCain and Barack Obama. It’s no longer about Hillary Clinton.”

Ah, if only it were that easy. For nearly a year-and-a-half, this election was all about Clinton. It was about Clinton’s failure in Iowa, about her finding her own voice and personal strength at different moments when she’d been declared politically finished. It also showed the great schism that existed among voters in big and small states, as Clinton steamrolled through big states while Obama methodically won a collection of smaller ones.

Now, without her, one is right to ask whether Obama can win in places where members of his own party chose his opponent by telling margins. An even deeper question is whether he can shed his sometimes ultra-liberal label to move to the yellow line – to be considered by independents as one of their own, a centrist.

“States like New York and California that are deeply Democratic states will go for him,” de Rothschild said. “What he cannot win are the states John Kerry lost. He’s not going to win Missouri. He’s not going to win Florida. Hillary won West Virginia by 30 points. West Virginia is McCain because we didn’t put Hillary there. So many Republicans would have come over to vote for Hillary Clinton, but the left and Howard Dean and Nancy Pelosi wouldn’t let it happen. So we’re going to be the minority party. The loyal Democrats, the true Democrats, are going to be the ones that are going to be upset by that because we want to win. We don’t want a loser. We don’t want somebody who’s not qualified to be president.

“He’s trying to aggregate all of his principles to the center but it’s not going to work,” she continued. “People aren’t stupid. They think people are all fools who are going to not go beyond Obama’s words and not look at a Democratic Party that’s putting its cigarettes in the eyes of the Clintons. This party wins when we care about people’s problems deep down, not only when we think people’s problems are the price of arugula or say they’re ‘bitter’ with their religion and their guns. We don’t connect. We don’t work that way as a party. Maybe there’ll be some miracle and those impressions will all be erased, but I doubt it.”

So, um does that mean de Rothschild will put her robust financial backing and influence behind McCain?

“I haven’t decided,” de Rothschild said. “I’m going to wait for both vice presidential candidates and I’m going to wait after both conventions. It would feel awful. I have been such a loyal Democrat my entire life. I’m proud of what Bill Clinton has done for this nation and I feel so good for being a tiny, tiny part of giving America the best president we’ve had since F.D.R. To leave that party, for even one election, would hurt me. It would be based much more in sadness than anger. But it’s a principled decision. I’m going to deal with the facts as I see them.”
Such sentiments only reflect how much work the Democratic Party has to accomplish and how much work Obama needs to do. A large group of Democrats still believe that Obama was naive to think that he and Biden could do it together without Clinton’s help.
In many ways her role in this election has only grown since her concession to the junior senator from Illinois. She is, after all, a force who built a coalition of women and working-class Democrats that needs to stand together should the Democrats put Obama into the Oval Office.

Beginning Tuesday evening, Clinton must do more than be a surrogate. She must be a new kind of power broker. Clinton must give a speech greater than the one she gave at the National Building Museum in Washington, when she officially ended her campaign, putting a temporary end to the Clinton Dynasty. Because it’s only through her words and actions, that she can heal fractures within the base that she built.

Former White House Strategist Karl Rove (WDCpix)

By mailing them doctored Hawaiian vacation brochures with “Denver” pasted over “Honolulu,” and sending a delegation of Hooters waitresses to Democratic National Committee H.Q. in Washington as “Denver goodwill ambassadors,” master Republican manipulator Karl Rove allegedly tricked Dem muckety-mucks into choosing the Mile High City as the site of their 2008 convention. The power brokers are still blissfully unaware that the choice is bound to prove a debacle inside a fiasco wrapped in a booby trap.

“The notoriously thin Denver air will shrink the lung power of even seasoned political windbags,” says a leaked secret Rove memo, “leaving Democratic National Convention speakers gasping for breath while suffering colossal headaches. This will reduce their spirited speechifying to panting gurgles. The physical discomfort will make even sunny-natured Obama as crabby and irritable as (John) McCain. Of course, his 10-pack-a-day smoking habit will further limit his breathing capacity.

“They’ll all be forced to take frequent gulps at nearby oxygen tanks,” the Rove memo continues, “The beauty part here is that we’ve bribed disaffected Hillary backers to fill the tanks with nitrous oxide. So everybody who takes a hit’s going to sound like Minnie Mouse. The crowd’s gonna laugh Obama and his posse right off the stage in the first five minutes!”

The Machiavellian Rove has reportedly also set up free skiing trips to nearby mountain resorts like Vail and Aspen for convention delegates, who on arrival will find slopes bare. But they won’t be able to return to Denver, since Rove operatives have been assigned to slash all the bus tires.

With scores of key delegates stranded hours away, convention proceedings promise to be thrown into even more than the usual chaos. Leading, or so the Rove gang hopes, to a Joe Lieberman putsch and his takeover of the Democratic presidential candidacy.

This way, Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman would be the only politician to play a major role in both party conventions in the same year.

Bruce McCall, a humorist, is a regular contributor to The New Yorker and Vanity Fair. He is the author of “All Meat Looks Like South America: The World of Bruce McCall” and “Zany Afternoons.”