BY AMY Z. QUINN
Yes, it smarts.
Yes, I'm angry and disappointed today.
And yes, I'll still vote for Barack Obama in November. But you should understand why I'm not feeling great about it this morning.
Now that it's over, now that everybody's been able to run their ecstatic headlines, can we all just admit that the MSM and the Yes! We!
Can!-crazed online world had a deep desire to see Obama win, if
only so everyone can soak in the aura of the New Kennedy or the
first black president or the generational shift, or to have anything but the Clintons to write and talk about for another four or eight years? 
Hillary Clinton's announcement in her speech Tuesday night that she would be neither conceding nor endorsing Obama just yet seems to have mystified or angered a lot of people. Even my respected colleague Will Bunch seems to have got it very, very wrong.
Here's what that non-concession sounded like to my ears: Obama may have garnered a sufficient number of delegates to secure a historic nomination for the presidency. He may even beat John McCain, with the support of many Democrats who cast their primary ballots for Clinton -- including me. But he certainly hasn't "won" my vote.
Because for weeks now, I've watched Clinton rack up decisive wins in key battleground states, securing blocks of voters Obama will desperately need in November. Then I listened as each of those victories was called meaningless, simply unneeded because some formula spelled out in the daily Obama campaign email and understood only by cable news anchors had already determined that "mathematically, she can't win."
I heard the voters who chose Clinton in Pennsylvania dispatched with the descriptor "blue-collar whites," which is a polite way of calling people of a certain socioeconomic status -- my parents, I guess -- some uneducated racist white trash. Or in the case of West Virginia, Dogpatch hillbillies who shouldn't even be allowed to vote.
Was that elitism, or just politics? I can't decide, but I'm damn sure that's what Clinton was talking about when demanded for "the 18 million people who voted for me to be respected, to be heard, and to no longer be invisible."
I
watched, with genuine emotion and pride in our country, as ladies born before women had the right to vote cast their ballot for Clinton. Then they were lumped in with the rest of the women who were just voting with their vaginas. At the same time, I read
about African-Americans only a few generations removed from segregation who talked about how moving it was to cast a
vote for Obama, and I saw many black superdelegates who had supported Clinton for years simply switch their allegiance, yet none was accused of "voting race." I read story after story about how the popular vote didn't matter anyway, because the coming tidal wave of superdelegate endorsements would put Obama over the top. How she might as well just drop out now and stop all this nonsense.
I was still waiting for that tidal wave of endorsements Tuesday night when Obama
staggered across the finish line, at the last possible second, as the
last votes were being tallied in the last states to hold their
primaries. This is a mandate?
For
weeks I've listened to Clinton be accused of tearing the Democratic party asunder
-- of damaging democracy itself -- by
winning. I've heard her viciously criticized for attempting to deny Obama, so
clearly a special, once-in-a-lifetime candidate, his destiny by being obstructionist enough to win as many, and often more, votes as he. I
watched TV pundits driven to near-maniacal ranting because Clinton had
the astounding arrogance to inspire as many people to believe in her
ability and experience as believe in Obama's magical historical mandate.
Was that sexism, or just politics? I'm not sure, but I do know that Keith Olbermann can bite me.
Last Saturday, I watched the DNC
Rules Committee grudgingly give Clinton half of what she fairly won in
Florida, and penalize her -- stripping her of delegates -- in Michigan, then give them to a candidate who chose not to have his name on the ballot. I watched
startling assumptions, obviously designed to benefit Obama, be made
about the true intentions of thousands of people in Michigan who had
already made a choice by voting Undecided. Hell, there weren't even any
dangling chads to go by, just exit polls and the desire for it all to
be over already.
As for former President Clinton, yes, dude was off the hook at times, but be clear about the fact that he was often absolutely correct. Many in the media were already against Hillary even before they fell so giddily in love with Obama. Obama's campaign did allow others to do their dirty work, and Obama's half-hearted attempt to distance himself from the hate being preached at his church was, in fact, pretty damn slimy.
Some of Obama's most passionate (and annoying) supporters refuse to believe -- simply cannot fathom -- that their guy would lower himself to engage in time-tested street politics like good old-fashioned shit talk. Look, when I first heard about that Rev. Pfleger thing, even I was like "Oh come on, where did they dig this one up?" I kind of agreed with Obama's dismissal of the whole thing as gotcha politicking.
Then I realized this wasn't some nugget culled from the nether regions of YouTube: This shit happened two weeks ago. And if we're going by the reaction of Obama's (now-former) fellow congregants at Trinity United who clapped, cheered, leaped to their feet
to express their enthusiastic agreement with a Catholic priest who
stood in their consecrated space mocking Clinton's ambition as
disgusting entitlement, her desire to win as some racist inability to
believe that a black man would dare to defy her, well, then it's hardly she or her supporters who are dealing in personal destruction.
Was that sexism at work, or just politics?
It was certainly repulsive to me as a Christian. Offensive to me as a woman.
But mostly today, it's all just disturbing to me as a Democrat, who will now be expected to shut up and fall into line behind Obama. Talk about a massive sense of entitlement.
