Check out this video of Hillary Clinton denying her husband a kiss and instead turning to Obama.

Reading a new piece in Vanity Fair by Gail Sheehy. Definitely spot on and worth a read!

The New York Times has a look inside how the Obama/Clinton campaign are negotiating how to move forward and “unify” the party.

The Associated Press reports and this morning MSNBC has confirmed that Senator Obama is asking top donors to help pay off $10 Million dollars of Senator Clinton’s debt accrued during her failed bid for the Democratic nomination.

In a teleconference with his top fundraisers Tuesday afternoon, Obama asked them to do what they could to help Clinton, according to two Democrats familiar with the call. A campaign spokesman confirmed that Obama had asked them to help the former first lady.

Clinton and Obama will appear together for the first time this Friday at a campaign event in Unity, New Hampshire. Concerns had previously been raised over the idea that Obama donors would alleviate Clinton’s debt because of the large sums still owed by Mark Penn whose business ties and connections to lobbyists and entrenched special interests Obama’s campaign stands in opposition to.

Fundraiser will be June 26th at the Mayflower Hotel according to the New York Times. The New York Daily News also reports Clinton’s top finance director Jonathan Martinez sent an e-mail to Clinton’s top donors inviting them to the event.

“As we move forward, we invite you to join us for a National Finance Committee meeting with both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on Thursday, June 26th in Washington, D.C., to discuss how we can work together to support Barack Obama and the Democratic Party,” Mantz wrote.
“Hillary ran for President because she wants to put this country on the right track,” Mantz wrote. “She continues to fight and stand strong for our values and priorities and will do everything she can to unify the party and to elect Barack Obama the next President of the United States.”

As part of the effort, Mantz wrote, the Clinton campaign is encourage its supporters to contribute $2,300 to Obama’s campaign.

You could honestly write dozens of books about media bias in relation to the 2008 campaign and coverage of Senator Hillary Clinton, no doubt many will. With that said, now that her candidacy is over it is a perfect time to sit down and reflect on what was, which is just what Tom Brokaw seems to be doing. From the linked article:

“It was inappropriate, for journalists especially, to try to cut the process short,” NBC News’ anchor emeritus, Tom Brokaw, told The Associated Press. “It was an appropriate issue for people to report on, in context, but there was an awful lot of commentary disguised as reporting that gave the impression that people were trying to shove her out of the race.”

Brokaw called all the discussion about Clinton’s exit a product of “too much time and too little imagination.”

I have been writing about my own feelings on Clinton’s extended exit, but I have to say up until the moment it was 100% clear she had no shot and all the contests were over, I too thought the endless calls for her to quit and the speculation by journalists was way over the top.

I have to admit it took a little while to form my opinion on Clinton’s weekend speech. I watched almost no commentary after it, opting instead to go buy a new printer, and I kept the television off for almost the entire weekend, instead spending my time with family and catching up on sleep. From the little I have read, many are heaping praise upon Clinton and the speech while a few seem to reflect my final conclusion.

I thought the speech was well written. I felt it laid out a wonderful set of reasons why hers was a real movement campaign, it captured the rooms complex and not entirely pleasant feelings about the moment, it achieved largely what it set out to do, end a campaign, thank Clinton’s supporters and of course lay the groundwork for unifying the Democratic Party. What it wasn’t, in many ways, was an actual concession speech, it was more a way of saying “goodbye for now”. I could not help but think about talk show host Johnny Carson’s final message in which he gave hope to the audience that he may return some day in some other form and gave hope that if he did, they would come back to join him.

Yes her speech recognized Obama’s triumph, but it spent far more time placing the emphasis on Clinton herself.

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Evidence continues to mount that Clinton campaign manager Mark Penn really had no conception of how to run the Senator’s presidential campaign. In his latest op-ed to the New York Times, Penn states his belief that Clinton’s largest problem was money despite the fact that the campaign raised over $225 Million and actually won primary states where Obama was outspending her 2-1.

While everyone loves to talk about the message, campaigns are equally about money and organization. Having raised more than $100 million in 2007, the Clinton campaign found itself without adequate money at the beginning of 2008, and without organizations in a lot of states as a result. Given her successes in high-turnout primary elections and defeats in low-turnout caucuses, that simple fact may just have had a lot more to do with who won than anyone imagines.

As it was noted by Jack Trapper from ABC News, the money itself wasn’t the problem so much as how it was spent and what it was spent on, namely Mark Penn and other consultants who pushed a message which Penn is still defending in the article. Clinton proved time and again, in New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, that when she ditched the pre-scripted lines, the inevitable strategy and instead connected with voters in a way she did not do the year following up to Iowa, she could win in-spite of her fund raising.

All the money spent by the Obama campaign on advertising and ground organization did almost nothing in California, Nevada, Texas and other states. Furthermore the final nail in the Clinton coffin came from ignoring caucus states where, yes, had they organized and spent money she would have competed better and won more delegates. That was, by all accounts, a Penn inspired choice, ignore the little Caucus states and spend time on the big states, thereby ignoring the apportioned delegate system that decided the election.

In short, Mark Penn sucks and should find another line of work.

Today Senator Hillary Clinton gave a speech announcing the suspension of her campaign and giving her full support to Senator Barack Obama. Check out a video excerpt as well as the text of the speech below.

Read the full text:

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photo credit: Jef Poskanzer

Last night Diane Feinstein was host to a meeting between Senator’s Clinton & Obama to, as the campaigns tell it, “discuss party unity and ways to work together in November.” While the media have spent the day speculating on what might have taken place, few details have been available.

Today Feinstein revealed a few more nuggets including the fact that Clinton called her that afternoon to see if the home would be available for the meeting, they met alone while their staffs waited outside, they met for an hour and finally she “recalls they were laughing, seemed to get along well.”