Daily Tidbits: June 4, 2008

• CLINTON CAMPAIGN CONFIRMS IT IS OVER. Aides say she will suspend campaign and endorse Obama at an event in Washington, DC on Friday. (Update: Saturday). Nagourney’s longer story here — he attributes her decision to pressure from her supporters.
• Inside Baseball Campaign News. Team Obama announces consulting teams and other staffing decisions for the general election effort.
• World reacts to Obama’s nomination: I’m doing the happy dance! Oh wait, that’s Oprah’s reaction. Here’s the world’s reaction.
• Still More Evidence McCain’s Campaign Is Run by the GOP’s “B” Team. Who ever thought of putting McCain’s sparsely attended and horribly written speech in the middle of Obama’s big night should be drawn and quartered. The speech’s tone was grumpy, ungracious, sarcastic and condescending. McCain looked awkward, tired and confused. His audience seemed bored and distracted. Meanwhile, Obama has 17,000 screaming, adoring supporters inside an arena and another 15,000 outside it as he gives an uplifting, positive and patriotic tour de force. I suppose McCain wanted to “frame the election,” but unfortunately for him, he was too successful: grumpy old man vs. young visionary leader.

• Rendell once again proves he’s his own man, for better or for worse. Today he dings Hillary as the wrong choice for VP because, among other reasons, she would upstage Obama. He also slaps her on the wrist for trying to negotiate for the Veep. Rendell had also dinged Obama during the Pennsylvania primary, and had been critical of President Clinton years ago.
• Hillary’s Campaign Shuts Down. Hillary tells staff to pack their things — last day in the office is Friday, although they will be paid through June 15th.
• Obama’s Veep selection team composed of Caroline Kennedy, former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson and former Deputy AG under President Clinton, Eric Holder.
• This will be the topic of a full post later today — but anyone else notice the conspicuous silence of Al Gore — the only major Democrat yet to endorse Obama? Who is the one Democrat in the country with the gravitas to restore and unify the full Democratic coalition without undermining the change message and vision of Obama? That’s right: Al Gore.
• Hilllary directly enlisted Bob Johnson to lobby the Congressional Black Caucus to, in turn, lobby Obama to select Hillary as Veep. Let me count the indignities attempted by Hillary in this potent brew: (1) putting Johnson, a self-made billioniare African American, into the role of her personal butt boy, (2) making the assumption that Obama would be more easily persuaded by the CBC than he would be by the merits of the issue, (3) making the assumption that the CBC would sell-out to the overtures of a major Democratic donor like Johnson rather than follow their hearts and minds, (4) acting through an intermediary like this, rather than return calls from Obama directly, in some kind of high school-like game, (5) using an African American as air cover for an unprecedented and disrespectfully public demand by a losing candidate of history’s first African American Democratic nominee, and (6) choosing Bob Johnson to serve in this role — the man who implied Obama was a street hustling punk in his younger years, prior to the South Carolina primary and later said Ferraro was right that Obama was “lucky” to be running as an African American candidate.
• Former Hillary-supporter Hilary Rosen Angry at Hillary: “I am not a bargaining chip. I am a Democrat.”
• Rahm Emanuel endorses Obama and joins him for his speech before AIPAC, and Obama’s later meeting with the AIPAC board. His L.A. superagent brother Ari, the inspiration for the eponymous character in HBO’s Entourage, has long been with Team Obama.
• McCain Compares Himself to Goldwater and Obama to JFK. In more hilarious evidence that McCain’s Campaign is being managed by the GOP’s “B” team, McCain’s keystone kops hand-deliver a letter (to which the Obama representative receiving it noted “You could have just emailed“) requesting debates with Obama. In the opening line, he begins by making an allusion to Goldwater negotiating a round of debates with Kennedy in 1963. I realize McCain is from Arizona and probably has warmer feelings about Goldwater than the rest of the country… but newsflash: most of the country remembers Goldwater as an old, cranky, right-wing guy with nerdy thick black-framed glasses who lost in 1964 in a massive landslide to Johnson. And they remember JFK fondly as the forever young, intelligent and charming leader who represented the promise of America’s future. If that is how McCain wants to frame the election, fine by me. Meanwhile, on the merits of the proposal of having town hall-style debates (which I previously noted Obama was wise to endorse), Obama reaffirms his positive reaction, but shrewdly proposes having even less structured and lengthier formats like the Stephen Douglas-Abraham Lincoln debates. Leave it to Obama’s team to find a way to improve on being compared to JFK — making a comparison to Lincoln!
• For those keeping score, Obama won the popular vote under any reasonably sane calculation.
• Flood of superdelegates continues with many House and Senate leaders, and several former Clinton endorsers (including the Co-Chairs of Clinton’s Washington State campaign), joining the party. Obama now has 2,175 delegates, with the endorsements expected to wrap up by week’s end. Hillary has suffered a net loss of 9 superdelegates over the last two days from defections. MSNBC notes that there is no remaining metric upon which Hillary could rely to claim victory.
• Baratunde Thurston. “This primary campaign has brought out the best and worst in me.”
• NY Times’s write up on Obama’s victory
• Andrew Sullivan on Hillary’s threatening, classless, non-concession speech.
• Andrew Sullivan on Obama’s gracious, visionary, patriotic, and inspiring speech.
• Dana Milbank: Hillary washed away in a trickle.
• The Opinionator: Hillary’s long goodbye.
• The Field reacts calmly to Hillary’s speech.
• Lanny Davis launches online petition for Obama to pick Hillary as Veep. (Kevin Kline award).
• NY Times’s profile on Obama: “He is a deliberate fellow in a manic game.”
• NY Times: What will be Hillary’s role, if anything?