Chris Matthews Attributes Hillary's Loss to Her War Vote

Atrios:

MSNBC just ran yet another "What Clinton Did Wrong" piece which... didn't mention the war.

Arguably there were two major substantive policy differences between Clinton and Obama. The first one is their health plans, and the second one is Iraq. Perhaps absent more differences it's inevitable that the horse race/identity politics/silly season/"gaffe" stuff gets elevated even more than it usually is, but at the very least they could mention the real, if small, differences in their policy positions.

And it is Iraq. No Iraq, no way to challenge Clinton.

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I was watching MSNBC during most of the coverage last night and I do recall Chris Matthews, of all people, at one point quite explicitly point out that a key distinction between Obama and Clinton was the latter's vote to authorize the Iraq war and that that decision was the key cause of Obama's ultimate victory. Matthews referred to Obama's opposition to the war as "surendipitous".

I did, however, find all the banter about Hillary as VP a bit much to deal with. Both CNN and MSNBC were playing up this angle all night.

I even watched all of Hillary's speech, with one towards the little clock in the bottom left hand corner of the screen indicating when the Montana polls would close, hoping that the land of Big Sky would give Obama a symbolic victory to paper over the disappointment of losing South Dakota by double digits.

Despite the thousands filling the arena in St. Paul, it certainly feels like Obama limped across the finish line. Maybe stumbled is the right word.

So in some ways I'm not surprised by the mostly defiant tone Hillary struck last night. But her egging on her supporters to log onto her website and offer suggestions as to what she should do now was pretty weird.

Meanwhile, I got a kick out of the reception to John McCain's 8:30 address. Jeffrey Toobin on CNN ridiculed it, causing the normally congenial David Gergen to shift uneasily in his seat next to him.

From Pandagon commenter Incertus:

Man, Toobin just kicked McCain in the junk for that speech.