I posted last night before the final weirdness of Hillary’s nonconcession speech had sunk in, recalling the words of Elvis Costello:

Romeo was restless, he was ready to kill
He jumped out the window ’cause he couldn’t sit still
Juliet was waiting with a safety net, saying,
“Don’t bury me ’cause I’m not dead yet”

HRC is no teenager (though she can certainly be a drama queen) and even Shakespeare’s star-crossed lover finally took her own life when she realized how badly her plan had turned out. The combination of her unnaturally dimply smile and this image of her spreading her wings, as if marshaling dark forces, make her look more like an old queen in a fairy tale, the evil stepmother who lives to deny others happiness. Think Snow White, Enchanted, anything Jane Fonda has done lately.

Looking at her now, addressing AIPAC, she looks like a fighter in the twelfth round. Following Obama on the dais, as she will now from here to eternity, you can almost feel for her. In Philadelphia, she liked to compare herself to Rocky, giving her handlers an excuse to play that stupid song one more time. But her campaign looks more like Rocky Balboa, the last and most unnecessary sequel to what began as a tired drama. She literally does not know when to quit and may be, literally, incapable.

Lord knows I have romanticized Obama’s rise to power and invoked Joseph Campbell and the challenges of a hero once too often for some of you. But the primaries have become his crucible, his first presidential crisis if you will; just as he needed to jettison not just the Rev. Jeremiah Wright but his whole church he must now resist the call to embrace the acid queen and offer her the VP seat. There is a push on from her and her supporters: the lamentable Lanny Davis is circulating a petition to force Obama’s hand, and followers chanting “Denver!” may well be hanging him in effigy if he doesn’t.

But what does he get, aside from the loyalty of some Clintonistas? A partner he can’t trust, who comes with a divisive organization of her own that will not blend easily into anyone’s administration, plus the extra added bonus of an ex-president just one cup of coffee away from a complete public meltdown. Worst of all he gets a politician who seems to confuse her country’s struggle, make that all struggles, with her own. She tried to end her speech this morning to the pro-Israel lobby on a selfless note, quoting from the biography of “my personal hero, Golda Meir,” but couldn’t resist a touch of self-pity. Describing the phone call she received telling her that the US had recognized Israel, Meir recalled hearing the phone and wondering “what bad news could this be” and Hillary could not resist a scripted aside: “Doesn’t that sound familiar?”

Haha. The bad news is that she must be slain, in her lair if needs be. The good news is we have the man for the job.