I fled NYC this morning in hopes of beating the heat in Connecticut. I had been listening to public radio to catch Hillary’s endorsement of Obama but just as she was about to take the podium the signal began to fade — a fitting end to her campaign, or at least my interest in.

From the highlights I saw when I got to the house we have rented she did what she needed to, mentioning Obama by name 14 times in a 30 minute address, and her followers, six thousand of whom had signed up on her website to attend the event, seemed mostly enthusiastic (though there were scattered boos). No one was holding up a McCain sign.

Indeed, she seemed more fired up here than she did giving her non-concession speech Tuesday night perhaps because this address was a bit more reality-based. Tuesday, at the end of another split decision, she was speaking in an auditorium two floors below ground in NY, meaning cell phones and text messages could not be received. This not only gave new meaning to the phrase “bunker mentality,” it meant she couldn’t get Obama’s call congratulating her on her victory in South Dakota — yet another metaphor for everything that was wrong with her campaign.

I know I have said some mean things about HRC in the last few months, and my remarks were nothing compared to the vitriol that was out there, but my anger was not directed at her positions, virtually indistinguishable from his, or even her style (she doesn’t give a speech the way he does but neither does anyone else). It was the fact that she seemed to think she could fudge her way into victory, talking about Florida and Michigan, touting her 18 million voters as if they constituted an army, reminding people just how close they were in the races.

At some point you have to go with the system what brought you; it would be like complaining at the end of a 6-5 baseball game that the Yankees could have pulled it out if there had just been ten innings. In fact her behavior was starting to remind me of athletes who insist they were on the better team after they’ve lost the championship, or Hollywood stars, busted on some morals charge, who complain about our society’s hidebound attitudes, instead of quietly going off somewhere before reappearing in a movie cameo or a guest spot on a TV sitcom.

Don’t weep for Hillary; she will be force to be reckoned with in politics for years and has finally accepted her role in our shared drama. “The democratic party is a family,” she said today. ” We may have started on separate journeys but today our paths have merged.” The stakes are too high to hold a grudge; look at the fate of the global warming bill that died in the Senate this week, if you need evidence that we need a radical purging in DC. Hillary certainly would have been a change from Bush, and a welcome one, but after seven years of lies and hypocrisy, we need something stronger. Like an exorcism.