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.

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.

On what promises to be a historic evening, John McCain is speaking before a hand-picked crowd in Louisiana and dying on stage. It’s difficult watching a good man, which I think he is, try to do the contortionist’s routine he must: decrying war while defending this one; blaming bureaucrats for the failure of government to help people after Katrina (when some good organization was just what was needed); claiming he can fix health care by…well, trusting in our can-do spirit. America, heal thyself!

Not only it is a bad and dishonest speech, poorly constructed and lazy (repeating the phrase, “That’s not change we can believe in,” playing off of Obama’s motto because his campaign’s best counter was “A Leader We Can Believe In”) but he can’t sell it. His grin is frozen, his skin shiny and waxy in appearance — none of which is improved by the baby-barf green background his campaign has selected. If this is his opening salvo, his attempt to piss on our parade by making this speech while the polls closed in South Dakota, it backfired.

Both CNN and MSNBC broke away from MccCain’s speech to declare Obama the presumptive nominee and marvel at this moment in our country’s story when a black man (okay, half-black man) with a name like Barack Hussein Obama can be the Democratic nominee for president. After letting white Southerner David Gergen and black Southerner Donna Brazille wonder at this turn of events, Jeffrey Toobin also talked about the fact that he is not a boomer. Like McCain

Who must have finished speaking, no doubt being helped off stage at the end, because when I flipped over to Fox News, Carl Cameron was making apologies for his piss-poor performance, acknowledging that he looked bad and sounded worse. But even Brit Hume had to question why he chose this evening to come out — before Clinton’s rendition of that old PiL classic “This Is Not a Love Song,” to say nothing of Obama’s aria, meant to mark the opening of the general election.

If this is the GOP’s best shot, well, what can I say but bring it on!

Now that he is preaching from the back of pickup trucks, telling anyone who will listen that his wife is a victim of a cover-up, Bill Clinton seems to have settled on a new role: the crazy old uncle who’s off his meds. Sure, I thought dignified diplomat, emissary of peace and understanding with a mistress in every port, would be a nice gig for his second or third act. But ranting that Hillary is winning the general election and saying things like, “In case you haven’t noticed, most of the media aren’t for her,” puts him in another class entirely. One that wears tin foil hats.

Hillary has a new, equally scary role for herself: She is the madwoman at the wedding, the one who was scorned and pounces when the preacher says, “Does anyone know of any reason why this man and this woman should not be joined together? Speak now or forever hold your peace.”

“Well, I can think of a couple,” she yells from a pew in the back. “He has no experience, his whole career is based on one speech and a lot of decent hardworking Americans who just happen to be white don’t like him.” There is some polite coughing, eye-rolling, one or two strained whispers — “God, not her again” — though nothing like the avalanche of admonition her husband envisions. Most people are just hoping that the bride and groom were go ahead with their vows (“I always wanted to be married in the Mile High City!”) and move on — even if she clearly isn’t ready to.

Campaigning in South Dakota, Hillary made a point of visiting Mount Rushmore, I guess so she could be photographed with some of our other exes. Her face appeared in the news, alongside the granite profiles of Jefferson and Roosevelt, and maybe she was just hoping we would take the hint. Sorry, lady. I’m sure you would make a perfectly good, er, husband (trying to stay with my analogy here, nothing wrong with pantsuits). But we, the ever-hopeful and often disappointed bride that is the loyal Democratic base, have fallen for someone else. Hard. And complaining about him just makes her look petty.

I guess it’s possible that she and crazy Bill are doing this just so they’ll look good when they stop ranting and join the party. Then we’ll smile politely when we see them at the reception and keep our distance. By the time the honeymoon is over and we’ve moved into the big white house we’ll have forgotten about the whole thing — though we’ll still want to put their portraits in the basement, if not the dumpster out back.

We just got back from a Memorial Day parade in Salisbury, CT, near which we had rented a house, as simple and touching a celebration as you can imagine. It was like one of those old Morning in America commercials, without the Reagan. Though there may have been a few Reaganites in our midst.

The parade started at ten am at the library, led by the local school marching band, followed by several carloads of military veterans. Locals are encouraged to follow them on the short march to the graveyard, and many of the kids had little flags to wave. In the graveyard the vets gathered in their dress uniforms and colors (one old Green Beret looked like he might have been the prototype for Special Forces soldiers everywhere), exchanging happy looks and banter. Hey, look! We’re still alive! Then a Boy Scout read The Gettysburg Address, the vets fired their rifles into the air before taps was played.

One of the local preachers read the 23rd Psalm and went out of his way to mention not just the (mostly) men and women who had fought and died but the innocents who died in the wars as well. One vet got up to make a speech but said he couldn’t and just wanted to pay tribute to those who served. The names of veterans from CT (none from Salisbury, it seemed) killed in Iraq and Afghanistan were also read and I was struck by the number of Latino names rising to replace the ranks of the Irish, English and Italians that had come before.

Everyone left after the last taps was played and then they were giving out free ice cream down the street. Our dog, who had been so terrified by the blanks fired earlier, got a lot of attention. I got the impression it was the kind of town where you could argue with your neighbor about this war, or any war, and still say hello to each other on the street. I felt free of the rancor and despair I sometimes feel on our most patriotic holidays and I wonder if I was getting a glimpse of a small town America I thought was lost. It made me feel optimistic for the days to come. Or maybe it was just the weather.