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Graciousness followup: submitted without comment

From minnpost.com:

"He shook my hand and said, 'Thank you for being here; I'm sure it's not easy,' '' said Stevenson of her meeting with Obama.  "I thanked him and said that everyone involved in his campaign had been so gracious. I didn't know what to say, so I mentioned that my daughter works for a federal health clinic. And he knew right away which program I was talking about. He said, 'Oh that's wonderful.' ''

...

The whole evening had been filled with similar graciousness and kindness, Stevenson said. 

Graciousness

graciousness:

godly; marked by kindness and courtesy; marked by tact and delicacy; characterized by charm, good taste, generosity of spirit, and the tasteful leisure of wealth and good breeding; used conventionally of royalty and high nobility

Hillary let the world know with the timing and delivery of her speech that she does not intend to be perceived as gracious in any sense of the word.  Obama's speech was delivered about an hour before Clinton's, and indeed first refers her in the third paragraph, wherein he goes on to talk about her strength and tenacity in the campaign, and brings them up as strong points for her.  Let me rephrase: he praised her and her campaign before he ever talked about his.  

His supporters are largely on the same page, cheering the mention of her name and, if not cheering, at least not booing Obama's mention of her and Bill as leaders of the Democratic Party.  This is in marked contrast to the "DEN-VER! DEN-VER! DEN-VER!" chant of Hillary's supporters, both at the meeting of the Rules and Bylaws Committee and at her speech on Tuesday night.  The implication of the chant seemed to be "to hell with party unity - there's still a slim chance we can pull this out!"  

Further contrast can be found in the content of her speech, which reads more of a standard stump speech than anything else - and Hillary has HAD to see the writing on the wall for a while now - either make victories in both South Dakota and Montana or pack it in, as Obama will have the delegates he needs to secure the nomination.  It's a simple decision tree: make a campaign speech or make a concession speech.  

As others have noted, Hillary had a chance to strike a much less discordant tone by graciously conceding the contest, calling for unity, and promising to fight on for one or two issues such as universal health care or dealing with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Instead, she went with what amounted to a large middle  finger to the sections of the party that either support Obama or simply want to see the nomination process resolved quickly and decisively in order to move on to the real struggle.   Obama struck this note with pitch-perfect precision: he acknowledged the contributions of Hillary both in terms of the historical aspect of a woman running for president - quite hard, I may add - and in terms of the goods that she brought to the party as a whole.

This, in contrast to Hillary's speech, seems to be at the heart of the matter: whereas Obama and McCain have both moved on to locking metaphorical horns with each other, with each moving to solidify their hold on their parties and bring former Clinton supporters into their camps, Hillary has yet to reciprocate with Obama, instead making vague hints about sliding into Obama's vice presidential slot.  And pardon the snark, but I thought that one of the privileges of winning your party's nomination is that you get to pick your VP.

In the end the machinations of the primary season will all be for nought, as Hillary will concede or suspend her campaign sometime in the near future, possibly as soon as Friday Saturday.  She and Obama will hug, I'm betting there will be tears and possibly some "DEN-VER!" chants, but nothing too serious.  However, the damage has been done, the tone has been set, and it's going to be some time before the bad blood between the two camps is resolved or faded away.  That discordant tone?  It's the hallmark of people who are not gracious.