After the Battle: Let Down

After the battle is over, the let down sets in.

There's plenty of time till the election, with several high points still to look forward to:

• The anointments at the national democratic and republican conferences
• The invasion of Iran we've been promised.
  
• Other October surprises from George and Dick.
  
• Anything else that McCain and Obama may throw at us.
  

But for a while now there won't be anything that major. Obama and Clinton have finally finished. Clinton finally conceded with good grace and a complete lack of the howling irrelevancies that frequently peppered her campaign speeches:

• I'm more electable (then why are you losing?)
• Obama can't win (but he can win the delegate race?)
• The popular vote should count more (rules, what rules?)
• I'm winning the popular vote (deserves a longer response than 5 words, but bottom line: there is no well defined way to count that, and it is irrelevant anyway, (see rules, what rules?))
• He's black (and you're female and John McCain is old).
  
• Whites support me, and RFK was shot in June.
  
• It's unprecedented that people would attempt to chase a competitor out of the race (gee, last time that happened was with John McCain and his competitors, and Bill Clinton and his competitors)
• And Bill didn't clinch until June (hah, no one else was actively running long before June).
  

I can still read dailykos, talkingpointsmemo, political animal and pandagon, but it just won't have the same force. It's going to be calm for a while. Plenty of important sparing will occur. Mistakes will be made by both sides. McCain will fire a few more lobbyists and call Obama a young man. Obama will unintentionally piss off yet some one else. Michelle will no doubt make another mistake. VEEP rumors will abound. Clinton will continue to deny running for the VEEP slot while running for the VEEP slot.

While all the sparing will set the tableau for the Fall, and may even determine the Fall, it mostly will not seem to matter the way each state mattered. Even when the states didn't matter, they seemed important.

I'll keep paying attention, but, the interesting part is over, and the part that is going to make me cringe is about to start.