The coveted SF endorsement

So there's apparently a good chance that, when Hillary resigns her seat post-inauguration, Gov. David Paterson will select my congresswoman, Nydia Velazquez, to fill her Senate seat and I'm hoping that he does so.

For one thing, she's clearly a twofer on the identity politics front, which is the cause of most of my optimism and some of my enthusiasm for her selection. But since she's been my representative I've checked to make sure she votes the right way on important stuff and sure enough, she has. It reminds me of an Alec Baldwin line from 30 Rock, where he's talking to the young white male NBC page Kenneth and informs him that, politically speaking, he's actually a latina woman. That's me.

My only beef with Rep. Velazquez was that she, along with I believe every other New York politician, supported Clinton in the primary. (I wrote her a letter sometime after Super Tuesday urging her to abandon ship and throw her support to Obama, but she took no heed.) And she also was a bit of a villain in David Einhorn's book, having failed to do anything as chair of the Small Business Committee over the utterly corrupt Small Business Administration (which pretty clearly falls in her purview), even after he made his case to her staff.

But on the whole, good peoples. And all the alternatives are either unknown or annoying. Andrew Cuomo? No gracias.

BTW the place to go for the latest on all the Paterson-stalking and nomination-jockeying is Elizabeth Benjamin's blog, which is the rookie of the year in my RSS reader.

Hillary's speech

Excellent. A big improvement over her withdrawal speech.

Of course we can't have the Clinton discussion stop now because Bill hasn't even gone yet, and he's the one who still burns with rage. I can't see any reasons for his not attending Obama's speech (lead story on Drudge, btw), that don't involve a Caligulan personality disorder.

Fired up! Ready to go!

"Democrats Try to Heal Bruises as Convention Kicks Off"

Nice headline from the Times. If this is Obama boosterism I want my money back. But the Shadow of Hillary story is just getting so much run, it just has to be the main angle for any news outlet that wants to be relevant.

Plus, there is something morbidly fascinating about the angry Clinton primary voter who just hates Barack Obama's guts and wants to see John McCain beat him senseless in the general. My sense is that this has more to do with his being the guy who beat Hillary than anything they would have objected to otherwise. It's just so stupid and petty, plus disadvantageous to my preferred candidate, that the numbers suggesting there may be hundreds of thousands of these voters are pretty depressing.

Still, there can't possibly be enough of them for it to matter. Most people who vote in Democratic primaries, and I don't know why Hillary voters would be any different, have some idea of why they prefer Democrats to Republicans and therefore don't represent a game-changing pickup opportunity for John McCain... I'm just going to keep telling myself that anyway.