The Diageo/Hotline national poll has Obama up by four points.

It was taken August 18-24 with the margin of error at 3.0%.  Obama is at 44 percent, McCain at 40, with 13 percent undecided (no third party candidates).

Having missed the events of the day live, I've spent the past couple of hours flipping between the three cable news networks. For about half the time I watched Fox and I really got a feel for profound difference in coverage between Fox and the other stations.

Not to say that any of the coverage was particularly insightful or brilliant, but on CNN and MSNBC I repeatedly saw clips from Biden's speech followed by talking head analysis of mixed levels of value. In the at minimum 45 minutes of Fox viewing I saw no clips of Biden's speech - not one. I would say about 25 percent of the time was spent on McCain's theme of Biden's former slights about Obama's experience when Biden was running for president. ALL of the rest of the time was spent discussing how much the choice pissed off Clinton supporters, bringing in whatever Democrats they could find to support the meme (Susan Estrich, a former Clinton campaign representative I didn't recognize, etc.) with alleged journalist Geraldo Rivera saying he was "pissed" that Clinton was passed over.

That was a great speech.  It seemed heartfelt, and I have to admit it's a testament to her character that she could transcend her obvious disappointment to make such a rousing and real speech on behalf of the man with whom she has been at throats for months.

Great line about female astronauts an presidents.  Great line about 18 million cracks in the glass ceiling (even if she's selling herself short by failing to mention her caucus voters).  

I haven't really spent time here in over a week.

Wow.  I had to refresh my screen and then rub my eyes to believe it, but while the rest of the country has already moved on, the die hards here press on with the nomination fight.  Even Hillary Clinton has pretty much moved on and is running a token campaign to position herself for another day.

The sun will come up tomorrow.  And Obama will be president come next January.

And it'll be the first presidential election in my adult life in which there is not either a Bush or a Clinton on the ticket.  That's a good thing for democracy.

I cracked up tonight watching CNN (the only cable news network to cover the speech live).  Rick Sanchez brought Durbin and some Clinton super delegate with the last name Schultz.  I really wanted to know how the campaigns were going to react to the speech.  Turns out that both representatives came across as evasive weasels - sorry.

Durbin was asked first to comment and he moves right into the canned statement the campaign has been giving about Wright for a month now.  Sanchez interrupted to ask him about tonight's speech, and it turns out that... Durbin didn't hear it, other than a few "edited" items.

It's a small red state and it's a caucus, so I know it doesn't "matter," but the little people there are holding an event on Saturday which seems to have escaped not only the attention of this blog, but also mainstream news which is obsessed with giving Clinton a platform to build up the Republicans and hammering on somebody nobody knew until yesterday for calling Clinton a "monster" (the horror of it - maybe Clinton should sue for intentional infliction of emotional distress).

McCain may have won the presidency yesterday.

Clinton won by playing the reactionary card, the "red phone" being the metaphor for "I voted for the war and I'll bomb their asses if they don't tow our line."  Obama mishandled the Goolesbee situation, and should have fired Goolesbee immediately, but the real difference was Clinton's appeal to the Republican mindset.

New Democratic Party leader Jack Layton tore a new one into Stephen Harper's administration today over the release of the memo written by a low level staff person at the embassy mischaracterizing a discussion with Austan Goolesbee regarding NAFTA.  The administration became very defensive and borderline apologetic.

Here's the video clip played on MSNBC today.  Somebody in the Harper administration wanted to play ball with Clinton, and Harper's going to get hit for it.

The damage is done however.  Hat's off to Hillary, sleezy as it is.