I spent the morning with pals at the Manifest Hope gallery, which was an amazing collection of work created by artists who were inspired by BO’s candidacy. (I took about 1,000 photos, which I will upload to Flickr tomorrow morning.) Spike Lee was there and he signed a bunch of kids’ shoes, which was pretty hilarious.

It was nice to take it easy after the hullabaloo that surrounded HRC’s speech last night. We watched at a bar near the Pepsi Center, and it might as well have been Super Bowl Sunday. Blaise teased me mercilessly, but I must confess that I teared up during the cheesy women empowerment film when Chelsea introduced her and also when she noted that her mother was born before women could vote and her daughter was able to vote for her mother for President. I admire how gracious she was and that she got the job done for Team Democrats, although I doubt she’s personally as supportive of BO as she proclaimed. I’m eagerly awaiting Bill’s remarks as I type … that will be pretty revealing in terms of how the old guard is going to go down.

We spent last night at a party for up-and-coming elected officials, hosted by my LA City Councilman Eric Garcetti. I enjoyed some spirited conversations with policy-wonk types while Shepard Fairey DJed. All week it’s felt like I’ve been transported to a dark bar in Adams Morgan, flanked by preppy Hill dudes everywhere I turn, and this crowd was a little more low-key, which was a welcome change.

The best part of yesterday, though, was a conversation I had with a local woman I wound up having a beer with while waiting for Blaise and Melissa. She’d tried to volunteer to help at the convention and hadn’t been contacted back (which happens with the excess of volunteers). She’d left work early hoping to check out the action and meet inspired people. I encouraged her to make a My.BO account and try again (even my grandma has one!) because I’ve had such a fun experience on the trail this last year. It reminded me that even if I’m not at the Kanye concert tonight or rubbing elbows with Nancy Pelosi at Pepsi, what I care about most is the activism of everyone I’ve met. No matter what media reports say about Hillary not saying he’s ready to leave or buzz about McCain’s veep announcement, it’s the grassroots/netroots crowd that is collectively leading this election and I’m so glad that I’ve been a small part of it.

Tonight we’ll be at the Manifest Hope concert with some pals from Iowa and Oregon, then it’s up and early to trek out to Invesco tomorrow morning for the big day. I hope Barackstar is bringing his A game to kick off the general election.

“I am convinced that honoring Senator Clinton’s historic campaign in this way will help us celebrate this defining moment in our history and bring the party together in a strong united fashion,” Senator Barack Obama said in a statement.

Surely HRC supporters will be up in arms that she has to share the convention spotlight with him, but it’s also a subtle reminder of why she doesn’t add anything to the ticket: She’s redundant. We need an old Southerner who has had either financial or military success. All but the most militant PUMAs will hold their nose and vote for BO in November; Obama needs to close the deal with traditional red state voters.

From Politico’s story on the announcement of Warner’s keynote:

Reflecting new Democratic optimism about the South, former Virginia governor Mark R. Warner will keynote the party’s national convention in Denver two weeks from now.

Warner appealed successfully to NASCAR Democrats in his election as governor, running strongly in rural areas and with working-class social conservatives. …

Warner’s a rising star in the party, paired with the established force of Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) on the second night of the convention. The duo is designed as a powerful display of the strength of the Democratic Party headed into the fall.

I watched this interesting video (below) on the subject yesterday, and while I initially wished that these people would dedicate their energy to something more compelling, I later felt glad that they were determined to preserve the significance of her candidacy in the feminist movement’s ongoing efforts. That will matter some day. 

  **UPDATE My USC professor friend has convinced me that I need to reconsider my position on this, arguing fairly persuasively that HRC is really trying to co-opt the Oval Office. Since I wouldn’t put it past her, I am going to stew on it over the weekend. 

Tom Brokaw condemns the media’s relentless coverage of Hillary’s imminent exit from the primary race. Check it out as he “Slams Press Drumbeat For Hillary’s Exit: ‘Inappropriate,’ ‘Commentary Disguised as Reporting.’”

Unfortunately, just being there isn’t enough, and I wish I could be proud of our first viable female candidate’s tactics as much as I begrudgingly respect her results. Any pride I had in seeing a woman narrowly miss the Democratic nomination was diluted by the knowledge that her hard-fought brand of equality is of the lowest common denominator. Today the end of Hillary Clinton’s candidacy proved that a woman can be just as sneaky and misleading and desperate as a male politician faced with failure and the implosion of a chance at power. I wanted to be wooed by her lovely words and the momentous accomplishment, but as her supporters love to point out, rhetoric without action is moot.

Candy Crowley said in her post-game commentary on CNN that after the New Hampshire primary HRC realized she needed to gain traction with women under 40, who didn’t appreciate the battle of old wave feminism and were leaning towards Obama. She noted that the campaign succeeded in educating the members of this group about the history of the struggle to break through glass ceilings. This comment was particularly incisive because it touches on the New Feminism that has prevailed in Obama’s victory and explains why some of us young women are not doing cartwheels today to celebrate HRC’s historic triumph.

By all calculations I should have been an HRC supporter. I was her passionate devotee as a teenager. I read any Hillary news I could find, went on a pilgrimage to DC and cried in the Sewall-Belmont House, and in AP Government I argued with pride defending the First Lady who didn’t bake cookies. She was my hero because there were so few women role models in high-profile positions and I was still intellectually immature enough to make identity politics the foundation of my political platform.

But then I grew up and built a career and fell in love a few times and dreamed bigger than the various compartments of my life can ever seem to balance. Every day I don’t know whether to put on my lipstick and look for one of those rare supportive men or fall asleep cuddling my BlackBerry, and no matter which I choose it seems like the other is going to pass me by. I watched my mother and my mentors try to do everything at once, and I’m not sure if it’s worth it. I do know, however, that I don’t want to wait my turn behind a pseudo-feminist man who sleeps with interns and degrades the values I proclaim to stand for. I would not parade him around on stage, flanked by my daughter and mother on the most historic day of the women’s movement, a silent endorsement of a another man who had a different concept of how executive power should be used.

So many Hillary supporters want to talk about misogyny these days, but no one wants to talk about the Clinton family’s female empowerment issues. If we’re going to write this day as the crescendo to parity in our history books, we don’t get to ignore this aspect of their public life. We can all forgive them and admire the way they rebuilt their lives and continued to contribute to American society in the face of self-inflicted adversity, but can we trust them?

If you’ve ever seen the way Barack Obama looks at his wife and children, even for the minute they’re on stage with him before a major speech, you can see his genuine love and admiration for them. Not only do I believe he truly respects women, it reinforces my confidence in his judgment and personal constitution, and thus his ability to govern with a moral compass and transparency. As a young woman making decisions about the future, this is a model that inspires me to hope for balance and equality.

We hear all about how hard it will be for Clinton supporters to get behind Obama, but it will also be very difficult for us to welcome her supporters into Obama Nation. Let’s not let her excellent speech distract us from her record; I don’t understand how any real progressive thinker or activist could respect the way she ran that campaign. We’re going to need to stir up vats of Obama Kool Aid for these Clinton supporters because we don’t want cheap shots, selective truthfulness and Microtrend Multiple Personality Disorder to seep into our organization.

For at least the next few days, it will remain hard to rally around her lovely, well-delivered words. We’ll be waiting to see how many people become PUMAs and who makes the effort to extend or accept an olive branch. Perhaps I will overcome this emotional, knee-jerk reaction as the much ballyhooed “healing” process begins. Fortunately, I’ve met a rogue HRC supporter or two who seem capable of playing nicely with others, and I’ll do my best to not push them off the monkey bars.

After all, girls wear pink and we’re good at compromising.