Gentlemen! Behold! Unleash John Kerry!

Despite my serious misgivings about the Big Dog last night and my decidedly mixed reaction to the selection of Joe Biden as Obama's Veep, both men came through with guns a-blazin' for the Big O. Bill's speech especially was a strong endorsement of Obama.

Bill Clinton was one of Barack Obama's fiercest critics during the primary campaign, but Wednesday night the former president delivered an enthusiastic endorsement of the Democratic presidential nominee.

"Barack Obama is ready to lead America and to restore American leadership in the world," Clinton told the crowd of cheering delegates. "Barack Obama is ready to be president."

Clinton pushed back on attacks initiated by himself and his wife during the bitter primary campaign, and later taken up by Republican John McCain, that Obama is ill prepared for the White House, especially on matters of national defense.

"With Joe Biden's experience and wisdom, supporting Barack Obama's proven understanding, insight, and good instincts, America will have the national security leadership we need," Clinton said.

He really put the issue of Hillary 2012 to bed: they are behind Obama 100% (or at least in the high 99% range.) Is it enough to forgive and forget all the nasty things they said? Hell, it's too important NOT to at this point. They've chosen live and let live, and we even saw a bit of the old Clinton magic. It's honestly more than I expected, doing the right thing at the eleventh hour is still doing the right thing.

Joe Biden also crushed one out of the park. Yeah, he made a couple of gaffes, but the guy hit McSame like a prizefighter when he connected...and he connected a lot.

Biden rattled off a list of McCain's positions on issues ranging from taxes to alternative energy, repeatedly saying, "That's not change; that's more of the same."

Sen. Barack Obama joined Biden onstage at the end of his speech, the campaign announced, marking his first appearance in person at the convention that nominated him to be the first African-American to lead a major party ticket for the White House.

Biden praised Obama as a leader who had been right on a wide range of issues, including Afghanistan.

"On the most important national security issues of our time, John McCain was wrong, and Barack Obama has been proven right," he said.

But in all honesty, the best speech of the night was the one you didn't see John Kerry make. You can watch it here, courtesy of Talking Points Memo.

Kerry had some of the best lines of the entire convention.

Candidate McCain now supports the wartime tax cuts that Senator McCain once denounced as immoral. Candidate McCain criticizes Senator McCain's own climate change bill. Candidate McCain says he would now vote against the immigration bill that Senator McCain wrote. Are you kidding? Talk about being for it before you're against it.

Let me tell you, before he ever debates Barack Obama, John McCain should finish the debate with himself. And what's more, Senator McCain, who once railed against the smears of Karl Rove when he was the target, has morphed into candidate McCain who is using the same "Rove" tactics and the same "Rove" staff to repeat the same old politics of fear and smear. Well, not this year, not this time. The Rove-McCain tactics are old and outworn, and America will reject them in 2008.

So remember, when we choose a commander-in-chief this November, we are electing judgment and character, not years in the Senate or years on this earth. Time and again, Barack Obama has seen farther, thought harder, and listened better. And time and again, Barack Obama has been proven right.

When John McCain stood on the deck of an aircraft carrier just three months after 9/11 and proclaimed, "Next up, Baghdad!", Barack Obama saw, even then, "an occupation of "undetermined length, undetermined cost, undetermined consequences" that would "only fan the flames of the Middle East." Well, guess what? Mission accomplished.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? When Barack Obama promised to honor the best traditions of both parties and talk to our enemies, John McCain scoffed. George Bush called it "the soft comfort of appeasement." But today, Bush's diplomats are doing exactly what Obama said: talking with Iran.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? When democracy rolled out of Russia, and the tanks rolled into Georgia, we saw John McCain respond immediately with the outdated thinking of the Cold War. Barack Obama responded like a statesman of the 21st century.

So who can we trust to keep America safe? When we called for a timetable to make Iraqis stand up for Iraq and bring our heroes home, John McCain called it "cut and run." But today, even President Bush has seen the light. He and Prime Minister Maliki agree on guess what? a timetable.

Kerry made a beautiful case, as did Biden later in the evening, powered by the Big Dog earlier. Clinton got a three minute plus ovation from the crowd. They loved him, and he really set the table. Biden cleared that table and despite his classic "George, I mean John McCain" gaffe really showed his passion and fire, but it was John Kerry who really laid out the most powerful argument yet that Barack Obama is far more ready to be President than John McSame, on the basis of the judgement displayed just in the last several months alone.

That is the message Obama's camp has to get across. Obama has been proven right, McSame has been proven wrong. He's already shown himself to be a more capable and much wiser leader than McSame.

Last night was pretty amazing stuff. Let's see what tonight holds when Barry speaks.

Shuffletown Players

With Kevin Drum moving over to Mother Jones and Steve Benen moving from Carpetbagger Report to take Kevin's place at Washington Monthly's Political Animal, I'd thought I'd update the links on the side and see what they had to say about O-biden. First, Kevin's new digs:

This is just bizarre. Has any presidential candidate ever before run an ad mocking his opponent for not choosing a particular running mate?

I think the folks running McCain's war room are getting cabin fever or something. But who knows? Maybe an attack ad this transparent will be just the thing to finally get all those ex-Hillary supporters fully on board with Obama. Sort of the way trash talk from the Yankees ends up on the front page of the Boston Globe and fires up even fair weather Red Sox fans. That's pretty much how it would affect me, anyway.

Point taken. This whole thing may backfire and blow up in everyone's face.

And at PA, Steve's still working his magic as he takes on Bill Kristol's lovefest for poor Hillary:

As part of Kristol's "argument" -- I use the word loosely -- the Weekly Standard editor insists that it's outrageous Hillary Clinton wasn't considered for the ticket, especially given that she and Biden "have basically comparable foreign policy 'experience.'"

The transparently shameless stunt here is for far-right Republicans to incite as much intra-party tensions among Democrats as humanly possible. Indeed, it's not just Kristol. Republicans are hoping, desperately, to drive a wedge between Hillary Clinton's supporters and the candidate Hillary Clinton agrees with, enthusiastically endorsed, and continues to campaign on behalf of.

A few thoughts. First, it's fascinating to see Kristol suddenly become a feminist. He's never expressed any interest in gender equality before, but I'm sure that's just a coincidence.

Second, given Kristol's new-found interest in feminism, I'm sure he'll devote another column soon to decrying Republicans' aversion to promoting women into positions of political power.

And third, James Joyner notes, "Stoking the lingering resentments of the Hillary camp is probably smart politics, although doing it so brazenly could backfire and cause more of them to realize that they're playing into the Republicans' hands."

And so it goes. Good to have both of them still around...we're going to need them as we head into the heart of darkness ahead.

So It's Live And Let Live From Clinton, Right?

The 800-pound plaid hedgehog in the room that nobody's talking about is "What will Hillary's supporters do about O-biden"? Will they accept the ticket and work to help it win, or will they go to the dark side and put McSame in the White House in order to give Hillary a shot in 2012?

It seems like an unusually cynical and downright cruel thing to ask. After all, Hillary's a Democrat. But the fact remains only about half of her supporters are behind Obama right now. And there's increasing evidence that the Clinton camp and their supporters are going to make O-biden pay.

Evan as Hillary Clinton praised the newly-minted Democratic presidential ticket Saturday, some in her circle are furious Barack Obama did not appear to give the New York Democrat serious consideration for the No. 2 spot, or even ask for her consultation on the matter.

"Set aside that Obama said she'd be on anybody's short list, set aside anybody's feelings on whether she was deliberately snubbed and the pros and cons of whether it should be her," a former Clinton strategist told CNN's Candy Crowley. "Focus on the politics of it and you have about a quarter of Clinton loyalists still not joining the caravan…for God's sake, not to even make a show of taking her seriously is flatly stupid."

A top Clinton advisor also told CNN they were "outraged," over how the process was conducted.

"You can't put [Obama VP vetters] Eric Holder and Caroline Kennedy on an hour plane ride to Chappaqua just to check the box? They should have done it just for the optics," this person said. "Barack never even said to her, 'Here's how I envision the job'– not one discussion with her about [the position]."

"They thought her supporters were mad before? They are really mad now," this person also said. We knew it was never going to happen but you would have thought they might at least make a show of it."

What the hell is going on here? Do the Clinton surrogates have no sense of shame or even political propriety? And while Hillary herself is solidly behind Joe Biden and Barack Obama, some voters are most certainly not.

"This is a voter's revolt," said Darragh Murphy, who founded Puma PAC, a pro-Clinton political action committee whose acronym stands for People United Means Action.

Polls suggest Obama's narrow national lead is all but disappearing amid attacks from a newly aggressive and disciplined McCain campaign. One reason for this appears to be that barely half of Clinton's supporters plan to vote for Obama, according to an NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll released last week. With the last two presidential elections decided by a small number of voters in swing states, Obama needs a unified party to win in November.

Puma PAC is among a multitude of pro-Clinton groups that formed online to protest a variety of issues, including perceived media bias and flaws in the primary process. In Denver, Murphy's group plans to show the premiere of an unfinished movie, "The Audacity of Democracy," and is cosponsoring a protest and candlelight salute to Clinton tomorrow. Another group, PUMA 08, will coordinate communication between its members and the press, and provide a home base for bloggers who support Clinton.

A separate organization, 18 Million Voices Rise Hillary Rise, is calling on Clinton supporters to join a march and gathering celebrating Clinton's achievements and the 88th anniversary of women's suffrage on Tuesday.

Democratic analysts downplay the significance of the demonstrators because Clinton's top aides and prominent supporters have shunned them. But analysts are aware they could be a distraction.

"I think the vast majority of the Hillary folks did fall in love with Hillary - and now are certainly falling in line with Obama," said Democratic strategist Chris Lehane. "Having said that, there's going to be the largest gathering of press outside of Beijing in Denver this week, with all of them on a hair-trigger for the slightest sign of dissonance and conflict. . . . It has all the elements of a tinderbox environment."

The goal for O-Biden at the Denver convention tomorrow is to bury the hatchet with these voters, but it's going to be a tightrope walk. The Village will be looking for any excuse to make the Democrats seem inept, broken, and weak. They always do. And the GOP is already making the pitch to disaffected Hillary voters.

In a blistering new ad, John McCain’s campaign accused Barack Obama of passing over Hillary Clinton as his running mate because she pointed out his flaws during the Democratic primaries.

Obama announced Delaware Sen. Joe Biden as his vice presidential pick Saturday, following reports that Clinton was not even vetted for the job.

McCain’s ad capitalizes on the lingering tension between Obama and Clinton’s supporters, with just one day remaining until the Democratic National Convention in Denver.

“She won millions of votes. But isn’t on his ticket. Why? For speaking the truth,” the narrator in the ad says.

The ad then quotes Clinton criticizing Obama for being vague and “increasingly negative.”

“The truth hurt. And Obama didn’t like it,” the narrator says.

The subtext, as subtle as a 20-pound sledgehammer to the privates, is "Screw O-biden! Vote McSame!"

Let's get one thing perfectly straight, folks. This is an organized effort from the beginning to sink Obama. The Clinton camp allowing this kind of stuff to air publicly on the weekend before the convention is proof enough for me that Hillary Plan 2012 is on...and the speed at which these pro-Hillary groups have organized for Denver all but locks it down as the plan all along. As the Clinton people say, they knew it wasn't going to be her from the start. They made no effort to disabuse the Village or their voters of the hope that she was going to be Obama's pick. Hillary could have put an end to it, but chose not to.

So instead of Hillary Clinton being the bridge to unite the party behind O-biden, now Hillary Clinton will become the wedge the GOP hopes to drive into the heart of the Democrats in 2008 and split off enough voters to give McSame a fighting chance in November. The Villiage may be aiding and abetting the GOP's tactics...but so is Hillary.

She's working for the other side now. She has been since became clear she wasn't going to win back in early May. The Clintons will make no real effort to help O-Biden. Surrogates will continue to attack Obama in front of the Village while Hillary professes her undying support. The GOP will continue to feature her in attack ads. It's the same tactics we'd expect the GOP to pull. Any attempt to denounce Hillary will only draw further attacks from not the Clintons, but the Village talking heads and the GOP coming to her defense.

Hillary knows she has a shot in 2016. But she knows she has a better shot in 2012. All she has to do is screw over America to get it. Strap in, kids. It's gonna be an ugly week. You need a scorecard to keep track of the good guys and bad guys, and Hillary falls directly into the latter.

Cross-posted at BooMan Tribune.