by Evie Stone

Good morning.

Thought you'd heard the last of Hillary Clinton's candidacy? Think again. As NPR's Michael Olson posted last night, a YouTube video of HRC talking to supporters at a recent California fundraiser is currently making the rounds. In it, Clinton indicates that it would be okay with her if her supporters submitted her name for the first round of balloting at the Democratic Convention. She tells the group:

There's this incredible pent-up desire, and I think that people want to feel like, okay, it's a catharsis, we're here, we did it, and everybody get behind Senator Obama...no decisions have been made. And so we are trying to work all this through with the DNC and with the Obama camapign.

After the video started circulating, the Obama and Clinton forces released a rather vague joint statement about having a "fully unified" party and making sure that everyone's voices are "respected". What does that mean exactly? It's unclear. Time's Karen Tumulty writes that Clinton's show of support for Obama (their joint appearance in Unity, NH, and her upcoming appearances on his behalf in Florida and Nevada) belie the residual tensions from the spring's bruising primary.

 

Tumulty writes:

In private conversations, associates say, Clinton remains skeptical that Obama can win in the fall. That's a sentiment some other Democrats believe is not just a prediction but a wish, because it would prove her right about his weaknesses as a general-election candidate and possibly pave the way for her to run again in 2012.

Clinton, who still has a mountain of 2008 campaign debt to retire, has scheduled a web chat today at noon. Maybe the convention issue will be on the agenda? Unfortunately for Obama, he doesn't have any public events today or tomorrow and is preparing for a weeklong vacation to Hawaii...in other words, he doesn't have many opportunities in the coming days to distract the media from reviving their feeding frenzy on Democratic divisions.

On the McCain front, the press keeps nibbling at those bundlers — the New York Times picks up the thread today, pushing the story forward and raising further questions about donors, who appear to be of modest means and have little interest in politics — and in some cases, open disdain for McCain. The Times finds nothing illegal in the actions of bundler Harry Sargeant III and his associate Mustafa Abu Naba'a, but especially in the wake of the Norman Hsu scandal last summer the McCain campaign surely wishes this would go away. (How long until that money joins Ted Stevens' donations to McCain in the Flight 93 memorial fund?)

Ditto a story out of crucial swing state Ohio that in 2003 McCain campaign manager Rick Davis lobbied to allow German-owned shipping company DHL to take over a shipping hub in Wilmington, OH, creating 1,000 jobs. McCain supported the merger as well. Now that DHL is struggling financially it wants to contract out shipping to UPS's facility in Louisville, KY — a move that would cost Wilmington 8,000 jobs. As Democrats swarm the story, McCain plans to meet with Wilmington residents today to try to defuse it.

And finally, USAT's David Jackson plants this seed: Libertarian Presidential candidate Bob Barr and Independent Ralph Nader are mounting efforts to get on the ballot in nearly every state. If 2000 taught us nothing else, it's that even if a third-party candidate is polling at just a couple percentage points, he or she can still affect the outcome of a closely-contested state.