On the night of the Wisconsin primary, watching Hillary Clinton give her third straight "I won't admit that I lost" speech in Youngstown, Ohio, was an exercise in surrealism. In this era of cell phones and IPods, virtually everyone in that Youngstown crowd knew that the Wisconsin primary had already been called in Obama's favor, and that she was in route to a 9th straight loss. It had to be confusing--and depressing--to see Hillary, fake smile at the ready, behaving like it was a birthday party. To Obama's credit, after watching five minutes of Hillary's shtick, when it became clear that once again she wasn't going to concede, congratulate, or confront reality, he had seen enough. He started his own victory speech from Houston, Texas ("Houston, I think we've achieved liftoff here!") and summarily knocked her off the air waves, as every network switched to his speech. It was fitting karma for Hillary who is not only hemorrhaging votes every week, she's hemorrhaging class.

The latest parlor game among the punditocracy is that of giving Hillary Clinton free advice on how to salvage her campaign. Pat Buchanan says that she has to "drop a bomb," "go nuclear," in other words make her campaign even more negative than it has been. Chris Matthews says that she should pound away at Obama's perceived short legislative record. The problem with these suggestions is that they all miss the forest for the trees: What about the option of simply running an affirmative campaign, and if you lose, you lose, but you do it with class and dignity?

Yes, I understand that 2008 was supposed to be Hillary's turn. Hillary is frustrated, even offended, that her self-professed experience hasn't been embraced by the electorate. Experience!? If experience were really the critical attribute, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd would be competing neck and neck for the nomination right now. Indeed, Joe Biden and Chris Dodd both would have made terrific presidents. Imagine Biden's disappointment, given his real 36 years of experience in the Senate (as opposed to Hillary's "35 years" of pretended experience), to see his campaign gain no traction. Imagine how disappointed Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd was, to move his family to Iowa months before the primary, but to never rise beyond 1% in the polls? My point is this: When these two men, giants in the Senate, saw their campaigns begin to falter, they didn't start throwing brickbats at their competitors, they didn't start strategizing about which scorched earth tactic they would adopt. What they did was make an assessment of their campaign prospects, and bow out gracefully, without turning the race into a guerilla war.

Biden and Dodd withdrew in this manner in part because they are classy dignified guys, and in part because they might have been branded as boorish idiots had they not done so. Only to Hillary Clinton do we grant the option of turning the race into a nuclear war. It is only Hillary Clinton who would contemplate calling up not just super delegates, but pledged delegates, to try to get them to go back on their pledges. It is only Hillary Clinton who would lay claim to the Michigan delegates when the primary didn't count, and when other candidates had taken their names off the ballot. It is only Hillary who would claim that her opponent is in hiding, because he only wants 20 debates, not 23. In large measure, it is Hillary's very narcissism and sense of entitlement, her insistence that she is owed the nomination, that is turning off voters all over the country.

As Obama becomes the overwhelming favorite, his campaign begins to face a different type of scrutiny. It is not surprising when more media guns get turned in his direction. However, MSNBC's Chris Matthews may have outdone himself with aggressiveness last night. In a rather bizarre piece of gonzo journalism, Matthews was interviewing Democratic Texas state senator Kirk Watson, and asked Watson to name any piece of legislation produced by Obama. Here is part of the awkward exchange:

Matthews: You are a big Barack supporter aren’t you senator?
Sen. Watson: Yes I am.
Matthews: Name some of his legislative accomplishments.
Sen Watson: What I will talk about is more what he is offering the American people....
Matthews: Sir, you have to give me his legislative accomplishments.You support him for president. You are on national television. Name his legislative accomplishments, sir. Can you name anything he has accomplished, SIR?
Sen Watson: I'm not going to be able to name you specific items of legislation....

As the interview ended, and the camera came back to Matthews and Keith Olbermann, Olbermann was clearly embarrassed by the over the top interview, but the steroidal Matthews continued his assault: “He is here to defend Barack Obama and he had nothing to say. That’s a problem. Why do you think they call it Hardball?" Replied Olbermann, “But this isn’t Hardball. We are doing the election results.” The exchange between Matthews and State Senator Watson has gotten lots of air time simply because people love viewing a train wreck. But the implication by Matthews, that it tells us something meaningful about the Obama campaign, is preposterous. It tells us only that Watson came to the interview ill-prepared. Here is a primer for all the Kirk Watsons of the world:

1) In the Illinois state legislature, Obama sponsored tough campaign finance reform along with former Senator Paul Simon.

2) In the Illinois state legislature, Obama was an influential force in the establishment of a moratorium on the death penalty in Illinois. In line with this, he passed a bill requiring that all interrogations of homicide suspects be videotaped.

3) In the Illinois state legislature Obama pushed through both ethics reform and health care reform.

4) In the US Senate, along with Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold (WI, who was surprisingly invisible during the Wisconsin Primary) Obama sponsored the greatest ethics reform package in the history of the Senate.

5) Obama and Republican Dick Lugar (IN) sponsored legislation that commits the U.S. to working toward the non-profileration of conventional weapons, including shoulder-fired missles and anti-personnel mines. The legislation bears Obama's name.

6) Obama and Republican Tom Coburn (OK) sponsored the Coburn-Obama Transparency Act, which created a publicly accessible web site which lists every organization which receives federal funds, along with the purpose and amount of those funds.

This is just a small sample of Obamas legislative work, and two things are clear about his efforts: They are meaningful, and they are bipartisan. In other words, Obama's appeal to a post-partisan presidency wasn't something that he hatched yesterday. We can only hope that soon, Hillary will start accepting the idea of herself as a senator again, and become a partner in an Obama post-partisan presidency.