NightBlogger

Louis Bayard
Salon
Casual observers might be excused for thinking of Gore Vidal in posthumous terms. A twilight pall suffused his most recent memoir, “Point-to-Point Navigation,” which described the death of Vidal’s longtime companion even as it ladled out retribution against longtime enemies. Many of those enemies have likewise passed on, and in recent appearances, Vidal has had to squeeze his proud, patrician figure into a wheelchair.

The old lion may be enfeebled, but he still has teeth. Doubters are referred to Deborah Solomon’s recent New York Times Magazine interview, in which Vidal responded to the question “Were you chaste?” with a line that Groucho Marx might have coveted — “Chased by whom?” — and succinctly described his feelings on the death of William F. Buckley: “I thought hell is bound to be a livelier place, as he joins forever those whom he served in life, applauding their prejudices and fanning their hatred. More

There were no warm-up chants, no triumphalist campaign songs, no celebrity supporters, just five local women awkwardly flapping blue Hillary signs.

Suzanne Goldenberg in South Dakota
The audience at this Indian reservation - about 200 counting 14 students on a class trip from Massachusetts and their teacher, who said they were all Barack Obama supporters - was so small Clinton did not even attempt the politician’s hoax of pointing to faces in fake delight.

This is what it looks like for Clinton at the end, the last gasps of a dying presidential campaign. When she launched her campaign in January last year, she cast herself as the inevitable Democratic nominee. “I’m in it to win it,” she said.

Now Obama looks like the inevitable candidate. Clinton’s chances of a miracle recovery evaporated on Saturday when the Democratic party decided to recognise primaries in Michigan and Florida, but halve their voting power at the party’s nominating convention. More