I just read this, along with the comments.  Although it has not moved on to TPM Reader Blog Heaven, and I should let it go, I really have to say . . .

You people are absolutely killing me. 

Between the risk of outright economic collapse and the existential threat to democracy that McCain's post-modern campaign represents, we're teetering on the brink of the abyss and yet, forty odd days away from the most important election since 1932, we decide this would be a great time to have yet another banal, inane, utterly pointless and fruitless foodfight over the primaries? 

Are you fucking kidding me? 

Connie, and all those who approved?  Do you really think any meaningful number of people saw Bill on that interview, smacked their heads and said "holy cow!  I was all set to vote for Obama until Bill Clinton offered a few words of tepid-to-warm praise for McCain!  Now everything changed for me and I'm totally onboard the McPowlin train!"  Assuming there are some complete morons out there who did that, don't you think there are at least as many undecideds who were swayed into Obama's corner by the rest of the interview?   Really? 

Here's some, you should pardon the expression, straight talk on the Clintons for my fellow long-time Obama supporters.  Hillary is doing everything you could ask a losing candidate to do.  Her conduct since she got through the inevitable, and very human, Kubler-Ross cycle for the death (or at least postponement) of her fondest ambition has been above reproach.  I don't give a rat's ass about her motives at this point.  All politicians act out of a complex combination of altruism, patriotism and cold, calculated, even venal, self-interest--even our guy.  Which of these factors predominates at any given point is ultimately unknowable and irrelevant.  What matters is the resulting behavior and her's has been exemplary. 

Bill?  Well, Bill is Bill.  If you think he's going to be anything other than a mixed blessing to Obama's campaign, you weren't paying attention to what he was to Hillary's campaign.  Bill wants to be the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral.  Always been that way, always will be.  It is alternately endearing and exasperating, helpful or harmful to himself and everyone around him, and it always will be.  Expecting him to be a less complicated presence in the general than he was in the primaries is ridiculously unrealistic.  Regardless, if nothing else moves you, could you please at least be pragmatic enough to recognize that we need the Clintonites and lighting into Bill like this when, from their perspective, Hill and Bill are giving it their all, is at least as potentially harmful to the cause as anything Bill's said or done since Hillary conceded?   Please?

And Clintonites?  Given the stakes--you know, existential threat to democracy and looming shadow of an economic depression, dangerously unstable Republican candidate with a blithering nitwit VP who would be one very old heartbeat away and all--is there any chance that this thing could stop being all about the Clintons for you at some point?  Please?  Could you at least consider not rising to the bait and immediately begin rehashing the arguments and greivances of the primary every time some random long-time Obama supporters get pissed off at Bill's (or even Hillary's) current conduct and fires off a post like this?  Could you please at least think about the irony of dredging up the "cultist" and "robot" memes against people who supported Obama in the primaries when your own reflexive rallying to the banners of a fight that's over and done could be construed as being kind of culty and robotic in itself?  Or, barring that, at least please just consider giving your shoulders a shrug and dismissing it with an eye roll and a "whatever"?

Open your eyes, people.  The Republicans spent the last eight years acting like judgment-impaired teenagers whose parents left them alone in the house and now the house is trashed, smoke is pouring out of the kitchen, kids are puking and passed out on the lawn and it looks like maybe something really, really really bad happened in that bedroom with the locked door.  The whole goddamn country is scared out of its wits and crying out for adult supervision and they are looking to us to provide it. 

Do you really think this is the time for us to be acting like a bunch of kindergartners?