I’m not looking forward to tonight’s Clinton encore. After the rancor of the primary, I found it incredibly galling that Hillary’s narrow loss somehow meant it was Barack Obama’s responsibility to help pay off the debt she accumulated while bashing him for months on end, to give her the VP slot ignoring his own judgment and any electoral concerns, and to remind her emotionally-scarred supporters that they’re Democrats. Granted, these expectations came more from the media and Clinton’s supporters than the candidate herself, the last few month’s worth of Clinton drama has been been exasperating.

But like everyone else, I’m hoping tonight’s Clinton love fest will do the trick. At the risk of adding more uninformed advice about “What Hillary needs to do”, lemme just hearken back to something I wrote back in April in response to one of her negative ads :

The thing I find depressing about this ad isn’t the tacky fear-mongering (I’ve come to expect that from the Clinton campaign), but my concern that these last few weeks are the toughest I’ve ever seen the Clintons work for something. If Hillary Clinton applied the same take-no-prisoners attitude she brings to the primary to her role as a Sentor, she’d be mounting filibusters and demanding impeachment hearings. Where was this toughness when the Patriot Act sailed through Congress or when we rushed to war in Iraq or on telecom immunity, net neutrality, torture, or any one of dozens of other issues in which Clinton has failed to take the lead?

Moreover, why should we expect Hillary Clinton to bring her “kitchen sink” strategy to the general election and aim it at her BFF, John McCain?

Tonight’s the night when we’ll find out whether Hillary Clinton will be as tough against the GOP as she was against Barack Obama. Here’s the baseline against which I will be viewing tonight’s speech :

Let’s hope she can bash McCain as well as she bashed Obama.