Prior to Hillary Clinton leaving the race, there was a lot of talk from her camp that she was in a better position to beat John McCain than Barack Obama, based on the polls. Obama’s camp said that after HRC dropped from the race, Democrats would (mostly) come together, giving Obama a bump in the polls that would put him ahead of McCain. Despite my slight worry and skepticism, Obama has indeed received the bump that pundits and Obama reps promised. In Gallup and Rasmussen polls taken after Hillary’s concession and endorsement of her opponent, Obama is ahead of McCain by six points. Surely the number will rise and fall over the course of the election, but for now, Obama’s support is growing. Among women, he’s got a leg up on McCain, and he’s polling better with women than John Kerry did in 2004.

Speaking of bumps, people in the know are estimating that Obama will receive a “presumptive nominee” bump in the fundraising arena as well. Some have predicted that he could raise $100 million in June. And he might need to hand some of that over to HRC, who faces the largest campaign debt in history.

Picture it: Washington, DC, 1993. Bill Clinton’s presidential inauguration. An 11-year-old girl freezing in the January wind, huddled with her sisters and her mom to stay warm, waiting, along with her family members, to glimpse the person they had braved the Inauguration-Day throng to see. It was the same person whose face adorned pins they had purchased and dutifully stuck to their winter coats to commemorate the occasion. The girls and their mother never did catch even a passing glance of the person — they were too short and the crowd was too thick — but they heard the voice. Her voice. The voice, my friends, belonged to Hillary Clinton. The little girl was me.

Fast forward 15 years (yikes!), and that little girl, as much as it pains her to admit it, is now a grown-ass woman. She no longer looks at Hillary Clinton, for a laundry list of reasons, with quite the same adulation. And that pains her, too, because there is still so much of Hillary Clinton that is great. And even though Clinton has lowered herself in the estimation of many who once admired her, she has still accomplished something that will, hopefully, change what it means to be a woman in this country and open doors that were once closed, locked, and dead-bolted. Her candidacy has highlighted the perniciousness of sexism in this country, and one could write a book about her resilience in the face of this particular adversity. For all that there is about which to be disappointed in Hillary Clinton — and there’s a lot, at least for that woman who once froze her ass off while sporting a Hillary Clinton pin 15 years ago — there are many major accomplishment to applaud. She’s out of the race, having endorsed Barack Obama and implored her supporters to do the same at an event in DC over the weekend. Yes, she’s out of the race, but she’s definitely made her mark.

• Oh, if only this new song from Nas called “Black President” didn’t make its appearance on something called The Nigger Tape. [NR]

• Looks like the Evander Holyfield Real Deal Grill wasn’t the cash cow the boxer was hoping for. Maybe next time find a niche that hasn’t been filled by another boxer? Oh, and handle your millions a whole lot better. [Bossip]

• Get with the times, Russian billionaires. [PS]

• A New Jersey congressman and former HRC supporter says that a top member of Clinton’s staff called him to discuss “a strategy of winning over Jewish voters by exploiting tensions between Jews and African-Americans.” [JJP]

• Bobby Brown’s son says Whitney Houston was an evil stepmother who wouldn’t even let him sleep in the main house. [HHC]

AN UNLIKELY PAIR Dream ticket dreamers? Keep dreaming. Sources in the Obama camp are lowering expectations, saying that it is unlikely that Hillary Clinton would be chosen as Obama’s VP. With pundits on either end of the spectrum opining that it is either the only way for Barack Obama to win or the worst possible thing he can do, I’m not sure what to believe. [WSJ]

With intense pressure mounting from both supporters and opponents in the Democratic party, Hillary Clinton has made plans to suspend her campaign and endorse Barack Obama on Saturday. The decision comes after bidding farewell to her staff and having a reception at her DC home to thank her staff and supporters. Her hesitation to concede or inform her supporters how to proceed had left many perplexed and unsure of what to do as the vast majority of Democratic politicians moved into Obama’s corner.

“We pledged to support her to the end,” said Representative Charles B. Rangel to the New York Times. “Our problem is not being able to determine when the hell the end is.” Congressman, the end is on Saturday.

Bob Johnson has gone from calling Obama a drug addict at a rally to calling his victory in the Democratic nominee race as “greater than the Emancipation Proclamation.” As full of compliments as he was on CNN, it was clear that he had a very specific agenda: lobbying to get Hillary Clinton the vice president spot. Lots of supporters have been taking to the airwaves to make this suggestion, although critics are saying that publicly strong-arming Obama into picking Clinton as his running mate will make him look terribly weak if he actually does pick her. Meanwhile, it seems that she and her more vocal supporters believe the vice presidency is owed to her. Why don’t they just lay off and handle this behind the scenes?

Meanwhile, Obama has appointed Caroline Kennedy, former Deputy Attorney General Eric Holder and “longtime Washington insider” Jim Johnson to committee that will vet a short list of VP candidates.

It might come as a surprise, but when the Democratic candidates began campaigning for the nomination more than a year ago, I was firmly in Hillary Clinton’s corner. Not so firmly that I didn’t like and respect a number of candidates, especially Barack Obama, but firmly enough there was little doubt in my mind that I would be voting for her in the primaries. When Stereohyped launched last April, I began the Obamarama feature, not as an outlet for my undying devotion for Barack Obama, but because he was a black, likeable candidate who had a chance (however minuscule at the time, it was at least better than Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton’s chances ever were) of becoming the nominee for president. Interestingly, the very first Obamarama was about how both Bill and Hillary Clinton received louder applause at Sharpton’s National Action Network Convention — a room full of black people — than Barack Obama did. For well-known reasons, that would be inconceivable now. I fully expected that I would have to retire Obamaramas by Super Tuesday, when he would go back to being a normal senator and Hillary Clinton would become the presumptive nominee. Obviously, I was wrong.

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BREAKING, AGAIN Hillary Clinton is not yet ready to accept defeat, an official tells CNN.

BREAKING Hillary Clinton’s campaign officials told the Associated Press that HRC plans to “concede tonight that Barack Obama has the delegates to secure the Democratic nomination.”

A number of curious things within the Hillary Clinton campaign — she will hold her post-primary rally in her home state of New York, her advisor Harold Ickes supposedly had a goodbye conference call with superdelegates, and Clinton field staff have been told to stand down and are now sending out resumes — point to the senator withdrawing from the race after Montana and South Dakota’s primary tonight. Then again, other signs point to that not happening. Mainly this: “Aides stressed she had no plans to withdraw from the race Tuesday night.” Despite the word from aides, it is expected and predicted by friends and foes alike that Clinton’s speech tonight will be of the farewell variety. [AP]

During the two days when I relish getting a break from topics such as these, my inbox was flooded with news alerts, I received excited/dejected/disappointed texts from politically-minded friends, and I found myself scouring the internet for news during hours I usually try to spend out of doors and away from the laptop. In other words, it was a big weekend in political news.

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Buenos días! The Puerto Rico primary went down Sunday, and, in case you haven’t heard, Hillary Clinton was victorious there, beating Obama by 2-to-1 and winning every single major demographic group, including the ones he always wins and she always loses. So what does this mean? Some who aren’t in Camp Hillary might say nothing — Puerto Rico doesn’t have a vote in the general election — but those in Camp Hillary surely see it as a sign to keep pressing until the bitter end. While Clinton campaigned and celebrated in Puerto Rico, Obama was busy in South Dakota and Montana. The primaries there are on Tuesday.

Geraldine Ferraro can go to hell. She doesn’t get it — or maybe she does and everything she says is orchestrated to feed into the “racial resentment” that she’s trying to explain. Either way, she can go to hell with her “woe is me, white people can’t open their mouths without being accused of racism, playing up to affirmative action fears, back-handed, damn-near right wing, Barack Obama has run the most sexist campaign in history” bullshit.

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SORRY, HRC The DNC’s lawyers today advised the DNC rules committee that they can seat half but not all of Michigan and Florida’s delegates, based on the party’s rules. The committee meets Saturday to decide what to do about the mess (that everyone knew about and agreed to) they got themselves in. [NYT]