I knew I was losing it when I turned on the TV at 6:30 pm for the final roundup last night. That was way too early for anyone with a real life. Obama, McCain and Clinton wouldn’t speak for eons. Polls in Montana and South Dakota wouldn’t close for hours and here I was, with an invisible ball and chain, tethered to the couch, unable to move, think, drink, eat—just stare. Clicking back and forth, up and down the channels, hitting mute — my Nintendo version of zapping a bloviator — then coming back to more blah, blah, blah. A woman obsessed. Where was the hotline for a wreck like me?

Gergen, Gloria, Malveaux, Anderson, Bernstein, Carville, Blitzer, Brazile, Brokaw, Russert, Keith, Matthews, O’Donnell, Candy, Andrea–all comments all the time. All blurs within minutes. “Historic” “First African American” to win a major party nomination, “historic turnout of Democratic voters”, “historic Hillary who almost became the first woman to win” the selfsame nomination. “What would she now do?????” these thoughts went on for hours as they vamped, waiting for speeches and Montana/South Dakota results. The countdown hype of Obama’s delegates had CNN’s bulletin showing he needed only four more votes: MSNBC showing nine at precisely the same time. Then he went “over the top” shouted Blitzer. All the while the crawl below the commentators showed a disconnect with Obama’s victory — Clinton’s blow-out in South Dakota. (Obama’s blow-out in Montana came later).

Then came the speeches and there was no starker contrast than Democrat and Republican appeal, at least for now: McCain’s white older turnout of a few hundred. Obama’s more than 11,000 roaring crowd of what, finally, seems something like a Rainbow coalition of Americans, albeit minus a large portion of white blue-collar guys. Hillary’s minions of women and young and older whites roaring their approval of her non-exit speech and her appeal to fans to e-mail her as to what she should do about her future.

One commentator — sorry, I forget which, but it was someone old enough to have an institutional memory — finally said something interesting and different. When Eisenhower was thinking of taking Nixon off the ticket for his eager acceptance of gifts, Nixon faced the TV and gave his famous “Checkers” speech — he was keeping that little dog, by God — and moreover he asked the audience to write in to show their support. They did and, as we now all say, the rest was history. Will this be Hillary’s Checkers moment? Is this job application via the web? Does that mean the Veep seat? Will the Democrats come together?

What the chatterers for the most part refused to do was turn the page and comment on the blistering points that Obama made against McCain’s claim that he provides the “right change”. For many Americans that would be some real change — coins to pay off their mortgage, stop the evictions, pay for a tank of gas while they are out of work and can’t afford to fill up the car to hunt for a job. Obama mentioned all this and ridiculed McCain’s attempt to wriggle away from his 95% pro-Bush voting record. Moreover, Obama got a thundering ovation when he said “what you won’t hear from this campaign or this party is the kind of politics that uses religion as a wedge and patriotism as a bludgeon” — the very tactics the Republicans have employed already. Taking the “we are all Americans” high road, Obama said he would not go the route that “sees our opponents not as competitors to challenge, but enemies to demonize.” Throwing down the gauntlet of a decent battle for votes? It sounds fine, but the demonizing campaign remains preferable to some on the other side and it is no coincidence that a sizeable number of Americans think (pejoratively) that Obama, for example, is a Muslim.

Trust the talking heads to mull all this over endlessly on cable TV. Stay tuned, same time, same place. But only if you are an addict.