Quick thoughts on tonight:

McCain: no one would ever accuse McCain of being a fabulous orator, but even by his standards this was a dismal effort. Awkward, off beat, and stumbling. In the silver lining department, there were a couple of lines in his speech which were quite good (I've always put the country ahead of any special interest, and even my own interests) and, if polished up a bit, could become resonant parts of his stump speech. Nevertheless, McCain did himself no favors tonight and he's going to have to up his game significantly to get anywhere near the same ball park with Obama on the stump.

Clinton: content-wise, her speech boiled down to a seven letter word: R-E-S-P-E-C-T. She wants it, for herself and for the people who voted for her who feel as if they've been given short shrift by the Obama campaign and the media. Stylistically, Clinton was as good as she's been the entire campaign. She looked energized, confident, and totally in control, weaving what I thought was a compelling and personalized story about the trajectory of her life and this year's campaign.

Obama: expectations are now so high for Obama they're almost a handicap, and the historic nature of tonight's moment placed perhaps an even more unfair burden on him. Nevertheless, he rose to the meet the occasion for the most part, though he did strike me as looking too angry throughout much of the speech.The climax at the end also struck me as a bit over the top veering dangerously close to the kind of messianic rhetoric that might make people's hair stand on end (generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment... when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal).

And so with tonight, the gun for the general election race has been more or less officially fired - even as Clinton takes the next couple of days to figure out how (or whether) she's going to exit the track. More on that tomorrow.