The Democratic National Convention should be Barack Obama’s shining hour. For one thing, he did what one year ago most pundits considered to be the improbable by becoming the nominee of the Democratic Party after one of the most grueling primary battles in recent political history. For another, he’s scheduled to accept the nomination of that party, the party that once was controlled by slaveholders and the proponents of Jim Crow, on the forty-five years to do the day after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s iconic “I Have A Dream” speech.

It’s supposed to be Barack Obama’s convention, but everyone’s still talking about the Clintons.

Both the Washington Post and the New York Times have reports today about Clinton supporters who still aren’t fully sold on Barack Obama, like this delegate from Maryland:

DENVER, Aug. 25 — The Maryland Democrats were busy burying any lingering rivalries between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton supporters under an avalanche of hugs, kisses and cocktails during a reception here the other night when Gov. Martin O’Malley bounded onstage.

“We have one nominee, and we are one party!” O’Malley, who had endorsed Clinton, shouted after embracing Rep. Elijah E. Cummings, an Obama backer. “Whether we supported Hillary or not, we are one party.”

But off to the side, Mary Boergers, a Clinton delegate from Montgomery County, felt more like a party of one. Boergers, 62, a retired political science professor, was wearing two Hillary buttons, and she intends to vote for her during convention’s roll call Thursday night.

“I find it perplexing that they make us feel like outliers or rogues because at the convention we plan to vote for the candidate we were elected to vote for,” said Boergers, who was still steaming from Obama’s selection of Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware as his running mate.

“It’s just offensive,” Boergers said. “If he said [Clinton] was on the shortlist and did not vet her at all, what does that say about the veracity of his words? My intent was to come to Denver with an open mind. . . . How all of us would be treated is a measure of how inclusive Obama’s campaign and presidency would be. His campaign is all about post-partisan Washington, but if he can’t even do it with his own party, how can he do it as president?”

And, as the Politico reports in it’s second story on the Clintons in as many days, it’s not just delegates who are having a hard time getting over the bitterness that arose during the campaign:

Hillary Rodham Clinton is over it — at least when people are watching.

Within days of losing the Democratic nomination to Barack Obama, her aides said she was all business, returning to her Senate duties, telling people she would do whatever Obama asked her to do in the general election.

Bill Clinton is not over it. He’s trying, his associates say. He’s slowly getting to a better place. But his resentments from the bitter campaign battles of last winter and spring are many and diverse, and people who have spent time with him recently said they fester just below the surface.

And Obama, apparently, isn’t taking many steps to mend fences with the Clintons:

Obama has maintained a certain cool diffidence toward the former president. They spoke by phone last week. But for weeks before that, associates said, Clinton had heard nothing and did not even know when he would be speaking at the convention. The Obama campaign’s only communication was a form letter sent to all delegates.

Clinton loves to offer advice to fellow Democrats. But even in their conversations, Clinton friends say, Obama shows little deference or signs that he thinks Clinton, the only Democrat since Franklin D. Roosevelt to win two terms, has any special wisdom to offer.

“There is a lot Obama could have done to unify the party, and basically he hasn’t lifted a finger,” said one Democratic operative who is close to the Clinton team.

Howard Wolfson, Hillary Clinton’s former communications director, wrote in the New Republic on Tuesday that Bill Clinton “feels like the Obama campaign ran against and systematically dismissed his administration’s accomplishments.

In other words, Barack Obama, the guy who actually won the nomination and beat the once-thought-unbeatable Clinton Machine, hasn’t kowtowed sufficiently to a former President. It’s an ego thing, apparently.

On top of all that, Clintons still apparently think that their criticisms Obama during the primary season remain true and that his victory in November is by no means certain:

[T]he Clintons believe a Democratic loss is entirely possible. They no longer vocalize their beliefs that Obama has scant experience and faces huge problems connecting with lower-income whites and other key voting blocs. But the criticism they leveled last winter and spring — both publicly and more sharply in private conversations with top Democrats — were entirely sincere at the time, and have not gone away.

As Hillary Clinton looks to the future, an ex-aide said, “She wants to reassert her relevance and introduce a new political identity.

“I think she understands that if she runs again, she has to run a different style of campaign,” this ex-aide said. “And she’s got a huge opening right now: For the first time in her career, she actually has a base to invigorate. At the beginning of the ‘08 campaign, she was the issue: She had to explain herself, her celebrity. Now she’s got a base — the working class — and she needs to speak to them.”

If she runs again ? Trust me, if Barack Obama loses on November 4th, the Hillary in `12 campaign will begin on November 5th.

That’s why Hillary Clinton has several tasks before her as she prepares to take the stage at the convention tonight. She has to appear to be the loyal Democrat rallying behind the nominee, which is why she’ll urge her delegates and supporters to vote for Barack Obama and try to disavow all those negative comments about Obama that the McCain campaign is already starting to exploit. She has to provide catharsis for supporters who still haven’t gotten over her loss and exclusion from the Vice-Presidential sweepstakes. And, somewhere, in the back of her mind, she’ll be thinking about her political future and where she’ll be in four years if Election Day 2008 doesn’t turn out the way the Obama Campaign would like.