Madame President, she will not be. But she will do something.

Since formally suspending her campaign and endorsing Sen. Barack Obama on Saturday with a terrific speech in Washington, the subject of what Sen. Hillary Clinton will do next looms as the million dollar question.

Clinton threw her full support behind Obama, who narrowly defeated her, and has now turned his full attention to the general election.

In that fight, Hillary will almost certainly play a major role. But in what capacity is anyone’s guess. Will it be as Barack Obama’s Vice President?

So far, much of the talk has centered around whether Obama would select his former chief rival from a short list of possible running mates.

Having lost by the slimmest of margins, and commanding huge support among demographics he struggles with, Clinton has some leverage should she seek the Vice Presidency. Would Obama risk the fallout of saying no?

We think he might, despite the wave of bad publicity, as most tend to vote for the top of the ticket regardless. But no one ever asks about the reverse:

Could Hillary Clinton possibly turn down V.P. if asked?

REJECTED! Would Hillary Clinton potentially give Barack Obama the Heisman-style stiff arm should he ask her to be Vice President? Some believe she just might.

The Clintons, as we know, don’t like playing second fiddle to anyone. HRC also spent much of the past year getting out from the shadow of Bill Clinton (still a work in progress). Does she want to spend eight years as Barack Obama’s #2?

Not to mention the possibility of an Obama loss sparking another run by Clinton in 2012 - a scenario pundits have speculated about for months.

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Last Tuesday night, when Sen. Barack Obama formally clinched the Democratic nomination for president, his rival, Sen. Hillary Clinton, did not concede and endorse him at a moment when party unity mattered most.

For all her talk that she has the nation’s interest at heart, her inaction Tuesday sent the message that only her dynastic ambitions matter.

Saturday afternoon, that all changed.

Bowing out of the race before thousands of supporters in Washington, D.C., Hillary ended her bid for the White House on the highest possible note, throwing her support behind Barack Obama and urging her followers to do the same.

She was sincere in her disappointment at falling short in the Democratic race, for personal reasons and because she believed she would be the best candidate.

But she was also sincere in her desire to see Obama elected. It was unquestionably Clinton at her best, giving us confidence for the party’s November hopes.

What her role is going forward in the campaign remains to be seen, but Hillary Clinton went a long way toward redeeming herself with this speech Saturday:

Follow this link for some particularly memorable Hillary Clinton quotes from this terrific speech, and follow jump for the full transcript…

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With the Democratic race officially over and Barack Obama the nominee, we’ve been reflecting on just how this incredible upset took place.

Obama is, in our opinion, the one, clear choice to be our next Commander-in-Chief. But how did such a relative unknown ever get the chance?

The postmortem on Hillary Clinton’s stunning loss reveals a litany of mistakes, miscalculations and turmoil within her campaign.

The early mishaps are well documented. Among them:

• A flawed message that focused on inevitability, rather than how she planned to deliver the monumental change that needs to occur in this country
• A strategic miscalculation about the importance of Iowa, the first election on the calendar, and all the caucus states thereafter (Obama won 14 out of 15 presidential caucuses; only half the primaries)
• The decision to punt February after Super Tuesday, when the race was still more or less tied, effectively conceding 11 straight races to Obama
• The inability to control Bill Clinton, who intruded and overshadowed more than he aided his wife’s campaign

NIGHT AND DAY: For months, not even Hillary Clinton seemed to know what the Hillary Clinton campaign’s central tenets were from one race to the next.

While the vultures weren’t circling until late May and early June, it was stretch between February 5 and March 4 when Obama ran the table by huge margins and Clinton’s fate was likely sealed.

A political insider who worked on John Kerry’s presidential campaign in 2004 tells Donkey Dish exclusively:

“If [Clinton] competed harder during that time, she may have done better in the delegate count even if she lost most of those states, and in the end, may have prevented the momentum Obama picked up from those contests and kept the race closer, making her argument to the superdelegates more compelling … It’s funny, Clinton won most of the major contests from March 4 on, but by then the race was already over, at least in many people’s minds.”

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Wednesday, Upper Deck revealed its Presidential Predictor baseball cards from its Series II set, with one showing a triumphant Barack Obama lifted into the air by Hillary Clinton, declaring him the winner of the Democratic race…

While each candidate is featured opposing Republican John McCain on several other cards in the set, the company announced that an alternate version of the above card - featuring HRC winning - was also produced, then pulled.

The company then yanked the card showing Hillary Clinton as the victor from its collating machines during packaging. However, a few did make it out into packs and (says conventional wisdom) are therefore more valuable…

“We had the version of Barack Obama lifting up Hillary Clinton pulled as it became clearer that Barack would be the victor,” said Jason Masherah, Baseball Brand manager for Upper Deck, told the Orlando Sentinel.

“Pulling these cards is a process done by hand so it is possible some of these cards made it into packs. Those are considered an error version.”

We enjoy how in each case, the runner-up is wearing catcher’s equipment, and hoisting up the victor as if he (or she) had just clinched the World Series with a final strikeout. It conjures up memories of last October here in Boston. *sniff*

You may remember that this is not the first time Upper Deck removed a Hillary Clinton baseball card from this collection - the first featured HRC as Morganna, a.k.a. the Kissing Bandit, which some felt was in poor taste.

Sen. Barack Obama says he’s not in a huge rush to pick his vice president, stating politely but firmly yesterday that “everybody needs to settle down” and allow the running-mate vetting process to run its course.

Democrats nationwide have coalesced around Obama since he received enough delegates to formally win the Democratic nomination Tuesday evening.

But no sooner did he clinch victory than pundits, donors and associates of Sen. Hillary Clinton alike begin speculating as to her future - some even clamoring for her to be given the vice president spot on the ticket.

Obama has named Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of the late President John F. Kennedy and niece of Robert F. Kennedy, to a vice presidential selection team led by former Deputy U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder and former Fannie Mae CEO Jim Johnson, who headed John Kerry’s V.P. search in 2004.

Quickly moving to assert control of the situation and the party, Barack Obama called for patience on the matter, saying the process must take its due course.

He was measured, yet forceful in refusing to bow to public and private pressure to pick Clinton now. Follow the link for some Barack Obama quotes on the subject.

Last night, Obama and Clinton met and talked alone in Washington, D.C., at the home of California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. No details of the private conversation - and whether it pertained to the V.P. spot - are known.

Clinton is expected to endorse Obama Saturday, but her future remains a mystery. Will she be named to the ticket - and should she?

For more than a month, her endgame was a mystery. When would she drop out? Under what circumstances? Why not sooner rather than later?

A day after losing the Democratic nominating fight but not formally bowing out, Sen. Hillary Clinton said she will suspend her campaign by the end of this week, and pledged to help Sen. Barack Obama capture the White House.

Clinton plans to thank supporters at a Washington D.C. event Saturday, but she got a head start in an e-mail the campaign sent out early Thursday, announcing the former First Lady’s planned withdrawal from the race.

By suspending instead of dropping out altogether, Clinton technically remains a candidate, entitled to keep pledged delegates and district-level delegates. Mitt Romney also exited this way on the GOP side.

In a campaign of near-deaths and premature obituaries, Clinton battled all the way into early June - though her hopes were essentially dashed May 6.

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Sen. Hillary Clinton lost last night, but did not concede.

She has been defeated by the slimmest of margins by Sen. Barack Obama, but has not formally acknowledged this or endorsed her rival, despite having a terrific opportunity to do so last night as the primary season concluded.

What was the point of not doing so? And what will she do next?

Obama clinched the Democratic nomination Tuesday and will be looking to unite Democrats divided by this long and contentious primary season.

How does one accomplish that? If you ask many Democrats - primarily HRC supporters - naming Hillary Clinton his vice president would be a start.

FADE TO BLACK: Hillary Clinton’s campaign is over, and yet it isn’t. Will the former First Lady drift into the sunset, or try to leverage whatever she can?

Some say an Obama-Clinton ticket might fit the bill for uniting Democrats, while others feel it would go against Obama’s theme of change.

Obama’s list of vice president options is far from short, and while Clinton will surely be considered, there are certainly no guarantees.

In fact, we would bet heavily against an Obama-Clinton ticket.

The bad blood between the two candidates, the differences in ideology, and the potential baggage that is Bill Clinton all pose problems.

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Sen. Hillary Clinton won the South Dakota primary last night, the latest in a string of battles she has carried in recent months.

The war, however, has been lost for the former First Lady. Sen. Barack Obama won the Montana primary - and the Democratic nomination.

Hillary Clinton was congratulatory in her South Dakota victory speech, but stopped short of endorsing her rival or conceding the race.

Her next move? Only Hillary knows what that may be.

Here’s Hillary Clinton’s South Dakota victory speech last night …

That’s the political question of the day, obviously - and apparently, the answer depends on what media reports you read.

Just a few hours ago, the AP reported that Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton will concede tonight that Barack Obama has the delegates to secure the party’s nomination, ending her bid to be the nation’s first female president.

The story notes that the former First Lady will stop short of suspending or ending her campaign in her speech in N.Y. City - though one wonders what else she could be conceding - in the end, it’s a delegate race.

Regardless, her campaign chair fired back that HRC is absolutely not planning to concede the Democratic race to Barack Obama tonight.

“No one has the number to be the nominee of the Democratic party right now,” Clinton campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe said.

Asked specifically about the report that Clinton will acknowledge after tonight’s South Dakota and Montana primaries that Obama has the delegates to clinch the nomination, McAuliffe replied: “They are 100 percent incorrect.”

JUGGLING OPTIONS: Hillary Clinton’s next move remains a mystery.

Meanwhile, some other campaign insiders report that Clinton is poised to deliver a message today “that she will do whatever it takes” to put a Democrat in the White House - a message some believe is a thinly-veiled assertion of willingness to accept an offer to be Obama’s vice president if asked.

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Forty-two.

It’s the answer to the mystery of the universe, according to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, and for Sen. Barack Obama, it’s the last milepost - the light at the end of the tunnel that is this historic Democratic presidential race.

After 17 months of campaigning, numerous momentum shifts, scandals, rules committee hearings, wrangling for support among insiders and more than 35 million votes, Obama needs just 42 more delegates.

That would finally give the 46-year-old Illinois Senator the 2,118 he needs for the Democratic presidential nomination, leaving little room for rival Sen. Hillary Clinton to make the dwindling argument that the party should choose her.

Although she may still try to halt his coronation, it appears the question of what’s next for Clinton may soon being answered: concession.

Despite waging one of the most formidable campaigns for the presidency in U.S. history, the former First Lady has simply run out of options.

The last two primaries of 2008 - South Dakota and Montana - take place today, but with just 31 delegates at stake combined, even two expected victories for Obama won’t be enough to put him over the top.

Enter the superdelegates.

After more than 50 elections, Barack Obama is closing in on victory.

On Tuesday, the U.S. House Majority Whip, James Clyburn of South Carolina, the top ranking African-American in Congress who has been neutral throughout, announced that he plans on supporting Obama in the race.

“I believe the nomination of Senator Obama is our Party’s best chance for victory in November, and our nation’s best hope for much needed change,” said Clyburn, the source of one of the top quotes from this year when he told Bill Clinton to “chill” on Obama before the South Carolina primary.

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