Obama beat them, and didn't need them to win. The punditariat clamored for Obama to beg Bill for his support, they trashed Bill for failing to deliver it lustily enough, and they fretted over whether Obama would underperform in the areas in which Hillary became an extremely unlikely working class hero. Then Obama won, handily, with barely any help from Bill and Hil, which was Bill's greatest fear, because Obama doesn't look to his presidency as a model for success, he looks to Reagan. The Clinton era: over. It'll barely register in the history books.We feel bad saying it, actually, because Bill is an incredibly gifted and skilled politician (we've seen him work a room, he's superhuman) and he meant well but his presidency, while on the whole a slight success, was kind of a mess. The economy was stewarded well and foreign policy was mostly responsible. But it also set up the Republican Revolution and devolved into a surreal farce that took up the entirety of 1998 and drove everyone mad and exacerbated the culture wars and led right to eight years of Bush, sort of. And for a while, it looked like Clinton's greatest legacy would be his political acumen and his new and improved centrist DLC, the organization that would provide the keys to the next Democratic victory. Well. In 2000 they got out-lawyered in Florida, in 2004 they couldn't eke out a slim victory from a divided elctorate, in the in 2008 primaries Hillary got beat, handily, by a charismatic nobody with a slim record. Come the general election, Obama went with a modified version of Howard Dean's 50 state strategy, expanding the map instead of focusing on two or three battlegrounds at any cost. He didn't reach out to Bill in any real way and didn't bitch when Bill didn't reach out to him. There's probably not room for Bill or Hillary in his cabinet, as much as a Bill Clinton Supreme Court nomination would be hilarious. And this means, basically, that the Clinton era has ended. He shoved the party to the right, yes, but it remains to be seen how long that rightward shift will last in a nation that might be trending left, economically at least. It's kinda sad, really, but Bill does still have his private jets full of models. All Hillary gets is her stupid Senate seat she didn't even want.

On this bright post-election morning, let there be no diminishing Defamer's mission to bring you tomorrow's most influential political figures and movements today. A scan of our illustrious archives reveals nearly two-and-a-half years' worth of Barack Obama coverage, dating all the way back to that time in 2006 when we couldn't understand why the Illinois senator was hanging out at CAA. (Hint: He wasn't!) Take an early lunch and join us after the jump in remembering a few key moments from the President-elect's pop-culture trajectory.· June 1, 2006: Barack Obama makes his first Defamer appearance after an operative sent in a sighting from CAA. What was he doing there? Nothing, as one definitive tipster pointed out: "I find these theories equally hilarious, troubling, and ridiculous, seeing as how it WAS A CAA AGENT: newly minted agent Billy Hawkins- a tall, handsome, Barack-ish looking man who spent a good deal of time chatting in the atrium yesterday." Oops! Billy Hawkins gets that all the time.

Whenever I read a Twitter, part of me wonders if the person who sent it has any actual work to do. Jon Stewart, cohosting Comedy Central's election-night coverage, wondered the same thing about cohost Stephen Colbert.

Gavin McInnes, Williamsburg resident, co-founded the ur-hipster mag Vice and now blogs at Street Carnage. A recently-anointed U.S. citizen by way of Canada, he personifies the lackadaisical "who cares" voting attitude that we attribute to young hepcats—although the non-ironic celebrations in Williamsburg last night proved that stereotype all wrong. McInnes, weighing in for all the cynics out there, was happy to let Pop + Politics know why he didn't take the trouble to vote. First reason: he's 38, and voted one time in his native Canada: "It was an empty vote. I wrote nothing in the ballot."And also?

In 1964, a group of black and white civil rights protesters attempted to integrate the pool of the Monson Hotel in St. Augustine, Florida. The hotel's owner, James Brock, responded by dumping acid into the pool. That was considered reasonable. This year, the Obama campaign opened a field office in St. Augustine, the most organized effort ever by a Democratic presidential campaign to win the Republican county surrounding my hometown. Obama ended up winning Florida and the entire country, a far stronger rebuke to the James Brocks of America than Martin Luther King Jr. was ever able to deliver. Jesse Jackson, who was there when King got shot, cried hardest of all last night. The old civil rights warriors feel this election more deeply than anyone else. The irony is that the civil rights movement never could have gotten to this day itself. Before this Obama election gets too grounded in our national psyche, let's go ahead and banish the hopeful assertion that this marks the beginning of a "Post-racial" society. As has been pointed out by everyone from Tavis Smiley to TAN, we're not post-anything. Race is just as strong of a psychological factor as it ever was. Our socialization has changed, and our expectations have been moderated, but America is far, far away from being a place where people "don't see" race.

Hollywood PrivacyWatch: 11/5 ZACH BRAFF just beat me to the door at the Laurel Canyon and Ventura Blvd. Coffee Bean a few minute ago. (I always pick up my pace when I see others entering, I hate lines.) Although he beat me, he was kind enough to hold the door open for me, after he entered. He looked like he just woke up and was dressed hip casual in basketball shorts and long sleeved sweatshirt. Very unassuming and polite. [Hollywood PrivacyWatch is written by and for Defamer readers; send your sightings to tips@defamer.com.]

A disclosure statement is an odd place for a wedding announcement. But that is where conference organizer and AllThingsD blogger Kara Swisher has buried the news that she married her longtime partner, Google vice president Megan Smith, last night, before the passage of Proposition 8, California's gay marriage ban, made same-sex marriages illegal once more. (The couple had had previous ceremonies — including, while we're disclosing things, one that I attended — but this was the first one that was a legal marriage under California law.) This would be no one's business but their own, except for the fact that Swisher actively covers Google and its rivals.

As the likelihood of Obama becoming president became larger and larger over the last few months, critics wondered openly how comedians would find things to lampoon about our new president. Maureen Dowd chronicled the concern she had for comedians in a column and even Obama himself wasn't terribly impressed by Fred Armisen's SNL portrayal. Following in the footsteps of Pareene's helpful guide to the subject, tonight's episode of South Park is titled "About Last Night…", and will portray Barack Obama's early arrival at the White House. From the early preview, and how the show has depicted the commander-in-chief in the past, it looks like overzealous Obama supporters will bear the brunt of the joke.

♦ Henri Bendel updated its window display this morning to account for the results of the election: "The cocktail-dress-wearing mannequins have been moved over to the blue polling booth, someone cracked a bottle of champagne (and drank it, leaving an empty bottle and glass), and there's a strange, lipstick-edged cake on the floor." [Racked]
♦ While most of the country was consumed by election fever, some fashionistas were all ready en route to support an equally important issue: Brazilian swimwear! The Claro Rio Summer show kicks off in Rio today, and Zani Gugelmann, Amy Sacco, Fiona Scarry, Natalia Vodianova and Justin Portman, and Michael Roberts are all there. [CR, CR, stylefile]

Things have been lonely for Anne Hathaway lately, who's found herself on a tough press tour without so much as a glossy thriller or Pope-swindling boyfriend to keep her company. Fortunately, Life & Style reports that Hathaway has found a new beau: actor Adam Shulman, whose sparse IMDb resume includes a multi-episode arc on American Dreams, a role billed just above The Real World's Trishelle in The Dukes of Hazzard: The Beginning, and a job as "Youth Voter #1" on The West Wing (timely!). The mag had this to say about the new couple:

It's a verified bug: PDF files can be used to take over your PC. Adobe's mistake was adding support for ever-sloppy JavaScript inside the once-benign PDF format. Core Security, the company that outed the vulnerability, says, "An attacker could put malicious code in JavaScript embedded in a PDF and [...] could manipulate the program's memory allocation pattern and trigger the vulnerability to execute arbitrary code with the privileges of the user." Great. I can hardly wait to reinstall Paul's PC after he pretends to read another of those ethics-in-journalism PDFs.

Guess who's here: Ralph Nader! The irritating old fool went completely around the bend this year, and now he's on Fox News calling Barack Obama an Uncle Tom. That's right! The formerly respectable lefty consumer advocate—seriously, we didn't even hate on him after 2000—now just says outrageous nonsense for attention, like when he did the thing with the parrot. He's pissed away his relevance and thus his hope of accomplishing any of his admirable goals and we're sick of him.In 2000, Nader got nearly 3 million votes, for 2.74 percent of the popular vote. In 2004, he didn't even get 500k. This year it looks like he managed to get half a percent of the vote, though, with 587,758 and counting, so good work, Ralph! He beat the Libertarian! And got just enough votes, it looks like, to put Missouri in the McCain camp! SPOILER!!! There was a time, 20 years ago, when Nader could've been in a Democratic president's cabinet. And, you know, then he could've actually helped working people and stuff! Now he just talks to parrots and says incredibly insulting things about Barack Obama, who everyone likes, unlike poor dumb Ralph Nader, who invented seat belts and then spent his last years annoying liberals.

French president Nicolas Sarkozy on the results of the U.S. election: "Obama is my buddy... I never believed Hillary Clinton would win." [Der Spiegel]

♦ Frank Bruni of the Times visits Bobo this week, and awards one star to new chef Patrick Connolly for his "ambition" and "good intentions," although he also points out that the restaurant "hasn't wholly surrendered its attitude and put service before sheen." [NYT]
♦ The NYPD shut down Serge Becker's "guerilla" election night party at La Esquina last night. [NYO]
♦ Boqueria's Soho location has been granted a liquor license and should be open by next week. [GS]

Promiscuous MySpace friender Tila Tequila recently denied reports that her relationship with Courtenay Semel, the publicly drunken daughter of former Yahoo CEO Terry Semel, was on the rocks. But The Superficial says the Hollywood Z-lister's shot at girl-on-girl love has ended. Why does she no longer Yahoo?Gossip column Page Six spotted Tequila "hooking up" with Justin Long, best known for his role as a Mac in Apple commercials, at a Vegas nightclub on Halloween. Will the Mac preference stick? Who knows, but according the a New York Post spy, Long reportedly "asked her [Tequila] to straddle him while making out." What would John Hodgman have to say about this? (Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images for Cirque du Soleil)

When maverick John McCain picked moose-hunting maverick Sarah "Pit Bull" Palin as his running mate, everybody said that it was the typical sort of impulsive McCain gamble that would make him such a terrible leader—and cost him votes. Here's Palin admitting as much.

· ABC came in first, NBC second, and CBS a distant third in their election coverage, which amazingly was slightly down from 2004. (Cable network coverage is blamed.) Regardless of where you watched it, however, it all ended the same way: "Barack Obama swept to victory as the nation's first black president Tuesday night in an electoral college landslide that overcame acial barriers as old as America itself." There Variety goes again—always playing the ace card. [Zap2It, Variety] · Paramount is close to signing an agreement with Technicolor to build a new sound postproduction facility on the Melrose lot. It's a move that comes several years after similar upgrades from rival studios, making them "something of a laggard in the postproduction community." They were the postproduction community laggard laughingstock! [THR] · Russian President Dmitry Medvedev called for an "end to media censorship" in his first public address, though the end of the word "censorship" was abruptly cut off when Putin snipped the cord on his microphone. [Variety]· Gore Verbinski is said to be looking to produce and possibly direct a movie based on this WSJ article about a guy obsessed with a Second Life-style virtual community. It sounds kind of interesting, unless it makes a wrong turn somewhere and starts giving off whiffs of S1m0ne. [EW] · The opening day of the American Film Market in Santa Monica brings a glut of movies in various states of completion looking for investors and distributors. Organizer Jonathan Wolf uses a lengthy pendulum metaphor to explain the economics of it all that put us in a light trance. [THR]

The author of The Andromeda Strain and Prey, best known recently as creator of the TV series ER, died of cancer Tuesday. I remember Crichton for his article in Wired's fourth issue, "Mediasaurus." Crichton forecast in 1993 that "The mass media will be gone within ten years. Vanished, without a trace." He was more right than wrong. If you're looking for Crichton info today, his Mahalo page is a good complement to what's on Wikipedia. (Photo by Harvard University Gazette/Jon Chase)

Earlier this year, noted GOP firebrand Stephen Baldwin vowed to flee the United States if Barack Obama was nominated as the Democrats' presidential candidate. He apparently got as far as Minnesota before settling down again for the end of the election cycle, but now that Obama has triumphed for the highest office in the land, we would like to personally reaffirm our interest in driving the moving van. How about it, Steve? Or were those crossed fingers not your own quirky variation on Hope, but just another way to get away with a garden-variety campaign lie? Tell us while you pack, why don't you?

New York City Mayor-for-life Michael Bloomberg is bringing his Midas touch to the ailing media industry! In the form of a year-long study sponsored by the city. It's not that Bloomberg, who got rich running his own quasi-media company, has a soft spot for newsprint; it's that there are 160,000 media jobs in NYC, according to the Observer, and it would be beneficial for the municipal tax base not to allow them to crumble away in the face of a changing economy. The question is, can the city actually do anything about it?