The contrasts couldn’t have been clearer between the sore loser Hillary Clinton and Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama this evening.

A defiant Hillary refused to concede defeat in a speech in New York even after Obama passed the 2,118 delegates needed to be nominated at the Democratic party’s convention in Denver in August. He is also the first African-American (partly) on a major party ticket in the country’s 232-year history.

In New York, Hillary said this evening:

I want the 18 million Americans who voted for me to be respected.

In plain English, Hillary is demanding that Obama give her the VP ticket.

Given her unworthy conduct during the Democratic primaries in which she repeatedly played the race card, Obama must not take Hillary as the Vice Presidential candidate on the Democratic ticket. There are so many more capable people. New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, for instance.

In his speech later at St.Paul, Minnesota, Obama was the epitome of graciousness, repeatedly lavishing praise on Hillary as a worthy contestant.

Even as Obama slayed the Hillary demon, the bigger battle looms ahead for him as the Republican slime machine will be in full force in their desperate bid to convince Americans to let them engage in four more years of destruction.

With Hillary’s defeat, many Indian-Americans must be crying in their beers tonight because they mostly endorsed her, held fund-raisers and gave a lot of money to the Hillary campaign. Where will these orphans go now?

Obama will not forget the slight from the Indian-American community. And he must not.