In keeping with how ineptly her campaign was managed, her point man on the “pressuring” efforts is Robert Johnson, who infamously reminded an audience last year about Barry O’s youthful coke use. Healing:

Johnson said he began discussing the vice presidency with Clinton last month and that they talked about it at a dinner in Puerto Rico last Saturday and again by phone and e-mail on Tuesday. “Let me be clear,” Johnson said in a telephone interview Wednesday morning. “She said if asked to do this, she must accept because she believes that it is in the best interest of the party that the party come together and win in November.”…

Johnson said he and other Clinton allies would deliver that message [to concede] to her as she contemplates her withdrawal. “As I believe she is interested in the vice presidency, she recognizes that is the first symbolic step…” he said. “If she wants to work with him as his vice president, she has to focus on getting him elected and not celebrating what has been a monumental achievement in her campaign. That’s the message some of us will be saying to her now.”…

Asked if there is a clear desire by Clinton to be vice president, he said, “That affirmative desire is with Hillary. That’s clear. The question is, is there affirmative desire on the part of Senator Obama?”

Allegedly he proposed lobbying the Congressional Black Caucus to lobby Obama on her behalf and she okayed it. Strategic question: Should she concede first and then lobby to be VP or hang in there to maintain some leverage? I’m thinking the former, since her leverage is disappearing by the moment and any further antagonism is apt to make her seem even more petulant than she already does, which only makes her more of a liability on the ticket. If she quits — which it sounds like she’s planning to do very soon (and I mean very) — and plays the belatedly magnanimous loser, she earns back a little goodwill. Take that as your exit question. Oh, and this too: If either one of them are seriously thinking about a dream ticket, why on earth are some of their most prominent supporters on both sides making it sound like such a disaster?

Update: The end is near.

Sen. Hillary Clinton visited staff at her headquarters in Arlington, Virginia Wednesday just after most of them had been told they would no longer have to report to work after Friday.

A staffer who was in the room said she invited all of her campaign staff to come to her home on Friday.

Before Clinton arrived, the staff was told that they would be paid through June 15th. But the bulk of the staff was told their last day of work would be Friday.

Compelling evidence that the Michelle Obama “whitey” tape is a hoax. If it exists, surely Hillary’s people have seen it by now, and if it’s as bad as all that they wouldn’t be so hot to lay down their arms just yet.