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political advisers would have liked.
    Hillary disappeared from public view for two weeks after the concession speech, spent some time at the Clintons’ primary residence in Chappaqua, New York, and in the Dominican Republic, then returned to the Senate with the pomp of a president on June 24, a humid Tuesday. When her mini-motorcade pulled up to the Capitol that morning, Clinton’s staff met her on the East Front plaza outside.
    They knew it would be a hard homecoming for their boss; staying in the Senate had never been the plan. So they set out to make her landing a little softer. In lieu of encountering “Welcome back!” banners and tear-jerking speeches, she entered her office to find a Ping-Pong tournament in midswing. Staffers clad in gym clothes—headbands, shorts, striped knee-high socks—paddled a ball back and forth. Dan Schwerin, a press aide who returned to the Senate after working with Balderston and Elrod on the campaign, had driven all over town to find the table in time for Hillary’s arrival.
    Clinton delighted in the boisterous, unlikely scene inside the Senate office that she hadn’t seen much of in recent months. She let out a hearty laugh. To network anchors, the sound of her full-body laugh was a “cackle,” a word that made her aides cringe; but to her adoring and anxious staff, it was a sign of normalization. “I love this!” she exclaimed.
    She watched the match closely, as the ball was smacked in one direction and batted back in the other—a dynamic with which she was very familiar. She couldn’t resist offering a self-aware admonition to the legislative assistant who ultimately lost.
    “Be gracious in defeat,” she advised.
    In those weeks, Hillary was heeding her own advice, but she was having difficulty getting her die-hard supporters to follow suit. The campaigns booked a ballroom at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington two nights later, June 26, so that Hillary could gather her top donors and political supporters in a show of unity for Obama. It was a struggle to fill out the guest list, as many of Hillary’s most loyal backers were still in no mood to shift allegiance. But the room was full by the time Obama and Hillary appeared together with Terry McAuliffe, the longtime Clinton family fund-raiser who introduced them to the crowd. Hillary spoke glowingly of Obama, and he returned the favor, recounting how his daughter Malia had told him it was “about time” for a woman to be president.
    “I’m going to need Hillary by my side campaigning during this election, and I’m going to need all of you,” said Obama, who announced that he had written a check for $2,300 to help retireHillary’s campaign debt and had asked his leading donors to do the same. But his olive branch was quickly snapped in half. During a question-and-answer session, Hillary’s supporters peppered Obama with questions that were thinly veiled jabs.
    “Q and A really turned more into commentary, and some of her most significant supporters were very pointed and forceful,” one participant recalled. “Obama was getting annoyed. It was not good.… Neither one of them were happy. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. It was supposed to be a unity event.”
    Finally Lanny Davis, a Washington lawyer and Hillary loyalist, put a stop to the kvetching with a call for civility. While Davis was an ardent Hillary advocate, his own son was an Obama guy—a sign of a generational divide that had to be closed for the good of the party. “It’s time for the family to come back together and act as one and take this because we need to win,” Davis said.
    Unity, it turned out, was more than just a sentiment for Hillary to express. It was also the name of a remote town she had to visit to prove her loyalty. Obama campaign manager David Plouffe was obsessed with the symbolism that Unity, New Hampshire, held for the forced union of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Not only did the small town’s name provide the ideal