I’ve been talking to well-connected Democrats here at the Pepsi Center about all this bad blood between Clinton and Obama. There seems to be a lot of agreement that Obama mishandled what was admittedly a very difficult situation — and now he’s paying the price. The Obama people were angry when, just before Obama announced his vice-presidential choice, the story came out that Clinton hadn’t been vetted. So Team Obama put out word that Clinton herself had told them there was no reason to bother with extensive document production unless she was truly in contention. It didn’t happen.

Putting out that story made the Clinton people even madder. I talked to one today who watched slack-jawed as top Obama strategist David Axelrod, on ABC Sunday, said:

very few people know actually what transpired during this process. But I can tell you, the first person that he sat down and talked to at all about this vice presidential issue was Senator Clinton. They had a discussion back in early June about it. And he has spent more time with Senator Clinton alone talking about issues, than he has with Joe Biden or anyone else in the last couple of months. So that’s simply not true. And of course, whenever you think about an issue like this, she would be among those you would think about very highly. But he knew her, he knew her very well, and so there wasn’t the same need as there was for other candidates.

Simply put, the Clinton people aren’t buying it. And even those who are not passionately committed to one side or the other are trying to figure out why Obama didn’t just go through the motions of vetting Clinton. Tell her that she was high on the list and go through the entire process. It wouldn’t have been true, and Clinton probably would have known it wasn’t true, but what could she have done? As it turned out, since Obama blew her off, she can now claim that she was disrespected in all this.