Admit it, Obamaphiles, there was a part of you that was a teeny bit relieved about the outcome of Tuesday's primaries. As much as you think you want Hillary Rodham Clinton out of the picture so you can love your man with uninterrupted, full-time ardor, you're just not quite ready to cut Clinton loose. She's just too fundamental, too necessary, too much like a sofa you think you hate but, while attempting to move it through the doorway, realize is crucial to the look and feel of the room.

I've written about Clinton enough times to know that it's impossible to mention her name without eliciting a mortar round from every possible ideological corner. I've been called a castrating feminist, a reprehensible anti-feminist, an ungrateful brat, a bloviating elitist, a liberal, a neocon, funny, not funny, brilliant, moronic, entitled to my opinion and deserving of certain unprintable acts.

So I know that calling Clinton a sofa will provoke all manner of feverish retorts. A certain species of humorless Hillary defender will see my metaphor as belittling and misogynistic. A certain species of humorless Hillary hater will use it as an occasion to say something perverted and awful. And for all I know, there is a Sofa Anti-Defamation League, which will bristle at the mere comparison between America's favorite lounging apparatus and America's most polarizing human being. You think I'm exaggerating, but you don't see my e-mail.

That said, I still think of Clinton as a sofa, and here's why: Without her, we can't quite relax. Without her, something is missing. There's a strange echo in the room. There's an empty space on the floor. There's nothing for the dog to furtively leap onto as soon as we leave the house.

Let's face it, that's no way to live. Barack Obama, that sleek Eames chair of a man, may be sexier and hipper than Clinton, but he hasn't yet matured to the level of the indispensable sofa. And until he makes voters comfortable enough to kick off their shoes and fall asleep in front of the TV (rather than sitting up to avoid choking on their adoring drool), more than a few Obama supporters will quietly hope Clinton stays in the race just a little longer.

Before Tuesday, the pundits had tapped Obama as the inevitable -- and deserving -- Democratic nominee. But as I went about my business in non-pundit land, I began hearing an interesting refrain. People who'd voted enthusiastically for Obama said that as the Clinton campaign's death knell began ringing (or was that the theme music to "Anderson Cooper 360"?) they began to have second thoughts.