One More Time...

Making Hillary veep is an awful, awful idea. It'd be like firing a torpedo at the Titanic as it closed in on the iceberg. Next week, we can look forward to an end to articles like this one.

From said article:

Now if only the two former rivals could get past ... oh, where to begin?

Think back to high school: In interviews on Monday, Clinton aides said they thought Mr. Obama did not like Mrs. Clinton. Clinton aides also said they thought Mr. Obama thinks Mrs. Clinton does not like him. And, like him or not, she is skeptical that he can win, her aides continue to say. Bottom line, chemistry might be a problem here.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a more colloquial style in the Times. How did all the above make it through edits? Also, I understand that with a conversational approach you can take some grammatical liberties, but wouldn't it be more correct to have "bottom line" (which, for your convenience, appears in the bottom line of the quote) followed by a colon rather than a comma? After all, he's in essence saying, "The bottom line is that which follows:"