WASHINGTON - The ping-pong table was supposed to be a gag. It was in Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate suite when she returned to the office Tuesday after a two-week rest following the suspension of her presidential campaign.

The table, where staffers were locked in a mock contest to celebrate her arrival, was dismantled soon after the New York Democrat moved through the door. The capital's supine politial media fawned over the stunt.

But it struck some New Yorkers as an out-of-body signal from their junior senator who had missed 97 out of 155 votes cast in the Senate this year in a historic, roller-coaster quest for the presidential nomination.

Clinton's heavily-packaged rites, which continued for three days, perplexed some who wonder if she were really resigned to the strong probability that she is not going to become president next Jan. 20, and may never be president.

It was reported her staffers recruited a small crowd, which Clinton worked like a campaign rope-line outside the Capitol. When she entered the Senate chamber she used the great ceremonial door that not even the vice president employs when he visits.

In the hallways, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-N. Y., arranged a public greeting for her.

She had hugs for supporters like Sens. Debbie Stabenow, DMich., and Barbara Mikulski, DMd., but a cold shoulder for Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Mo., who did not back her.

It went on. She made major speeches to two advocacy groups.

Then the Clintons staged a high-profile downtown party to raise $100,000 to defray her campaign expenses. The presumptive nominee, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and his wife, gave Clinton checks for $4,600, said nice words and left.

To core supporters, the fuss looked appropriate for the first - but not the last - woman as a serious contender seeking the presidential nomination.

The rituals, though, did not necessarily enhance her ability to answer New York's great needs in the Senate, where most Democrats supported Obama, and where she ranks Number 68.

Among Democrats, she stands fifth on the Environment and Public Works Committee, eighth on Health, Education and Labor, and ninth on Armed Services.

Some wonder if Clinton and New York would have been better off had she quietly ambled into the Senate chamber two weeks ago and then privately dined with members who did not support her, and just got to work.

The awkward truth is that Schumer for the last few years has largely done the chores of both senators, as far as upstate is concerned.

It was Schumer, not Clinton, who rushed into the breach when the Bush administration proposed draconiam ID rules for crossing the Canadian Border. It was Schumer who interceded with the National Football League to bolster the Buffalo Bills' finances. Schumer and nobody else has been hectoring the airlines to keep regular, inexpensive service in upstate. Same with Medicaid funding.

Schumer has confronted power to help New York. The state needs two senators to help pull it out of the hole it is in. It needs two senators with influence.

Sen. Clinton's presidential campaign is either over, or it is not over. New York papers are reporting that Obama is becoming very nettled at continuing pressure from Clinton supporters to put her on the ticket and give her a starring role at the Denver convention, which should showcase Obama.

For the sake of whatever clout she can wield for New York at an Obama White House, Clinton should end, not suspend, the campaign, stop the ceremonies, cast off the Bill Clinton third-termers, release her delegates now and tell her friends to stop needling Obama.