Hillary Rodham Clinton said all the right words last night to unite a party battered by a divisive nomination battle. But she's done that before, with some of the same words, long before the Democratic National Convention opened.
Associated Press
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, on the road in Billings, Mont., watches Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton speak Tuesday at the Democratic National Convention.
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What mattered this time, with thousands of delegates inside the hall cheering her on and millions of her supporters watching on TV, was how Clinton offered her support to the Democrat who beat her for the party's presidential nomination, Sen. Barack Obama.
From her first words, there was no doubt.
“She absolutely delivered – for Obama and for herself,” said Stuart Rothenberg, editor of The Rothenberg Political Report, a respected nonpartisan newsletter, who was in Denver's Pepsi Center. “Right from the get-go, she embraced Barack. . . . The Obama people got exactly what they wanted and what they needed.”
Sherry Bebitch Jeffe of the University of Southern California hailed it as “one of the best speeches she has ever given,” adding, “She really knocked it out of the ballpark.”
It is almost a cottage industry inside the party to doubt the motives of anything said or done by Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton. And nothing will stop the skeptics from believing that the Clintons would prefer an Obama loss in November to Republican John McCain, seeing that as the only chance for the New York senator to make another run for the White House.
But last night she hit all the right notes, delivering a speech remarkably free of any sense of defeat, self-pity or what-might-have-beens. She thanked the 18 million Americans who supported her in the primaries, but then all but commanded them to put aside their displeasure with the outcome and get behind the Illinois senator as he leads the party into battle.
The party – most particularly the Obama team – was looking for “delivery and emotion,” New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said before the speech. Critics were poised to examine body language, facial expressions and attitude.
They got what they wanted in what was clearly a personal triumph for Clinton. But it was not the type of triumph she hoped to be celebrating here.
This was not the way Clinton thought the convention would be – not the night she thought she'd be speaking, and not the speech she thought she'd be giving. Only nine months ago, Clinton thought she'd be on stage tomorrow night, accepting the party's nomination.
Only the most naive believe that the Clintons suddenly have dropped their oft-voiced doubts about Obama's experience and readiness for office. And the former president – who speaks to the convention tonight – has been less than adroit at hiding the deep bitterness he feels about the way the primary race turned out.
But Sen. Clinton readily accepted the tasks outlined for this speech by the Obama team. And unlike many past losing candidates in both parties – notably Gov. Ronald Reagan in 1976, Sen. Edward Kennedy in 1980, Sen. Gary Hart in 1984 – she performed last night in a way that will make it difficult for anyone to blame her if the nominee loses in the fall.
The task was daunting. That was clear in a USA Today/Gallup Poll taken last week. It showed that fewer than half of those who supported Clinton in the primaries now support Obama. Only 47 percent are with Obama, while 23 percent said they may support him but could change their minds before the election. Thirty percent now plan to vote for McCain, someone else or no one at all.
Clinton's target was that 53 percent of her supporters thus far resistant to Obama's appeal. In the speech, she challenged them to rise above personal pique and focus on the greater good that could be done by an Obama presidency.
No one knows how those voters will react. But Obama should know that the burden now shifts to him. If he wants these voters, he has to win them over. Clinton can't do it for him.
Getting the working-class Democrats who were so strong for Clinton “is up to him,” said Rothenberg. “They have to either become personally comfortable with him or simply decide that their future is better in his hands than in McCain's.”
Perhaps the most troubling aspect of this for Democrats is that Obama so far has proved unable to widen his appeal much beyond the core groups who supported him so zealously all year.
And almost as troubling, McCain has demonstrated that he is ready to exploit this weakness. In the last week, McCain has run two ads aimed at Clinton supporters. He has tried to stoke their anger by noting reports that Obama failed to give serious consideration to Clinton as a running mate and recollecting past Clinton criticisms of Obama.
In her speech, Clinton tried to cut off that avenue of attack for the Republicans. She turned her guns on McCain, proving far more effective on attack than anyone else has been at a convention notable in its first two nights for its failure to highlight the weaknesses and flaws of the opposition.
Clinton seemed quite happy to be leading that attack. She certainly did not do anything to suggest she is stepping away from an active role in the party.
But at the same time, it was hard not to see her speech as signaling what Democratic strategist Jim Duffy called “the end of the Clinton era.”
“That is what this is all about,” said Duffy. “The Clintons are 60 years old and there is a new generation coming on. They had their time.”
