Was it really her best? She did what she was expected to do; she gave a speech asking her supporters to go over to Obama. I didn't notice that she never personally praised Obama--good catch--but she could have given an honest speech that did more to weaken McCain. She did not point out a single policy position of McCain, but rather listed all sorts of scary, Bush-like things, and then said Bush and McCain would redefine the Twin Cities next week. It's something, but personally I would like to see some Democrats of stature really lay into McCain in a manner that suggests they think his defeat--considered negatively, not just as the other side of the coin of Obama's victory--is an urgent matter.  I don't think I saw that. Perhaps it wasn't Hillary's job, at least not with her supporters trying to claim the headlines ("Democrats Divided by 'Post-Rational' Clinton Vestige") coming out of this convention. But the idea that this is all she could have done honestly is simply wrong.

A part of the problem is that Senator Clinton has never been a truly great public speaker.  Not unlike Mark Warner, she tramples her applause lines, takes horrifying breaks at completely inopportune moments, and simply doesn't have any kind of cadence.  Senator Clinton could have given the best speech since the Gettysburg Address and it wouldn't have mattered because she has no style. (Warner was worse - my god, what a stiff.)

That said, the substance of her speech was fine.  (Note the lack of enthusiasm.)  It was fine.  It worked, but she didn't go above and beyond the call of duty, simply for the fact that she did what was expected.  She implored the dead-enders to support the Democrat.  It is like telling Christians that they should celebrate Christmas.  D'uh.

My great fear has always been reserved for tomorrow night, as Bubba waddles on stage to perform his quadrennial celebration and worship of himself.  If Bill doesn't tear McCain a new one, then I will know that tonight was mere theatre, a bit of a shadow-play to throw everyone off the trail that the Clintons actually think of somebody other than themselves.  I simply don't have that much trust in the Clintons to think in that way.

I hope to be proven wrong.  I want to be dead wrong.  I want Bubba to show me that I am simply some kind of paranoid knave.  I want to see Bill produce a full-throated defense of Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. I don't think it will happen.

I hope that tonight was enough.  I hope that the tide will change.  I hope that people far less cynical than I will see that tonight Senator Clinton actually supported Senator Obama.  But I won't get said hopes up too far.  The Clintons are political animals, with a keen eye out for their own survival at the expense of all others.

On Thursday, Obama has to have the speech of his life to rub away any possiblity of anyone remembering anything other than what he said.  Talk about a tall order.  But it has to happen, he must live up the greatest amount of pressure and expectation that any politician has ever faced in a speech.

"She implored the dead-enders"

Please repeat this every day, please insult them.

After watching a tape of Hillary's speech, I generally agree with Chait and Cohn : The speech was

Wow, Mr. Chait, you are one cynical dude. She gave the best speech of her life. It was inspiring to watch, and it made me feel proud of my party again. This was one of the best political moments of the year. For once, please, let's not read evil motivations into her every word. This thing, including (or especially) all of its enthusiasm, felt pretty authentic to me.

Mr. Chiat --

Are you really an Obama supporter? When will you and other "supporters" start to wake up to the fact that trashing the Clintons , and encouraging divisiveness, can't win Obama one single vote. Worse, if he and his campaign can't effectively disassociated themselves (as they are more and more desperately are trying to do) from the nastiness, pettiness, paranoia and Clinton derangement syndrome of "supporters" like TNR's writers and commentators, as well as many others in the political media, it will inevitably end up costing him many votes.

Unity, like a successful marriage, isn't something that anyone can create alone.

I thought Hillary Clinton gave a great speech on the night that is probably the pinnacle of her political career - a night in which she told her supporters to "keep going" with the Democratic nominee for the general election, Barack Obama.

She left no excuse for deadenders and PUMAs. Clinton made it clear that if they do not support Obama then they were not in the campaign to help the people the Democratic Party fights for and whom Clinton fights for.

Mr. Chait, sometimes you sound eerily like Andrew Sullivan on the topics of the Clintons and Obama. Which is why I suppose, I enjoy reading both of you, since nine times out of ten your assessments of  Obama jive with mine, as do your gut reactions to the Clintons, but I gotta disagree with you both on your stingy analyses of tonight's speech.

I agree with ralphanelle that  it was the best speech of her life, and I don't agree with Cohn that it was delivered without a change of pace. She varied the pace according to the points she was trying to make and the emotions she was trying to stir. And it was forceful in parts, emotional in parts, appropriately grateful in parts but it told her supporters what they needed to do without chiding them. It was enormously respectful of her supporters -- giving dignity to their support while exhorting them to give dignity to her campaign by supporting Obama. The reality is, she doesn't like Obama, and she knows she's not an actress. Bill might have been able to pull off platitudes about Obama, but she can't. So she didn't. If she had, I think she would have undercut her sincerity which would have further  made her supporters dig in their heels. By not attempting effusive personal praise of Obama, she was able to sincerely and with authority and conviction state who we need to elect in very clear terms. She had enormously complicated task tonight. And she pulled it off.

Good for her.

And I enjoyed the funny notes.

..."My great fear has always been reserved for tomorrow night, as Bubba waddles on stage to perform his quadrennial celebration and worship of himself..."

-kgrant

In a party full of fatsos it's ironic you would single out Bill Clinton when many of his cohorts make him look absolutely lithe...

President McCain...LOL...The Clinton haters gave him to us...

Chait is right that the speech was not the absolute perfect speech to Obama supporters' ears -- more praise for the nominee, please; somehow retract the 3 a.m. stuff; say how you learned that Obama is thus and so in the campaign, etc.  But, and it's a big but, Obama supporters weren't the audience for the speech.  She asked her supporters, "Did you do it for me?"  The point, of course, is that they theoretically did it for her values.  But the fact is, many did do it for her and have an emotional connection to her.  You don't switch from "Do it for me" to "Do it for him."  You switch from "Do it for me" by working for Hillary to "Do it for me" by working for what she stands for.  That's what she did, and she did it well.  If she had done any of those things I mentioned before, yes, it would have sounded phony, but it also would have sounded incoherent.  As in, I said he wasn't ready; now I think he is.  For the audience she was addressing -- her supporters -- saying you had better support Obama because the other guy is a disaster, because Obama believes what I do, is, I think, exactly the right message.  If that means not saying "You better like the guy too, because, notwithstanding what everyone knows, I just adore him," fine.  Not every Democratic voter in the fall needs to be a completely sold Obama fan.

p.s.  Andrea Mitchell interviewed an elderly sweetheart from Pennsylvania after the speech -- a Hillary supporter sad to see her deliver her swan song -- who took Hillary's marching orders to heart.  I think the speech was effective and that the message hadn't been heard widely enough before tonight.

Clinton's speech was awesome. She may not have praised Obama personally, but Kusmet hits the nail on the head in his Plank post: her appeal to sisterhood and solidarity on behalf of a generic Democrat was a more effective way to get her disaffected supporters to follow Obama than dressing him in pretty adjectives would have been (no matter how sincerely she could have delivered such praise.) Remember, many of these Clinton supporters don't especially like Obama, for whatever reasons. Some might be mad about the unfair treatment they thought she received during the primary. Others may be affronted by an "upstart" new kid on the block, who came out of nowhere to grab the nomination away from an older, battle-hardened candidate. Still others may simply be rubbed the wrong way by aspects of Obama's personality -- his polish/slickness; his confidence/arrogance; his youth/lack of seasoning; his reflectiveness/aloofness. (Each quality can be experienced as a positive or negative.) Those of us who like Obama may think these feelings are unwarranted; but whether or not they are is beside the point. The feelings are there and need to be acknowledged.

Clinton did the smart thing: she powerfully appealed to the core motivations of her supporters (universal health care, women's rights, standing up for the invisible, etc) and showed them that voting for Obama as the generic Democrat was the only way to stay true to these motivations. She reminded them, in other words, that their core values trump whatever negative feelings they have about Obama personally. Since the sense of disappointment and anger is still keen among some of Clinton's supporters, this appeal to their own core values is more likely to make them support Obama than any shiny words she could use about him would ever be.

And the Harriet Tubman bit was a very powerful way to call forth a sense of solidarity and sisterhood around these core Democratic values.

Correction: Kusnet (not Kusmet.)

The post in which he makes this point (about Clinton's appeal to solidarity and sisterhood) is here:

blogs.tnr.com/.../the-democrats-strike-back.aspx

Obama needs to win this on his own...

John Stuart Mill said the Conservative party of his day was the "stupid party"...

He never saw the early twenty first century Democratic party...

They just might snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory...

Wow...she might have had a few pops before this one.  "Barack Obama is...my candidate..he, um...MUST be president.  Right?  Little help?"  Very amusing.

The speech was fine, Hillary made all the right points.  She commenced by enthusiastically endorsing Obama, recapped her run and made a plea to her supporters to unite behind Obama, and contrasted a future with Obama in the White House vs. John McCain.  On ther personal note she praised Michelle Obama, Joe Biden, and their families.

Mark Warner was disappointing, the message of the speech was right on, the delivery stilted and as several noted, he stepped on the applause lines.  

And speaking of "lack of enthusiam" the look on Michelle Obama's face whenever the CNN camera cut to her wasn't exactly one of rapture.

It was a good speech.............................for her.  It was like pulling teeth for her to even mention Obama, which she did as little as possible.  Maybe Bill's talk, inevitably about him, can avoid any mention of Obama.  

I watched the convention last night - mainly to hear Hillary.  Halfway through her lackluster effort and typically self-congratulatory rhetoric about glass ceilings and her connection to a litany of historic steps forward for human rights and the liberation of women, I left the room to check my e-mail and attend to a project I was interested in.  

Later, when I returned to the tv, I was pleased to hear Keith Olbermann on MSNBC praising her speech.  Michael Beschloss was on PBS arguing that the speech fell short, so I decided to read the speech and see how it ended.  My take on the speech as a document is that she seems to have made a good argument against McCain but failed to say anything nice about Barack Obama.  

Add to that the problems with her delivery -- kgrant's first paragraph above is spot-on, although I have seen her do better when the point of the speech is self-promotion -- and the combined effect is disappointing.  This, after all, is a woman who was only narrowly defeated in the nominating process -- I have to believe she could have done better.  Hell, Michelle Obama was better.

I think Hillary had an opportunity last night to impress everyone - to make some of us wonder if we had chosen the wrong person to head the ticket.  Instead we saw a bland an uninspiring video, followed by a weak and too-brief introduction by Chelsea, followed by a prolonged but unimpressive standing ovation and the lackluster but dutiful speech.

In many ways her speech was like her campaign - not quite good enough.  

Neil      

Those who are commenting on this post do not realize one important thing. As a member of the mainstream press who someday hopes to move up in the world of journalism, press must hate Hillary Clinton with every fiber of his being. Everything she does must be criticized. Every action must be interpreted negatively. One must comment constantly on her evilness. These are the rules of the game. Chait is merely playing by the rules, like a good boy who someday hopes to move to bigger and better horizons in the world of journalism.

Hillary's speech was excellent.  She did all she needed to do, she doesn't need to act like she's about to grab a beer with Obama after the convention.  In fact, Obama supporters should take her unstated message to heart when wonder whether she praised the candidate enough:  We don't have to like each other, but we generally want the same things from government, so let's go win this thing together.  We can argue about the other stuff later.

The Republicans know how to do this.  Most of them hate McCain, yet their about to raise a zombie army for yet another election to get him elected.

Many Obama supporters have a deeply emotional bond with their candidate -- they don't just support him they "believe" in him. They support his candidacy as an act of faith and a statement of personal belief.

In their calculation, you're either for him (which makes you a good persona) or against him (which makes you bad, perhaps even an evil, person).

For them, Hillary can never be forgiven for running against Obama. For them, encouraging people to vote for Obama isn't enough -- they won't accept anything short of asking people to believe in and fall in love with their candidate. To acknowledge his superiority, his uniqueness, his beyond mere politics goodness.

But there are a lot of people who just don't approach politics in this very personal, fall in love with the candidate, hate any opponents, way.

I personally have never been in love with a political candidate. Never found one who wasn't flawed. Never cast my vote based on what kind of (wonderful, special) person I thought (imagined) the candidate to be. Instead, I see politicians as representatives of certain values, constituencies and interests. And I base my vote on my judgement of who best represents the values, constituencies and interests that I think most need to be served in order for the country to best be served.

The emotional, negative arguments Obama supporters make against Hillary make sense to them because they think if someone hates Hillary they will vote for Obama.  But voters like me -- and there are a lot of us -- are turned off by such antics.

You guys need to  stop  being angry at people for not "believing" in Obama enough (as deeply as you do) and start making some positive, pragmatic arguments for why they should vote for him instead.

That's exactly what Hillary did last night. And it is exactly what needs to be done.

Unity in the Democratic Party means Hillary's supporters supporting the ticket we have AND Hillary's detractors acknowledging the significance of her "almost" candidacy, her importance to many voters we need, and her obvious commitment to publicly support Obama and Biden.  I didn't support her (although I absolutely would have, had she won the nomination), and I'm not unhappy that she's not the nominee, but my god people, she came within a hair's breadth of being the first woman presidential candidate,and probably first woman President of the United States, and lost it to a someone who came from nowhere to upset a plan she's been working on for a decade.  You can't reasonably ask for more than she's been giving since mid-June; you can't expect her to make rhetorical love to the guy who humbled her plans.  You can only expect her to support her party and ticket, and bring along as many of her supports as possible.  She did that last night.  Give credit where it's due, and move on.

And for the press: Cltinton vs Obama is over; Obama vs McCain is the story now.  Repeat this until your head hurts; tattoo it on your forearm.  You are supposed to be serving the public interest, and the public interest demands an informed discussion and choice between two competing visions for the nation.  Clinton and Obama are on ONE SIDE of that debate, not opposite sides.  It's John McCain and his cohorts on the other.

esmense

I'm not angry at Hillary, just unimpressed.  

And, as an Edwards supporter who chose Obama over Hillary after Edwards dropped out, I am not an Obamamaniac.  I know a lot of people like myself who have come to support Obama without being fanatical.  

The criticism of Hillary is real - it cannot be explained away as the product of a cult-like defensiveness on the part of Obama supporters.  

Neil  

sdemuth

I agree the press is having fun with the Clinton-Obama drama, but they aren't making it up.  As long as there are delegates on camera whining into a microphone about how they aren't sure they'll support Obama, that story is going to have legs.  

Neil

Esmesne- you're being a little unfair. There's plenty of emotional bonds to obama AND to Clinton. That's not characteristic of one candidate more than another. And most of the Obama supporters commenting here are praising her speech. I am one of those people. She gave a great speech, set exactly the right tone and I think she was genuine. Like many people, seeing her last night made me feel that I would have been fine with her had she won, and again, that the low points in her campaign weren't her fault as much as Penn, Bill, & co, who royally messed up her chances.

How Stumping For Barack Obama Brought John Kerry Back From The Dead , by Jason Zengerle The TNR Q&A

How Stumping For Barack Obama Brought John Kerry Back From The Dead , by Jason Zengerle The TNR Q&A

If we're lucky, this crap will have been forgotten by November, as no doubt the McCain supporters back then forgot how Bush and Rove had disembowelled their candidate by way of racially paranoid "black baby" rumors in S. Carolina.  If they can do it, why can't we?

There was nothing about Obama’s readiness to be president, and almost nothing about him on a personal level.

Hill's speech reaffirmed my decision not so support her.  I could barely stand listening to it.  She just isn't that good a speaker.  She's a great person and an effective Senator and would be better than any Republican in the White House, but she is not in Barack Obama's league.  Her speech had some great lines, but was mostly self-absorbed and did not find anything good to say about the party's nominee other than "support him just because".

She didn't have to do a 180-degree turn from her over-extended campaign against Obama which desperately sought to paint him as unelectable and unready.  All she had to do was acknowledge that he is a political force to be reckoned with.  After all, he beat HER, right? And she didn't go away quietly. She threw everything at him and did not give up until it was literally over.  ANd he still won the primary race.  She could have ackowledged how he did that and he did it rather gracefully compared to the way most campaigns are run.

Clinton's speech gets a 7 out of 10 from me, but I'll wait til Bill goes.  If he can be a tad more gracious and praising of hte nominee, then I'll bump my collective opinion of them up some.

Good point ironyroad.  If Republicans can forget that Rush Limbaugh said during the primaries that the nomination of either John McCain or Mike Huckabee would spell the end of the GOP, if as noted above by hewstino that the Republicans will raise the zombie armies to work for McCain, Democrats can put the primary behind them and work together.  There's a lot more in common between Clinton and Obama than there ever was between McCain and the conservative core of the GOP, much as McCain of 2008 would like to pretend otherwise.

Why be surprised by the nastiness of Obama supporters on TNR? They were nasty from the beginning, and that reflects the totalitarian tendencies of this movement. The movement is all about Obama. So obviously they cannot forgive Hillary for getting almost as many votes as Obama. Obama won the orimaries - good for him. But his supporters cannot forgive the 45% of Demoicrats who did NOT vote The Pompous One, but Hillary. That's why they tried to make her quit. Classic Obama tactic - prevent the opponent from running, just as he did in Chicago. Obama knew he couldn't win big, so he did his normal dirty tricks. Had Hilary quit early, he could have claimed a big victory. She didn't, and that's why the Obama fanat5cs hate her.

The man can't win without cheating.

Have you noticed how Jonathan Chait, a habitual bootlicker, deplored that Hillary didn't praise Obama as a person? For Chait, as for most Obama fanatics, it is all about Obama's person, not his positions (ever shifting, ever vague) and certainly not his judgment (terrorist Bill Ayers, racist Jeremiah Wright).

If Obama wins and if the average Obama supporter is as depraved as the average TNR Obama supporter, we're in for a fascist dictatorship in the US.

What esmense said.

I enjoyed Clinton's speech, to the point of remembering why I initially supported her. It must have been extremely hard for her, more difficult in many ways than her "concession" speech of a few months ago.

It's hard for most people to stand up and speak before others. I don't get these suggestions that so-and-so "hit a home run." A home run clears the bases--there's nobody left to drive in. In contrast, even humankind's most persuasive orators--Hitler, Christ, Lisa Simpson--fail to move, or outright piss off, the audience's outliers. You can lead a horse to water...

A political convention in a democracy isn't Scientology. A bunch of guys and gals get together somewhere to nominate somebody, rip off some "best practices," drink, and maybe get laid if they're lucky. Then everybody goes home and forgets all about it in a week or so.

I heard a radio interview with a Clinton delegate from NorCal who claimed to be unmoved by Hill's speech. Holding back tears, this woman was still enraged that Obama had failed to "wait his turn." I marveled that only in America can someone who has apparently been repeatedly dropped on her head become a delegate to a national political convention.

The media? They're just creepy. They're like the security cameras in Vegas, trying to catch the card counters or the call girl picking up your room key at the front desk.

purcellneil: I think the press IS "making it up" - by actively seeking out those few Hillary supporters who are willing to say things that fit into thier Evil Hillary storyline, exagerating thier importance and downplaying all indications to the opposite.  Every possible statement, gesture or facial expression on Hillary's part that can possibly be construed as an example of her supposed dislike for Obama, or "reluctance" to support him, is taken as incontrovertible evidence and beaten to death.  Every clear statement of support is downplayed and cynically dismissed.   I'm not sure there's anything Hillary can do to convince the Haters that she's onboard, short of dropping to her knees and annointing Obama's feet.

emanse: you are spot on.  All this instigating is bad for the Democrats.  Not only that, but the very low standard of evidence that Obama supporters use to "prove" Hillary's evil intentions (see Clinton race-baiting, among other issues) can and most definitely WILL be used against Obama, too.  

It's hard not to agree with stgla.  Hilary's job last night was complicated by her own work at extending a campaign that should have ended weeks before it did.  For this very reason, I think she would have courted failure last night had she devoted more of her address to praising Obama than she did.  Her job was to focus her supporters (some with noses pinched) on the larger cause and I am not sure how she could have done that better.  What has to be done now is thorough lambasting of John McCain, and I assume the build up to the one/two punch of Biden and Clinton is precisely for that purpose.  I have to say I am a bit worried about Bill and his ability to keep his emotions in check, particularly given the gleam in his eyes and the words he appeared to utter as Hilarly accepted the crowd's welcome last ngiht.  We have all seen Bill go off script, ramble, and vent---let's hope he keeps his eyes on the prize.

WHAT THIS IS ACTUALLY ABOUT

Senator Clinton provided a stirring and eloquent endorsement of Senator Obama last night. Those who read something else or who find it otherwise are having to go through pretzel-like contortions to explain themselves.

What was especially welcome was the fact that the centerpiece of her speech was a rational argument (remember rational argument?) about why those who have supported her should now support Senator Obama. It was compelling and should persuade all those who can be persuaded.

One major problem for Senator Obama are all those undecided, swing, independent voters, many of them middle and working class, in the states who are going to decide the election. Sen. Clinton will work tirelessly--but essentially this job is his to do. Not even Biden's, but his. He needs a compelling, specific and comprehensive message and a concrete plan to make the country better that voters can believe in.

Go out to where those voters are and speak to them directly and compellingly about the comprehensive program that you are going to offer--specifically what are you going to do?

If hope is the theme, then what is it that we hope for? If change is the theme, then what is it that we are changing to? Provide examples. State it and say it--and get it out there in such a manner that voters will be moved.

Rendell: He is a little like Adlai Stevenson. You ask him a question, and he gives you a six-minute answer. And the six-minute answer is smart as all get-out. It's intellectual. It's well framed. It takes care of all the contingencies. But it's a lousy soundbite. We've got to start smacking back in short, understandable bites. Everybody is nervous as all get-out. Everybody says we ought to be ahead by 10, 15 points. What the heck is going on?

This is now the task for Senator Obama and Senator Biden. It is time, at last, to take the focus off Clinton supporters, delegates etc. There are really no Clinton voters at all, but simply voters who happened to vote for Senator Clinton in the primary season.  

Obama backers (and all of us Democrats are his backers now) need to follow Senator Clinton's advice. They need to get off the topic of Hillary Clinton and "keep going."

I would be impressed with Hillary's efforts last night if the net effect of her speech and the McCain ads based on her debate comments and campaign ads cancelled out.  I don't hate Hillary, but she has done more damage to the Democrats in 2008 than Joe Lieberman.  I think Hillary's future presidential chances are somewhere between those of John Edwards and Ted Kennedy.

I'm not sure that's the most interesting Clinton story from the DNC -- what I am keen to see is whether Bill Clinton manages to rekindle some goodwill among the Democrats who were turned off by his primary campaign statements.

Neil

Best speech of her life.  She did a fabulous job.

Luckily for McCain, nobody believed her.

purcellneil writes, "...  I don't hate Hillary, but she has done more damage to the Democrats in 2008 than Joe Lieberman..."

Neil, the real and lasting damage to the Democratic Party was done and continues to be done by the Left idiots who took over the Party in 1968.  

It is the Left to whom LIeberman and even the Clintons, especially Bill, reacted.

So, if you want really to know whom to blame, look to your Left.

Reagan had a successful two term presidency, despite senility and Iran-Contra in his second term. Republicans of all stripes worship his memory. Clinton had a successful two term presidency, despite his misadventure and subsequent politically motivated impeachment. Unfortunately, he is despised by a substantial portion of Democrats, if not an outright majority. That is why, even with everything supposedly going their way, the Democrats stand a good chance of losing, yet again.

Ok....now that she's conceeded to Obama, his supporters seem to be missing the most important question.  Why should I vote for him? He allowed his campaign to condone some of the most vicious behavior against  people with dissenting viewpoints publicly.  He did not come out against the misogyny seen in the media, or even that expressed by his supporters *in his name*.  Anyone who expressed any concern about his fitness for the job, his stand on policy (or lack thereof), demonstrating evidence that creates concern about his commitment to policy (he did not even have a women's issues line on his website's Issues menu until 3 weeks after the NARAL endorsement....what kind of commitment does that demonstrate?) would be subject to insult and ridicule. This is not how discourse is supposed to function.

We have been living in a time whose hallmark is closed minded lockstep thinking for 8 years now.  He does not apparently offer any hope of a change from that.  It's now up to him to prove that wrong. Otherwise, he won't get my vote or a lot of other people's votes who believe that free political expression is what America  is all about.