You know what, you're right. And she should have had it in there. But please don't mention it to anyone -- maybe people will actually believe from her speech that she really thinks he should be president.

It's a glaring omission. Nowhere did she say Obama would be a great president, nor did she discuss his remarkable story and what he has accomplished as a candidate. Her speech can be summed up quite easily: "He's better than the other guy - not great, but our best bet." Not a ringing endorsement by any means.

That said, I think it was about as good as we could expect, and probably enough to move some Clinton supporters off the fence.

Oh come on.  I'm no HRC fan but she knocked this out of the park.  Her speech was perfect, she was classy and she really gave a stem winder of a speech.  On a scale of 0-100 she got a 110.

No, she did not say the words. Perceptive, Mike, but really, was she supposed to hand him all her lines? And wouldn't saying those words come across as forced and ironic?

Hillary did a good job for herself.  Best speech I've ever seen her give.

She did her duty for Obama.  Sounded credibly enthusiastic.  She now has plausible deniability if anyone accuses her of dragging her feet or saboutaging him.

One commentator pointed out that her speech repositioned and narrowed her bid into a feminist movement.  Just as Obama has mainly succeeded in transcending the "black candidate" trap, I would think she would want to transcend the woman candidate one.

Mr. Crowley, Hillary didn't assert that Obama was qualified to be Commander in Chief because sometimes even a Clinton can't bring themselves to lie that baldly.

You are not mistaken.  This speech was about the party and unity, and not about Obama.  She threw his name in there a couple of times (so she wouldn't sound too callous, like Reagan did in 1980), but this was about her campaign and her party.   She looked positively pained at the beginning when she was discussing Obama, but then really started to get into it when she talked about her own campaign.  Obama was an after thought tacked on to complete the "compact."  What was even worse was the pained look on Michelle Obama's face.  Looked like she was forced to eat worms.  

The most pitiful part was how pleased, needy, and grateful Bill looked when Hillary gave her obligatory homage to his presidency.

N.B. over @ NBC's First Read:

The McCain campaign responded, seizing on Clinton not explicitly saying Obama was ready to be Commander-in-Chief: “Senator Clinton ran her presidential campaign making clear that Barack Obama is not prepared to lead as commander in chief," McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds said. "Nowhere tonight did she alter that assessment. Nowhere tonight did she say that Barack Obama is ready to lead. Millions of Hillary Clinton supporters and millions of Americans remain concerned about whether Barack Obama is ready to be President.”

firstread.msnbc.msn.com/.../1295877.aspx

Man, some people are hard to please.  She gives the speech of her life and you hone in on something like that.  She did a great job.  Would it be possible to just appreciate that?  We'll get the C-in-C stuff from Bill and Joe tomorrow.

I actually like HRC and think she'd be a much stronger general election candidate than Obama. I also think he made a mistake by not choosing her as his VP. That said, I don't think this was a ringing endorsement of Obama. It was an endorsement of the Democratic candidate for president - better than the other guy.

Again, as good as could be expected, perhaps, and it's been well-received. But she still could have done more, and quite easily, by stating that he will be a great president and that his well qualified. She said so much about Biden. Given McCain's attack d'jour, this was especially important.

"What was even worse was the pained look on Michelle Obama's face.  Looked like she was forced to eat worms."

Huh? What speech were you watching?

For God's sake - who cares? 1) Mrs. Clintons is not the sole arbiter of who's fit to be commander in chief and who's not.  Any way, on this issue, her judgement is suspect: she thinks McCain is fit. 2) Her Harriet Tubman finale was wonderful.  The woman is talented.  Too bad things could not work out differently.

It was one of her critiques of him, but foreign policy in general was largely neglected in her speech, and that may have been all to the good.  This was the voice of an earlier (and less controversial) iteration of Hillary's campaign: the one that promised to bust ass on the domestic issues that have more or less been acknowledged as her strongest areas and remain probably the most defining aspect of her candidacy, and her overall career in politics.

Predictably, the McCain campaign noticed the same thing you did and fired a shot across the bow.  But I think that shot falls well short, following as it does a speech that equated McCain with Bush in no uncertain terms and left no doubt whatsoever that the stakes are too high to elect anybody other than Barack Obama.  The gabbing heads on MSNBC seemed to agree, and it's probably better that they're now talking about that aspect of the speech than revisiting "3 AM."

Oh, I don't know Mike, she did say that the fate of the planet depended on electing him......that ain't good enough for you?  That suggests that he would be a better commander in chief than the other guy.   How literal does she have to be?

Good gravy - you sound like Pat Buchanan criticizing Michelle Obama  because she didn't use the word 'church' in her speech.

Talk about overanalysis . . .

HRC said in debate that she believed that Barack Obama was ready to be president.  She praised him highly and by name in this speech (and his wife, and his running mate, and the running mate's wife), etc.  Of course she did not say that he would be a better president than she would--no one would believe seh meant that, because everyone knows she doesn't believe that, and she's entitled to that opinion.  But otherwise she certainly did not stint her praise.  She did a fine job, and I'm a confirmed anti-HRC voter.  She deserves some credit.

ChanRobt: re the feminist movement stuff, I think you have to keep in mind that her speech was deliberately aimed at one result: motivating her supporters to support the other guy.

It was far less a general endorsement speech than a specific plea to a specific audience (which was indeed very invested in the "glass ceiling" aspect of her candidacy), and that probably explains more about its structure and emphasis than the commentator you mentioned was taking into account.

Boy I can't wait to hear what Bill has to say.  This could be bigger than the Beijing fireworks.  If McCain picks a woman for veep, he can just go up to the ranch for the next two months and sit this out.

Hillary Clinton is not a great orator. She speaks with mechanical precision, clear and direct and but

"I would think she would want to transcend the woman candidate one."

On the one hand, Channy, I agree completely. On the other hand, I think that a) she is not the nominee and does not have to speak for the whole party, b) the femenist rapport is precisely the tie that bonds her most ardent supporters, and c) as with all elections, consolidating the party base after the primaries is paramount.

timteeter, well said and agreed.

I thought it was an excellent speech. It must have been hard for her, yet she managed to sound sincere and it was very well written and there were a lot of great lines. But she doesn't like Obama, and it would have come across as entirely phony if she'd overdone the platitudes. I'm sure she understood her limitations as an actress. By framing her speech the way she did, she was able to say it sincerely and with conviction. There's no doubt that in my mind that even if she doesn't like Obama personally, even if her endorsement of Obama is about voting for the lesser of two evils, she did a good job of outlining why it was important for her supporters to vote for him over McCain. And after all -- as Norah O'Donnell pointed out --she doesn't have to deliver her supporters love to Obama, she just has to deliver their votes. I think her speech was convincingly unifying.

The other thing that stood out tonight: she is so much more mature than her husband. I could really see why she's her daughter's hero tonight.

Bill was a like a little boy beaming with pride when she praised his presidency. For the first time, I realized that in terms of temperament, he has a lot more in common with Bush and McCain than he does with Obama -- Obama may be the youngest of all of them, but his is an old soul, whereas they all have the souls of adolescents(oops, bad thought -- does that bode ill for Obama?).

That said, after tonight, I bet Clinton COULD give that sincere-sounding ringing endorsement of Obama that Hillary just couldn't. For all his flaws, he does have that charm and the ability to be warm and effusive without seeming insincere even when objectively the observer knows he's gotta be. Until tonight, I had forgotten that talent of his. Did you see the look on his face when people were chanting Obama's name? I was stunned by the look of rapturous enthusiasm he managed to evince. How do you go from angry sulking that lasts for months right up until the day of your wife's speech to apparently genuine Obama fan in the minutes immediately preceding it? I can't imagine that he did, but boy did he look like a convert in that audience tonight.

And I interpreted the look on Michelle's face as anxiety and a figurative crossing of her fingers At one point, I saw her brother say something to her and she nodded vigourously; their body language spoke relief.

The "commander-in-chief" aspect of the presidency has become a Republican club to beat up on anyone else with.  This has a limited historical basis and there are many other, arguably more important, aspects of the job, and we're not a militaristic society like Prussia in the 19th century.  Soldiers are citizens in uniform, not the natural manifestation of autocratic power.

The United States is a paranoid society desperately attracted to war and conquest to the exclusion of all other values -- if it was, we'd have nothing to counter Putin with.

You Obama people!  Please get over yourselves.  Hillary could do back flips your your guy and you'd be comparing her to last week's Olympic contestants. And why should SHE make the case for Obama making a great commander in chief when he's so week in doing that himself?  I've been waiting for that answer for about a year now.  Anyway, I'll vote for him because I'm a Democrat.  But if you think your cool guy can sway independents because he's the new and improved politician of the 21st century, you're going to have a rude awakening.  (Just like our party had in '68 and "72 and "80 and "88 and 2000 and '04).

She really did give a great speech. True, she did not praise Obama personally, but she did say the future of our country hung in the balance, or something along those lines, so she made it crystal clear that she supported him. She doesn't have to like him, or like coming in second.

As far as the party unity aspect was concerned, she took it to 11. And I 'd give her a 10 for her effective hits on McCain, which were effective without being petty (maybe McCain might try something similar). So the fact that she didn't do everything that she might possibly have done is a pretty minor point, I think.

And I'm going one better.  If Obama doesn't roll out his cabinet appointments soon, I mean at least three weeks before the election, the guys going to be in big trouble. I can  foresee a drop in the polls which will make your head spin.   Do you really think independents are going to vote for him because he keeps his mouth shut on the most important issues affecting this country.

Or do you think his principled anti-war stance is enough to convince independents he's got the right stuff? Obama's a cypher. That's great if your an artist, a writer, but politics is a meat and potatoes kind of living, and unless someone revoked some immutable laws, we the people all have to eat in the short run, because where is it we're all going to be in the long run?

Great point, ironyroad. We need to get over this "we are in perpetual war" mentality. A struggle, yes, but we can win that by being ourselves and leading the world instead of shrinking back in fear and paranoia.

Hillary's speech did what needed to be done. Echoing icarus a bit, who really gives a shit what she thinks about qualifications for CIC? Her principal credential in this regard was being married to a president who had zero national security experience himself, and who for the first two years of the genocide in Bosnia was focused on "gays in the military" as CIC.

It's going to be up to Obama to settle this issue--no one can do it for him. If he continues to respond to events like Russian aggression in Georgia with "nuance", he will lose.

I mean, if we're really going to hit HRC for what she did NOT say (which, I repeat, is overanalysis), then I note for the record that she said she was a proud mother, a proud Democrat, a proud American, etc. . . . but she did NOT say she was a proud wife!  Anyone want to read something into that?

Terrific speech. I liked the tilt more towards the Party, less towards Obama. More towards domestic policy, less towards foreign policy. I think a ringing endorsement of Obama as commander-in-chief, while needed, would have been false. She doesn't believe it.

My dislike of her husband's conduct in the White House, and after, colored my opinion of her, greatly. Last night I saw why she would have been a very good choice for VP - if she wasn't tied to him.

She's going to be a great senator. I hope last night signals that she will be a srong, active supporter of Obama. I haven't heard anyone comment on the absence of "I'm a proud wife" from her opening. It stunned me. Did anyone else notice?

"And I'm going one better.  If Obama doesn't roll out his cabinet appointments soon, I mean at least three weeks before the election, the guys going to be in big trouble. I can  foresee a drop in the polls which will make your head spin.   Do you really think independents are going to vote for him because he keeps his mouth shut on the most important issues affecting this country."

Not to step on the whole unity vibe, but this post is frankly idiotic.  a) Nobody's poll numbers drop because they don't tell people about their cabinet appointments before the election.  I think cabinet appointments are important, but they're pretty much never an electoral issue.  b) He's done anything but "keep his mouth shut on the most important issues affecting this country"  The only way you could possibly come to this conclusion is if you totally ignored everything he's said during the campaign.  I will say that he needs to talk a lot more about health care, but he's had plenty to say about the economy, foreign policy, energy, etc.

I tend to agree with scire and Jeff Frey that although you're correct in noting the omission, I don't think it diminishes her speech's impact. When you say that the fate of the nation rests on the election of Barack Obama, that's pretty full-throated, and anything but a tepid endorsement. Frankly, for her to have explictly addressed his fitness to serve could have been awkward and would have been picked apart by pundits anyway. So best to say what she did, which is that the stakes are high and that a vote for McCain would be disastrous to the issues she cares about.

"Nothing less than the fate of our nation and the future of our children hang in the balance."

Enough said...

One more example of what my grandpappy* used to say: ya can't please everyone.  It wasn't the Gettysburg Address, but it was the best speech anyone could have reasonably expected Hillary Clinton to give.  She sold it well, too.  It reminded me of the early days of the primary campaign, when I thought nothing could possibly keep Hillary from the White House.

*NB: My grandfather never actually said this.

Gabriel: if you actually bother to read rather than simply drool out speaking points, you would note that most "Obama people" have positive things to say about the speech, and the ones who do not, have explained it carefully (here and on other threads), not on the basis of animus but of message and delivery.  So, on that score, and frankly speaking as a former admirer of Mrs. Clinton and one of the "Obama people", I suggest you put a sock in it.

Your other post about rolling out Cabinet appointments is funny.  Funny because it is PRECISELY why I was turned off of Mrs. Clinton's quest: the changing "metrics".  At every step of the way, whatever milestone or goalpost or endline that arrived, Mrs. Clinton and her surrogates moved the goalposts and demanded more.  This is yet another step in that direction.  For her to have done that in the context of a primary, while improper, at least made sene; for you now to do so, after Mrs. Clinton's speech, reeks of something else.  And here is the bottom line: either you agree with the platform and the policies and the points that Mrs. Clinton set out, in which case, you will fall in line and "keep going" until the Republicans are unseated.  Alternatively, you were simply for HER, regardless of her policy objectives, in which case you were wrapped and you are wrapped up in a personality cult - making your "Obama people" quaint, charming, ironic and hugely amusing.

what timteeter said, and I am about as confirmed a Hillary hater as anyone. She certainly has improved as a speaker, much earlier it just seemed like she yelled her speeches.

And gabriel, most people here are Obama supporters and they mostly all praised her speech. By the way, what planet are you on? McCain's only shot is if America is about as racist as I think it is, otherwise even Dukakis could win this contest. If you would get your head out of Hillary's ass you would see that. By the way, I loved that line that all of this is not about her but about her beliefs.

ick, I disagree about one thing you said. If the McCain of 2000 were running I would find I agree with more of his policies than Obama's. However I still would have voted for Obama precisely because of him and what he represents. The benefit for me is that if McCain had won I would get over my disappointment quickly. Sadly, McCain has made my decision much easier since he has decided to become a Dick Cheney clone. Maybe I misjudged him before but I think McCain is now pretty much an unprincipled disgraced, motivated far more by solipsism than anything else. What is suprising to me is how few of these Hillary diehards can even see this, but they also never noticed Hillary's solipsism either.

Blackie: to paraphrase Rumsfeld (and I do hate doing it, but for all his failings, he did make sense at times), you go with the election you've got, not the election you might want or might have had.  I have never liked McCain and I think he just looked good against Shrub and given the midgets who were running for the Republicans in 2000.  Be that as it may, I made my comment above about what Hilllary or Obama might represent in the context of this election, where you could not possibly have more contrasting platforms and, given the incompetence and cronyism and corruption of the past eight years, you could not possibly have more at stake in keeping the same gang of criminals (headed by a different clown) out of power.

This is the age old ceteris paribus question, and that things are never quite equal.  Yes, IF you had two people of similar policies and more or less similar competence, you might go with symbolism and the personal qualities; you might even accept some policy differences as not mattering to the bigger picture.  Whether McCain of 2000 would or could have claimed "all thing equal" with Obama of 2008 is difficult to assess.  As to the policies and contexts of McCain 2008 and Obama 2008, I don't think there is any similarity at all.  This is where to say "If not Hillary then McCain" misses the point of what Hillary stood for and stands for, suggesting a personality cult rather than truly following a political leader.

And blackie: John Paul Stevens is 136 years old.  A McCain Presidency will be a race between which of them kicks the bucket first.  Not a good thing, as Martha would say.

I think it's also worth asking the question, What gives Hillary the credentials to determine whether Obama is fit to be Commander in Chief anyway? Frankly, notwithstanding her roll as First Lady, she doesn't really have that capability. Biden, Nunn, Rockefeller, Gore, Carter -- these are serious people who can speak to Obama's fitness and they've all enthusiastically given him their support.

ick, yeah, as much as I hate Hillary, if McCain ran this kind of campaign against her I would have voted for her, it isn't the idiocy of commercials such as the Britney spears, it is the policies. I simply have no more faith in McCain as being a centrist, he seems far more interested in being Commander-in-chief than anything else. When you are uninsured, or fearful of losing your job why the hell should I care about what is going on in Lebanon (one of his commercials shows hizbollah) In 2000 he might have been the person for the job, not now.

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

Blackie: In all but one Federal election in Canada since I got the right to vote - that is, for the past twenty years - I have had to hold my nose when voting.  For the first two elections, my local MP was a lunatic right wing bigotted pig - he happened to wear the right party colors and in a Parliamentary democracy, that's what you go with.  After that, I moved away, and my local member of Parliament (for the Liberals) was just a corrupt and incompetent pig - again, to have the right leader I had to vote for the wrong person.  Just in one election I managed to change my registration to my parents' riding so that I could vote for a guy who was just stupid, but otherwise honest and of sound political views.

Democracy sucks in some ways, and there are serious drawbacks in Parliamentary democracy - but you gotta ask what is it that matters: for me, I could not vote for a party that promised to bring back the death penalty, lower taxes for the rich, cut social services, limit abortion etc. and so I held my nose and voted for the bigot, the pig and the idiot, in succession, to make sure the right party got in.

As an anti-Hillary commenter, you would find fault with her no matter what she said or didn't say.  If she had said that she NOW thought Obama was qualified, you'd probably criticize her for being insincere or too political.  Just can't please you anti-Hillary folks.    

Maybe Bill will beg for forgiveness for repealing Glass-Steagall?

Or maybe he'll apologise for the regressive, and disastorous Welfare to Work scam that amounts to cruel-and-unusual-punishment:

www.dollarsandsense.org/.../0900albelda.html

"The types of jobs poor mothers get and can keep provide neither much dignity nor sufficient wages. Working enough hours at low wages to support a family is often untenable. Women fail too often. This is not only demoralizing, but economically debilitating."

Now, that's a speech I'd like to hear from Bill.

blackton -- your "John McCain 2000 vs. 2008" point is good up to a point -- both candidates are, just like Bill Clinotn and GWB, not being totally honest on their plans (to say the least).  Both know that the deficit and economy will dictate a lot of their policy.  THey also know their Iraq plans, as stated, are nonstarters.  But yes, McCain's clearly is more comfortble with the concept of being a "war president" than living through a time of relative peace like Clinton and "manaaging" things.

My work has been crazy busy this week so maybe I'm in the minority, but little of the convention is filtering through to me.  I wonder if juxtaposing it with the Olympics was a smart idea -- if there is no big bump, that's going to be as much of a reason to me as anything (though from the little that is filtering through, there hasn't been a lot of inspired rhetoric -- gawd was Pelosi's speech and the little I heard of Warner boring.)

After watching the CNN interview with this Clinton delegate ( www.youtube.com/watch ) I'm not so sure this is not a moot point. The thing that strikes me is how connected and empowered this woman feels because of Hillary, and the disappointment is obviously overwhelming. (And people bitch about Obama's cult of personality? Sheesh...) It would seem that the real problem faced in uniting the party is that Obama absolutely cannot replace what these delegates are losing. Worse, as a bearer of the Y chromosome, he fully represents everything they resent about life: a man underperforming and outgaining a woman every step of the way. Of course, one's view of Obama's performance is perfectly subjective, but that just makes this problem even more difficult to address.

Nevertheless, no matter how empowered they feel, no matter how resentful against Obama, no matter how they redo the math to prove Hillary wuz robbed, no matter how many bitter t-shirts they put on to parade the corridors of the Convention, the truths of politics (Democratic and democratic) remain in force:

1.  You have to learn how to lose, as you're likely to do more losing than winning, and at some point your ego takes a back seat.

2.  Nobody owns the presidency or even the nomination, no matter how high they think their standing is or should be in the party.

3.  If our candidate loses in November and enough people believe that senior Democrat X either caused that or stood by and let it happen, people won't forget X.

Harping on this omission is feeding into a silly narrative.  Perhaps another mediot will ask her about Obama's readiness now, and when she says he's ready, the narrative will be that she sounded insincere.  

I love the fact that she appealed to the party's agenda as a means of uniting the party.  That's the point!  She wasn't going to be effective if she tried too hard to warm the doubters up to Obama.  Her message was that however you feel about Obama, vote for him anyway because this election's far too important re: the reasons we're all engaged in politics to begin with.  That's much more realistic and persuasive to actual people.  Also, in an indirect way, she primed listeners for how Obama himself tries to appeal to voters, by transcending the politics in favor of what's important!

This is coming from an Obama supporter who'd have happily voted for either candidate.

SERIOUSLY???  How can an insightful editorial wiz such as yourself not understand nuance?  Webster's Dictionary:  1 : a subtle distinction or variation

2 : a subtle quality : nicety

3 : sensibility to, awareness of, or ability to express delicate shadings (as of meaning, feeling, or value)

— nu·anced  \-ˌän(t)st, -ˈän(t)st\ adjective

I know TNR has a history of Obama love but come on!!.  Her speech was gracious, heartfelt, amazingly generous and likely the best runners up speech ever.  Give her a break, Crowley.