WASHINGTON: Hillary Clinton hit a home run last night — all the way out of the Democratic National Convention — when she delivered her endorsement speech to the delegates there. She had a huge task: To help her one-time opponent unite a party that seemed on the verge of tearing apart in the aftermath of the most protracted primary race in modern history.
Hillary used her prime-time convention address to reassure her coalition of 18 million voters that Barack Obama and his running mate Joe Biden would carry on her battle for universal health care, economic growth through green jobs and renewed American prestige overseas.
She issued sharp criticism for John McCain and gave full-throated support for Obama, urging Democrats to put the long and bitter battle behind them and unite to take back the White House in November. Hillary put aside the disappointments of her close primary defeat to implore her supporters to back Obama and dismiss the GOP nominee: “No way. No how. No McCain.”
In her speech on Tuesday night, Hillary appeared to bury the hatchet with Obama once and for all. “Whether you voted for me or whether you voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose,” Hillary said as Democrats, clustered into the packed Pepsi Center, waved white signs emblazoned with “Hillary” on them. “We are on the same team, and none of us can afford to sit on the sidelines,” Hillary said.
Bill Clinton and Biden will now share the spotlight at the DNC, and eyes will be focused on the former president to see if he matches the rousing endorsement given by his wife to Obama.
Democrats are wondering what he will say to sell voters on the younger man whose success so clearly frustrated him during the oft-bitter race. Bill Clinton, by the way, will leave the convention before Obama speaks today.
The DNC is supposed to be an opportunity to take care of committee business and formally nominate a presidential nominee, but it has become more of a “Days of Our Lives” episode that has the media riveted on the controversy that many delegates here are still mad that it is not Hillary who will accept the historic nomination tonight. Hillary’s supporters are warming to Obama, but they still love her.
Most Hillary backers acknowledge they will inevitably support the Illinois senator for whom they came all the way to Denver. But up until last weekend, when Obama tapped Biden as his running mate, they held out hope that he would ask Hillary to be his vice president. But publicly, at least, Hillary has been a good sport. Within days of losing the Democratic nomination to Obama, her aides said she was all business, returning to her Senate duties, telling people she would do whatever Obama asked her to do in the general election.
Bill, however, is not over it. He is trying, his associates say. But his resentments from the bitter campaign battles of last winter and spring are many and diverse, and people who have spent time with him recently said they fester just below the surface.
In a Rasmussen Reports poll released yesterday, 21 percent of Democrats said the former president and Obama really don’t like each other. Some 57 percent said the animosity is manufactured by the media.
For the Clintons, the politics of the week are simple: Accept the cheers of the many Democrats who still support them, continue to lavish praise on Obama, and make sure that if he loses no one can say it was because they were covertly rooting for that result. It also requires them to embrace a generational transition in which the Clintons — whose political personas once stood for youth and the excitement of change — are cast as sunset figures, two conventional politicians in their 60s being shoved aside by a charismatic young celebrity.
Now 60, Hillary could easily chase her dream in a future White House contest, activating the fierce loyalists and the women who dreamed of a woman president — and perhaps calling in an IOU from a future President Obama.
Conscious of their potential to overshadow Obama at the presumptive nominee’s coronation party, the Clintons have planned few other public outings, and no news media appearances.
Obama gets the final word today, with a nomination speech that aides say will deal heavily with defining the economic stakes.
