My reaction? “Goddamn and Holy Shit! She did it!” I’m (finally) sitting here in the bloggers’ lounge at the Pepsi Center, where I heard her speech, and from where I sit, she did what she needed to do.
In the first two sentences, she unequivocally supported Barrack Obama. Then she talked about her campaign — about the people she was in it for — and then she laid it on the line with one question: “Were you in it for me? Or were you in it for them?”
The answer was clear: You’ve got to be in it for them, and if you’re in it for them, you’ve got to elect Barrack Obama.
But you saw the same speech. What do you think?
I thought it was amazing, and I am going to sleep better tonight than I have in quite some time.
fantastic speech. loved it
good to hear because I was so excited to see it that I fell asleep on the couch and missed the whole rest of the evening.
First part of it was the same dull stump speech with hokey anecdotes of suffering Americans (not that there isn’t suffering). Then she perked up. She told people they should be for the causes they care about not just for her. It was a good message but still sounding so self-centered . Really liked the part about Seneca Falls and suffrage. She put some excitement into that.
It did the job, and the commentators on MSNBC were gushing. So, that’s all to the good.
Slightly off topic, could Warner have been worse? And Schweitzer was clearly animated, but we didn’t get a chance to listen to him. Had to listen to the MSNBC pontificators instead. He was cheated out of his evening in the limelight. And it was clear by audience reaction that he was a hit. Aah. The glories of TV coverage.
Yeah, I flipped to CSPAN when I realized that Schweitzer was on. Missed most of his speech though. I am so over these talking heads.
Hillary has improved a lot as a speaker. When the campaign first started, her speeches were nothing special, delivered in the tone of voice you got from your mother when she wanted you to pick up your clothes. Now she can really deliver a good speech.
She has improved, but she still has no natural sense of timing. And that is nearly as critical to an effective speech as the words.
I don’t understand why anyone wouldn’t watch CSPAN for these things. The twits on cable won’t say anything new for like 4 hours at a time. They just babble incoherently to fill up space until they can pick apart the main speaker.
Gov. Schweiter’s speech was the best of the night. And he did seem to be getting a big kick out of giving it. You really should go to CSPANs website to pull the video/transcript.
The Big Sky Dem rocked! I needed to be roused out of the Warner anesthesia and the gov delivered. I haven’t seen him speak before, but he’s the first guy to get the crowd really going in the first two days.
Will do. We watch so little TV, it never occurs to us. We only have cable stations because we have to have satellite for any TV or internet. So, we have many dozens of channels we never watch. But tonight we’ll find CSPAN and tune in there.
Thanks
She did her job. She unequivocally endorsed Barack Obama and she left the PUMAs with no wiggle room for failing to do the same, unless they’re truly for all that McSame has to offer America in terms of continuing the Bush legacy.
Now Bill can do his thing tomorrow and that should be a wrap on us hearing from the Clintons until Chelsea decides to run against George P. Bush for president in 16 years…
and did the best speech tonight.
There were 4 great speeches tonight, one after another. First, there was Schweitzer. Great great speech, and he brought them to their feet.
Then there was Warner. Great great great speech. He was a great critic of McCain without rancor.
Then there was Hillary. Fantastic. Exceptional. Just phenomenal.
She did the job, she used the lumber.
Tonight DEFINENTLY makes up for last night. Tonight, one after another, the speakers dumped on McManyHouse.
I am simply JAZZED, folks. I am VIBRATING. Tonight was fantastic.
was Chelsea’s. It was great, great, great because it was short, short, short.
Best speech of the night. I may not agree with his politics, but I just adore that man. He was too cute up there giving his speech.
Why not???
Following the In memoriam tribute… with his anti-war call? Telling America that it has squandered its resources and its lives for a pack of lies? Telling America to get on its collective feet and rise up to the challenge… and having the audience rise to a standing ovation?
Why don’t you consider THAT a great speech?
BTW… NO MORE BUSHES, NO MORE CLINTONS.
EVER!!!!
Not for a thousand thousand years.
LOL…I came onto this thread to just say how much I adored Kucinich. I didn’t see Clinton, but wow…Kucinich blew me away. I so want him as president. I’ve supported him for years based on his policies, but had never seen him speak. He was unapologetic, he refused to toe the line, he spoke his mind and his mind was right.
Oh yeah, I also am glad Obama didn’t choose Sebelius. As much as I wanted a woman, she was bland and boring, even though she said all the right things.
I’d have mentioned Kucinich, but I missed his speech as I have most of the convention. Hillary’s is the only one I’ve caught so far.
If you’re watching the convention at home, you’ve seen more of the convention than I have. Which makes me wonder why I’m here in the first place.
Schweitzer was GREAT!
I’m watching Hillary now. So far so good.
We found Warner to be a dull disaster. And if you didn’t know about McCain you would have learned absolutely nothing about him from Warner. That’s how subtle he was!
Great speech in my opinion! Hillary truly set the table for bring the Democratic Party together and it was done with style and grace. Let’s stop the talking and focus on the task at hand. It is important to re-focus out efforts on bring true change in Washington in November!
We are going to kick some McSame ass in the fall. Good for Hillary. Put the Democratic party and the country first. I hope her egotistical philandering husband was paying attention.
I saw what you did, and looks like others here also agree. Great speech. She said exactly what we all knew she needed to, and did it better than I’d expected. She thanked her people, supported Obama, and cut the legs out from under the PUMA tools.
She did a good job. Certainly her best speech this year, and she seems at peace with things the way they are. I do wish she had emphasized the Supreme Court a little more, since that may be the single most powerful argument to her supporters on the fence.
I wish everyone would emphasize the Supreme Court and the fact that Justice Stevens will probably have to retire soon. I’ve read that the next president could nominate as many as three justices – the idea of McCain doing that and putting more Antonin Scalia clones scares me to death.
She came out unequivocably for Obama and she told her supporters as clearly as she possibly could that if they supported her, they needed to support Obama.
McCain’s response was predictably lame, and CNN and Fox apparently were watching some other speech.
I thought the speech was a waste of airtime. 2/3 of it was the same stump speech she gave from Mar to June. She said the lines that she had to say, but she spent most of it talking about her. She did not walk back any of her shitty comments during the primaries.
It’s one thing to say that McCain sucks. She didn’t need to say why McCain sucks, she needed to state unequivocably why Obama rocked. She didn’t do that.
I still have $2300 waiting for her 2012 Senate primary challenger…
It was good political theater. Does anyone really believe that she no longer sees herself as the wronged chosen one?
I talked about this with some of the people in the blogger lounge. You’re right, she didn’t walk away from those comments. She didn’t mend those fences.
However, that wound is deep — because it’s really the reopening of much, much older woulds — and that’s not something that can be healed in a speech. That’s something that will probably take the next few years for Hillary to work on — and I believe she has to do this if she wants to run again in 2012 (and I’m 99% sure she does).
Trying to do that in her speech tonight would have derailed it, and she’d have taken a nosedive into the weeds.
She did what she had to do tonight to bring her supporters into the fold. The rehabilitation of Hillary Clinton re: black voters is a work yet to begin.
The Clintons’ political capital in these parts can be valued in Confederate dollars…
She said what she needed to say.
Will her surrogates do what they need to do and stop attacking?
CNN is reporting the Big Dog won’t be there Thursday.
Actions speak louder than words. Clinton’s actions speak for themselves.
He’s too busy running around the world deal making.
One MSNBC commentator expressed the thought that the unity talk was as much for Bill as it was for her followers. I tend to agree.
Beautiful. Just about perfect. I think she took the “divided party” meme off the table. She ends her run with grace and power and intelligence. She has embraced and empowered the whole great ecology that is the Democratic Party. Now it’s time for the Democratic Party to do the same to her.
Hillary has definitely grown as a speaker. She grated on me in her 2004 Dem convention speech, but not at all tonight.
She also came across as the most “authentic” and “on the level” that I’ve ever seen her be while giving a speech.
It will be interesting to see if Bill Clinton will be able to give a comparable performance tomorrow.
With style and grace and more than a touch of elegance, Hillary went right to the point in her unequivocal support of Obama. Plus, she did a great job in eviscerating McCain, a potent danger to the good of the Republic. There may be hope for America yet.
I think the net effect was to marginalize the PUMA’s. We’ll continue to hear a little whining from them, but they are now officially on their own. They don’t have Hillary’s seal of approval, and they are going to look even sillier after tonite.
I don’t think we’re going to have a problem with party unity.
Check the transcripts of yesterday’s coverage on MSNBC. They got marginalized then. They spent a good chunk of coverage making jokes at the PUMAs expense and it was simply because the ones that talked were un(der)informed.
Larry King of all people is asking tough questions to this PUMA member, Elizabeth Joyce. Her feelings are hurt and Obama needs to personally ask her for the vote. Yes, she wants him to ask her.
She is really delusional and I wish the media would stop giving them a microphone for their bitter feelings. We get it, go away now.
She said all the right things and said them well… about four months too late.
Like all things with the Clintons they will do the right thing when they absolutely have to and at the last possible moment.
What she bumped up against were her own limitations as a candidate. That was about as good a speech as she can deliver. In presidential politics it was never going to be good enough.
Bill’s crocodile tears were disgusting. That man has never loved anyone but himself. In the list of “proud” one thing glaring by it’s absence was proud wife.