10:43. Already much better than Warner. She hasn't done all she has done to see another Republican squander...
10:45. "No way, no how, no McCain." Fantastic line. She has a chance to win me back.
10:49. Talking directly to her supporters. I hope that this is meaningful, although I suspect that too many of those supporters, those that claim to now be in the McCain camp, were never truly Democratic supporters -- how could they be? And can she take this beyond tonight's speech?
10:50. Nice eulogy for Stephanie Tubbs Jones.
10:51. Getting into core issues. Time to hammer into the failure of current Bush policies. I hope she gets into a sustained attack on McCain. I'm concerned that it's sounding a little too much like a Clinton stump speech, with too much "I ran". She needs to make this more about Barack, but she's hitting many of the right issues.
10:54. OK, here we go. "Were you in this campaign just for me, or...." This is absolutely the right approach, and tied it in beautifully to what I was first concerned about. This is really starting to get into high gear. It seems to me, however (although this is not a criticism of Hillary per se, but rather of her "supporters"), that much of the problem is not that some of these so-called "PUMAs" were not in the campaign for the many various issues, or even for Hillary, but, in their minds, were in it for themselves, and have taken Hillary's primary loss as a personal affront. Can she pull them along? If they were a supporter of her or the policies, she's saying that they have no choice to vote for Barack Obama. If they don't, it was never about her or the issues.
10:58. Alternating between "Barack" and "President Obama." Nice.
10:59. She's hitting McCain on issues, but perhaps a bit too abstract for my taste. And I wish she wasn't smiling through the laundry list. But getting better, and hitting some of the issues that I mentioned in my earlier post on Warner's keynote.
11:03. "Keep going.... And before we can keep going we have to get going by electing Barack Obama as the next President of the United States. We don't have ... a vote to spare..."
I think Hillary did as well as she could have done. This was a very good speech for Hillary. We'll see how this speech is spun now.
UPDATE: Olbermann agrees, calling it a grand slam. Matthews also seems to love it.
UPDATE # 2: Um, I'm watching a woman on CNN who is in tears. She's saying, though the tears, that Hillary, who should be president, did what she had to do, now it is time for Obama to do what he has to do, whatever in the world that means. She won't commit to voting for Barack, though she says she won't vote for McCain. It seems that for me, the speech was a very good way to bring the Hillary folks on board, but for the Clinton obsessives, it just further convinced them of how Hillary really deserved it. I don't understand this, I'm completely perplexed and frustrated. And CNN just went to commercial and guess which one aired -- the McCain/Hillary ad. Ugh.
UPDATE # 3: And now, the McCain camp has issued their reaction, using Hillary to knock Barack again, with the argument that Hillary didn't say Barack is ready to lead. And CNN just has to read it, and keep regurgitating it (though Carville is providing the proper reaction about the complete lack of graciousness in the McCain camp), along with the program note that they will be bring in lots more Republican reaction in a few minutes.
UPDATE # 4: Carville said this is a bad night for Hillary haters. For the first time in a long time, I agree completely with Carville.
UPDATE # 5: Or maybe not. Andy Sullivan is barely moved, saying she did the bare minimum. Perhaps it's Sullivan's anti-Clinton obsession shining through, or maybe my perception is skewed. He's right, she didn't hit McCain as hard on the issues as I would like, as I've mentioned below. But this was about as effective as I've seen her, and I didn't sense any irritation, which I sort-of expected. So, I'm pretty happy. Still not sure it will help with her phony supporters, but it's a start.
UPDATE #6: Here's the video of the speech.
