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« Clinton Speech: Good On Style But Will It Last

Bill Kristol and His Fox Team See No Good, Hear No Good and Say No Good in and about Hillary’s Speech »

“No Way, No How, No McCain”

Posted by TONY CAMPBELL, Columnist in At TMV, Politics.
Aug 26th, 2008 | Comments

Writer’s Comment: This writer does not have a transcript of Senator Clinton’s speech to reference so forgive any missed quotes.

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton really surpassed my expectations tonight. Her speech directly confronted her supporters to put up or shut up. The line I enjoyed the most was when she said “I want you to ask yourself, were you in this campaign just for me…we did it before with President Clinton and the Democrats and we will do it again with President Obama and the Democrats.”

Here are some other highlights from the speech:

“The time is now to unite, one party, one purpose.”

“None of us can afford to sit on the sidelines.”

“Barack Obama is my candidate, he must be our President.”

“I haven’t spent the past thirty-five years fighting…to see another Republican in the White House.”

The tone of the speech was pro-Obama and a call to “keep going.” It included a respectful thank you and a warning to her supporters that “we don’t need four more years of the last eight years.”

There were some humorous moments in Senator Clinton’s speech as well. The line about the Twin Cities and how symbolic it was for McCain and Bush to be there next week because “they are so hard to tell apart” was priceless.

I have been skeptical if Senator Clinton would really give up her historic campaign after getting so close to the finish line. Tonight, she proved me wrong. Her speech and her demeanor were brilliant and proved she has ensured her place in American political history.

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Leonidas

The speech was a general call to American's to vote for the Democratic candidate. Surprise, Surpride its the Democratic National Convention.

What was absent? A strong proclamation of Obama's abilities and experience, and discussion of issue positions, and a criticism of McCain's abilities and experiences and discussion of his issue possitions.

What was there? A call for Democrats to unite, a condemnation of the Bush administration (Bush isn't running in 2008 BTW Hil) and a moving account of how the woman's movement has progressed.

If you took out Obama's name from the speech and inserted another democrat it would have still fit. There was nothing really special about it, excepting the area of the woman's movement.

DLS

The speech was lousy. Awake, non-Kool-Aid-drinking members of the nation-wide audience observed that she was wooden like Al Gore, obviously self-serving, spoke too long, was pathetic in parts, and had us laughing derisively by the end as we thought about begging the stage managers for the Hook to yank her off the stage and end our misery.

Last night at the convention was nearly 100% a waste of time. It needs to be much better tonight.

The Kool-Aid drinkers can engage in all the fiction they want and claim how great her speech was, but it wasn't; it was lousy, and all the lies to the contrary won't change it.

The Dem voters certainly chose the much better and more appealing candidate this year, that's for certain.

Can the Dems rescue the rest of their convention besides Obama's speech on Thursday? We'll see tonight. Good luck; they now need it.

ChrisWWW

Good luck; they now need it.

That would assume that anyone actually watches the conventions. They don't. They watch the coverage. Regardless of whether or not Clinton's speech was good (I think it was as good as any of her other speeches), it doesn't matter, because it's getting positive coverage everywhere but Faux News.

DLS

Well, the people saying the speech was wonderful are delusional; correctly saying her speech was lousy, as I have, has nothing to do with politics -- in the past I have been complimentary of liberal speeches that have been good.

The coverage has frequently been poor. Not only Fox (I haven't been watching Fox) but also CNN and here in Detroit metro I've simply been watching PBS, who shows all or nearly all that is on stage.

I hope Bill Clinton does a good job tonight and don't mind if he strays from the "script" and attacks the Republicans on the economy (the 1990s included a bubble but the economy is now in worse shape than it has been and Bill Clinton could even engage in psychop and say it's "like father, like son" as far as Bush economies are concerned).

There is nothing wrong with appreciating criticism from the "other side" when it is accurate, and maybe someday you'll learn to appreciate it.

While I and others were trading one or two remarks (that was all, not continuous barbs or sniping) about Hillary's speech last night ("pathetic"; "get the hook"), we all loved Schweitzer, who rallied the crowd, which should have been the object of every speech last night.

http://www.forbes.com/prnewswire/feeds/prnewswi...

Bill Clinton is not the only big-name speaker tonight; don't forget Joe Biden. He's going to be the most important other speaker and is anticipated to do some good McCain- and Republican-bashing. It's overdue!

DLS

"They watch the coverage."

We take note of the coverage and criticize the coverage, too, not just the arrogance of talking and not showing the current person on stage but some of the silly things that are said (often by people in Washington for far too long..).

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