On the day after the Indiana and North Carolina primaries, I wrote a piece in which I asserted that Senator Hillary Clinton’s post-election speech indicated that she knew her quest for the presidency was over for 2008. Near the end, I said:
…for the first time in my recollection, Senator Clinton allowed for the possibility of defeat and, in a possible effort to assuage the concerns of superdelegates fearful of the bitterness aroused by the contest between Clinton and Obama, spoke more about Democratic unity.
Clinton spoke of the common “journey” being made by both she and Obama…
I then concluded the piece in this way:
The 2008 campaign is over for Hillary Clinton. She clearly knows that in her head. Some time in the next few weeks, when her heart catches up to her head, she’ll put an end to her quest, showing more class than her most vicious detractors claim she possesses, clearing the way for Senator Obama to begin the work of solidifying his Democratic base for the fall campaign.
For weeks now, in spite of her campaigning for Barack Obama, some pundits have said that Clinton wanted to sabotage her former Democratic nomination rival’s efforts to win the presidency this fall.
But if anybody thought that, Clinton’s address to the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night must have disabused them of such notions. Her speech was, as the New York Times rightly puts it, an “emphatic plea at the Democratic National Convention to unite behind her rival, Senator Barack Obama, no matter what ill will lingers.”
One thing that struck me as I watched Clinton tonight is what amazing strides she has made as a speaker since the beginning of her presidential campaign. Gone was the shrill, wooden regurgitator of tag lines. Instead, Clinton has become, if not a gifted orator, an effective one who connects with her audience. Only once did she step on a line that deserved more emphases, an impressive achievement in a hall filled with thousands of people and a sophisticated sound system. If Clinton, an indefatigable campaigner, had been as honed a speaker at the beginning of her nomination quest as she evidenced being tonight, one with an incredible capacity not just to empathize with people, but convey that empathy, the results might have been very different in 2008.
But more substantively, Clinton displayed the class and the political smarts I attributed to her in that piece written on the day after the Indiana and North Carolina primaries. She was gracious and enthusiastic in her words of support for the Obama-Biden ticket. Her speech will go a long way toward securing the party unity Democrats know they need to face off against a formidable John McCain.