CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
– POLITICS
Aug. 27, 2008 – 12:06 a.m.
Clinton Ends Epic Battle Gracefully
By Edward Epstein, CQ Staff
Hillary Rodham Clinton stirred Democratic delegates Tuesday evening with a valedictory for her historic but ultimately unsuccessful presidential campaign and urged her supporters — some of whom are still smarting over her loss — to get behind Barack Obama in November.
The New York senator’s speech was one of the most awaited moments of the Democrats’ Denver convention. After her epic, close nomination battle with Obama — the Democrats’ hopes of retaking the White House after an eight-year hiatus could come up short in November against Republican John McCain if her ardent backers either stay home or defect to the GOP.
“Whether you voted for me, or voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose. We are on the same team, and none of us can sit on the sidelines,’’ Clinton said to lengthy cheers after she was introduced by her daughter, Chelsea Clinton. Her speech that wound up her losing effort brought tears to the eyes of some her delegates.
“ Barack Obama is my candidate. And he must be our president,’’ Clinton added to the cheering audience that included her husband, former President Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama, the presumptive candidate’s wife. In all, Clinton mentioned Obama’s name some one dozen times during her minute speech.
She also slammed John McCain , the man the Republicans will nominate next week in St. Paul, Minn. “No way. No how. No McCain,” she said.
“We don’t need four more years of the last eight years,” she added.
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The early returns on Clinton’s speech among delegates at the jammed Pepsi Center were that the first woman to mount a nearly successful bid for a major party’s presidential nomination had helped the ticket of Obama and his vice presidential choice, Delaware Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr.
“She accomplished what Teddy Kennedy didn’t in 1980,” said Colmon Elridge, an Obama delegate from Kentucky, referring to the lingering divisions between Kennedy and President Jimmy Carter that helped sink the party’s prospects that year. “This is a united party right now.”
Rep. Al Green , D-Texas, said he felt Clinton’s speech will help Obama win in November. “We may start calling her kingmaker tonight,” Green said.
But another test comes Wednesday evening when Clinton’s husband, Bill Clinton, addresses the convention facing a similar rhetorical challenge.
If the Clintons’ are seen as not-serious enough in their support for Obama, it could damage their legacy among Democrats, especially if Obama and Biden lose in November.
While his wife has traveled to several states to campaign for Obama since dropping her active candidacy in June, the ex-president has been largely absent, apparently still smarting over his wife’s defeat.
Clinton Ends Epic Battle Gracefully
The first concrete evidence of the Clintons’ success in convincing their supporters to rally behind Obama will come after the former president’s speech on Wednesday evening when Obama and Sen. Clinton are placed in nomination and votes are cast.
The 60-year-old senator and former first lady, who got 18 million votes in primaries and caucuses, is expected to release her delegates on Wednesday afternoon. But if Clinton delegates in any great number try to cause mischief during the vote or turn their backs on Obama it could mean the calls for unity haven’t worked, at least not yet.
In Clinton’s own New York delegation, three House members who are pledged to vote for the senator — John Hall , Joseph Crowley and Timothy H. Bishop — said they plan to vote for Obama Wednesday. “I want to respect her wishes,” Crowley said of Clinton’s decision to release her backers.
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An elected New York delegate, Dr. Ashok Malhotra, described a conversation he had this week with a die-hard, female Clinton supporter from Florida.
“[They] are very mad but I explained that if we don’t work for Obama then we are disappointing Hillary,” he said of his attempt to reason with the supporter.
But other Clinton delegates said they will stick with their candidate. “I’m going to vote for her for historical purposes, and to make a statement,” said Lori Glasser of Florida. “I made a pledge to Mrs. Clinton and I’m a woman of my word. And, women in America need to be recognized.”
She also voiced a complaint made by other Clinton backers, that Obama hasn’t shown their candidate or them enough respect.
“I’m looking for the Obama campaign to reach out and unite us all,” she said. “They need, after Thursday, to make sure Obama contacts the delegates. He needs to personally reach out.”
Anne Price-Mills, an African-American Clinton delegate from Washington state, said she still isn’t sold on Obama. She said she was looking for “tangible evidence” that Obama has the experience and leadership moxie to be commander in chief. “When you hire a CEO, it’s not just because he has a smile. You need the resume. Sometimes you take a chance . . . but I’m cautious,’’ she said, adding that she might sit out the general election.
The angriest of Clinton’s delegates said they were circulating a petition demanding that the convention hold a complete roll call vote of all delegations Wednesday. There have been reports that the Obama and Clinton camps have agreed to a deal under which the roll call will begin and votes would be announced until her New York delegation votes. At that point, the roll call would be interrupted by a motion to make the vote unanimous for Obama.
For their petition to be considered, the Clinton supporters need a minimum of 860 delegate signatures, or 20 percent of the total number of delegates.
In her speech, Clinton thanked her supporters. “You never gave in. You never gave up. And together we made history,” she said. But she noted that she and Obama had few policy differences that merited her supporters turning away from Obama.
Clinton Ends Epic Battle Gracefully
She said the only way to achieve her objectives was by electing Obama. “We don’t have a moment to lose or a vote to spare,” she said.
The magnitude of the task Obama faces in soothing Clinton voters can be seen in a Gallup Poll released on Monday. It showed 47 percent of Clinton supporters say they are solidly in Obama’s camp. Another 23 percent said they support but could defect to McCain or stay home.
Sheri Bebitch Jeffe, a University of Southern California political scientist, said Obama still faces a big challenge in attracting Clinton’s “most rock-solid base: the ‘Hillary women.’ ”
“They are not moving over to Obama, and probably won’t even if Hillary goes all out” in campaigning for him this fall, she added.
Pennsylvania Gov. Edward Rendell said Clinton offered a stark message to her supporters in her speech — “Get over it. If you care about the things that I’ve fought for all my life, Barack Obama is the only one to bring those things into law,” he said.
Before Sen. Clinton spoke, the convention heard from a procession of elected officials, many of whom ratcheted up the convention’s tone by attacking McCain by name, in speeches centered on the day’s theme, the nation’s economy and energy policy.
Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius zinged McCain over his recent failure to know how many homes he and his wife, Cindy, own, “I’m sure you remember a girl from Kansas who said there’s no place like home. Well, in John McCain ’s version, there’s no place like home. And a home. And home. And home,’’ said Sebelius.
Rep. Rahm Emanuel , D-Ill., tried to tie McCain to President Bush’s economic record. “George Bush has put the middle class in a hole and John McCain has a plan to keep digging that hole with George Bush’s shovel,’’ he said.
“McCain has no problem hitting the snooze button on the economy because he’s never been a part of the middle class,’’ said Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland , who had backed Clinton in the primaries. “And I would say to him: Sen. McCain, it’s time for your wake-up call because we just can’t afford more of the same.”
“ John McCain calls himself a maverick, but he votes with George Bush 90 percent of the time. That’s not a maverick. That’s a sidekick,” said Pennsylvania Sen. Robert P. Casey, who supported Obama.
The convention keynoter, former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, generally took a less aggressive approach. “The race for the future is on, and it won’t be won if only some Americans are in the running. It won’t be won with yesterday’s ideas and yesterday’s divisions. And it won’t be won with a president who is stuck in the past,’’ he said.
Drew Armstrong, Molly Hooper, Lauren Phillips, Adriel Bettelheim, Liriel Higa and Jonathan Allen contributed to this story.
Comments
Oh Please!!! We'll see if last night was just another grandstanding and disingenuousness on the part of the junior senator from New York....
If you consider how shamefully Ted kennedy treated Jmmy Carter, how Gary Hart treated Walter Mondale, Jsse Jackson and on and on, it is clear that Skylark hates the Clintons. I want to remind him that the last Democratic president was Clinton, Hillary knows how to talk to people, not make stadium speeches, and she is clear about what she wants to do. You don't have to take my word for it , see what Gov. Ted Strickland says. Obama wanted him to be VP, but Strickland turned him down. His advice is "get out of stadiums, talk to people at Wal-Mart and tell them in ten words how you are going to make their lives better.
In America we expect losers to be a good sports, no matter what. The 2008 Olympics is a good example. It is time for the Clinton supporters,(and her husband) especially the ladies, to be good sports, shake hands with the winner, stop whinning, crying, complaining, kvetching. She lost. That's all there is to it. Time to get over it, move on, don't sit out this election, help elect Obama ,OR suffer 4 more years of Republican non-leadership, while waiting for Hillary to run again. If that is what they want, it is a betrayal of their candidate.
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