Later today, Barack Obama will officially receive the nomination of his party for President of the United States, but last night, the story was all about Hillary Clinton:
DENVER — With her husband looking on tenderly and her supporters watching with tears in their eyes, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton deferred her own dreams on Tuesday night and delivered an emphatic plea at the Democratic National Convention to unite behind her rival, Senator Barack Obama, no matter what ill will lingered.
Mrs. Clinton, who was once certain that she would win the Democratic nomination this year, also took steps on Tuesday — deliberate steps, aides said — to keep the door open to a future bid for the presidency. She rallied supporters in her speech, and, at an earlier event with 3,000 women, described her passion about her own campaign. And her aides limited input on the speech from Obama advisers, while seeking advice from her former strategist, Mark Penn, a loathed figure in the Obama camp.
But the main task for Mrs. Clinton at the convention — reaffirming her support for Mr. Obama in soaring and unconditional language — dominated her 23-minute speech, and she betrayed none of the anger and disappointment that she still feels, friends say, and that has especially haunted her husband.
Declaring herself to be “a proud supporter of Barack Obama,” Mrs. Clinton urged Democrats to put aside their loyalty to her and unite behind Mr. Obama — or risk continuing Bush administration policies under the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain.
“Whether you voted for me, or voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose,” Mrs. Clinton said, beaming as the convention hall burst into applause. “And you haven’t worked so hard over the last 18 months, or endured the last eight years, to suffer through more failed leadership.”
She added, “No way, no how, no McCain.”
So, even if Bill is still holding a grudge, Hillary is fully on board with Obama, at least in public (which is really all that matters right now.
The question is whether the supporters will follow:
Despite Clinton’s plea for Democrats to unite, her delegates remained divided as to how they should proceed.
There was Jerry Straughan, a professor from California, who listened from his seat in the rafters and shook his head at what he considered the speech’s predictability. “It’s a tactic,” he said. “Who knows what she really thinks? With all the missteps that have taken place, this is the only thing she could do. So, yes, I’m still bitter.”
There was JoAnn Enos, from Minnesota, who digested Clinton’s resounding endorsement of Barack Obama and decided that she, too, will move on and get behind him. “I’ll vote for [Obama] in the roll call,” she said, “because that’s what Hillary wants.”
There was Shirley Love, from West Virginia, who smiled at Clinton’s composure, waved a button bearing her name and felt a renewed pang of regret that she had lost the nomination. “She deserves it,” Love said. “That’s the thing that sticks with you. Even if she can move on easily, that’s not as easy for everybody else.”
(…)
Clinton’s performance fell far short of the panacea the Democratic Party had desperately hoped for, delegates said. Some worried that, after Clinton’s public withdrawal, more voters might defect for Republican John McCain or simply stay home.
“I’m not going to vote for Obama. I’m not going to vote for McCain, either,” said Blanche Darley, 65, a Texas delegate for Clinton. Darley wore a button saying “Obamination Scares the Hell Out of Me.”
“We love her, but it’s our vote if we don’t trust him or don’t like him,” said Darley, who was a superdelegate for Bill Clinton in the 1990s.
Weeping, Dawn Yingling, a 44-year-old single mother from Indianapolis, said that the speech was “fabulous” but that she still isn’t going to work for the Obama campaign. “She was fabulous, nothing less than I expected. It’s hard to sit here and think about she would have accomplished. We’re not stupid — we’re not going to vote for John McCain,” she said. But she’ll limit her campaigning to a House candidate. “It will take a Congress as well as a president. That’s what I can do and be true to who I am.”
And there appears to be some bad blood among Hillary’s big donors as well:
DENVER — A significant number of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s top fund-raisers remain on the sidelines and unwilling to work for Senator Barack Obama, a nettlesome problem that appears to be contributing to the campaign’s failure to keep pace with ambitious fund-raising goals it set for the general election.
The lingering rancor between the sides appears to have intensified at the Democratic convention, with grousing from some Clinton fund-raisers about the way they are being treated by the Obama campaign in terms of hotel rooms, credentials and the like. Tensions were already high, particularly in the wake of revelations that Mr. Obama did not vet Mrs. Clinton or ask her advice on his vice-presidential pick.
Many major Clinton fund-raisers skipped the convention; others are leaving Wednesday, before Mr. Obama’s speech.
More broadly, a consensus appears to have emerged among many major Clinton donors that the Obama campaign did not do enough to enlist their support, according to interviews with more than a half-dozen Clinton fund-raisers.
“I’ve had more contact from the McCain campaign since the nomination than from the Obama campaign,” said Calvin Fayard, a New Orleans lawyer, major Clinton fund-raiser and longtime Democratic donor who is not in Denver this week.
Mr. Fayard said he was considering supporting Senator John McCain, the Republican, citing what he perceived as Mr. Obama’s inexperience.
How representative these people are of the voters that gave Clinton victories in states like Pennsylvania, Florida, and Ohio is unclear, but if even a small percentage of the people who supported Hillary in the primaries either stay home or vote for McCain in November, Barack Obama could find himself with a problem.
