Making a Case for the Blue States
Hillary, Bill and Biden
With just one speech, Hillary Clinton effectively dismissed any claims by Republican operatives that she’s only out for her own interests and doesn’t care about party unity. Last night, Senator Clinton gave the speech of her life, conveying emphatically that she is a Democrat above all else, and urging that her supporters get on board with the Obama campaign.
I don’t care what the right-wing talking heads say. There is no way any true Clinton supporter listened to that speech and decided that they still plan to vote for McCain in November. If they heard Mrs. Clinton exclaim, “We don’t have a moment to lose or a vote to spare. Nothing less than the fate of our nation and the future of our children hangs in the balance,” and decided that this was a throw-away speech that meant nothing, that she really didn’t mean what she was saying, there’s not much you could ever do to convince them that a vote for McCain is a vote to sink this great country of ours. “Nothing less than the fate of our nation and the future of our children hangs in the balance.” You absolutely can not put things in more black-and-white terms than that. There is no nuance there. It’s pretty clear. You cannot get clearer.
Any remaining Clinton holdouts are either members of Rush Limbaugh’s “Operation Chaos,” or they’re merely out for any attention they can get in the press, and they are only out for themselves. Let them go to the other side, because they are not advancing the ideals of the party, nor are they advancing the ideals of America as determined by the Founding Fathers.
Mrs. Clinton also offered,
I haven’t spent the past 35 years in the trenches advocating for children, campaigning for universal health care, helping parents balance work and family, and fighting for women’s rights here at home and around the world, to see another Republican in the White House squander our promise of a country that really fulfills the hopes of our people. And you haven’t worked so hard over the last 18 months or endured the last eight years to suffer through more failed leadership.No way, no how, no McCain.
But perhaps the most important statement the Senator made to her supporters was when she asked them, specifically,
…were you in this campaign just for me, or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that young boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?
That passage alone clearly reveals a former presidential candidate who believes that what is at stake here is more than her own personal ambition.
We need to elect Barack Obama because we need a president who understands that America can’t compete in the global economy by padding the pockets of energy speculators while ignoring the workers whose jobs have been shipped overseas. We need a president who understands we can’t solve the problems of global warming by giving windfall profits to the oil companies while ignoring the opportunities to invest in the new technologies that will build a green economy. We need a president who understands that the genius of America has always depended on the strength and vitality of the middle class.Barack Obama began his career fighting for workers displaced by the global economy. He built his campaign on a fundamental belief that change in this country must start from the ground up, not the top down. (Cheers, applause.) And he knows that government must be about we the people, not we the favored few.
Last night, Hillary Clinton effectively handed her supporters over to Barack Obama in the most crystal clear terms. There was no equivocation, no hesitation. She did what she needed to do, and then some. Bill Clinton, watching from the convention floor, seemed full of pride as he watched his wife give that speech, and I have little doubt at this point that he will wholeheartedly join her cause and make it clear to the nation tonight why it needs to elect a Democratic president this year.
Joe Biden also speaks tonight, and it’s going to be tough for him to equal or surpass what Hillary accomplished last night with her speech. Many will surely be asking, “why is he on the ticket and not her, especially after a speech like that?” Biden’s opportunity to show his stuff tonight will revolve around how effective he can be at “straight-talking” with the American people. He surely cannot equal Senator Clinton’s eloquence, so he will have to take a different route to endear himself with Democrats and Independents. My guess is that he will launch a blistering attack on the Bush/Cheney/McCain administration, and give the Democrats on the floor the “red meat” they have been looking for the past two nights. If McCain is perceived by Americans as a “straight-shooter,” then Biden is his equal in that department. Everyone knows that Biden tells it like it is, in very clear-cut, blue-collar terms. My guess is he will very effectively be reminding America tonight of how eight years of Republican rule has resulted in massive debt, windfall profits for gas and oil companies, a credit crisis, the disasterous Katrina aftermath, people losing their homes, 47 million people one major health care issue away from total destitution, over 4000 of our soldiers dead in a war of choice not necessity, and the list goes on.
As for the former President, I imagine he will be a perfect reminder of how this administration was handed a nation at peace, with budget surpluses, an expanding middle class, and elite status in the world, and how they totally squandered that and then plundered America’s wealth to line their own pockets and the pockets of their campaign contributors and friends.
It’s not going to be a pretty night, but it will be a necessary reminder of where we where, where we are now, and where we could be again if we elect the right candidate.