Fiery speech erases doubts about Clinton's enthusiasm for Obama
DENVER - This was a Clinton speech that didn't require any parsing of words.
In a fiery call to arms last night, Hillary Clinton tried to clear up the one thing that hadn't been clear before: Her level of enthusiasm for making Barack Obama president.
In past speeches, she has offered sincere endorsements of Obama, but then gone on to extol the accomplishments of her own campaign. This time, perhaps sensing a greater urgency, she offered repeated appeals on Obama's behalf.
"I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me?" she asked, in what seemed like a question directed at the roughly 30 percent of her supporters who are resisting Obama, according to polls. "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 boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?"
The speech also included some of the most pointed denunciations of President Bush and presumptive Republican nominee John McCain by a major speaker at the Democratic convention so far.
"With an agenda like that, it makes sense that George Bush and John McCain will be together next week in the Twin Cities," she said. "Because these days they're awfully hard to tell apart."
At moments like that, Clinton showed the tougher edge that defined her candidacy against Obama's promises of hope.
But she also tried to link her story - and those of her women supporters who fought for their advancement - to the larger narrative of progress being put forward by Obama.
"I want you to think about your children and grandchildren come Election Day," she said, adding later, "We've got to ensure that the choice we make in this election honors the sacrifices of all who came before us, and will fill the lives of our children with possibility and hope."
While all elections are theoretically about the future, it's clear that the Democrats are using "the future" as a code for the ambitions of the groups that came together to support both Clinton and Obama, including women, minorities, and the young.
Earlier in the evening, keynote speaker Mark Warner, the former governor of Virginia and candidate for the US Senate, offered his own appeal to the future, one aimed more at undecided voters and white men.
"This election isn't about liberal versus conservative. It's not about left versus right. It's about the future versus the past," said Warner, after presenting a vision of the American dream that was quite different from that of Clinton or Obama - his own spectacular success as a cellphone entrepreneur.
"We believe in success," Warner said in the keynote speech. "We believe that everyone should have an opportunity to get ahead, and with success comes a responsibility to make sure others can follow."
Lost in Warner's formulation - but not Clinton's - is the invocation of Bush as a reviled figure, a man whose tax cuts rewarded the rich at the same time as he squandered American good will and credibility in a deadly war.
But while some analysts debated whether the party would have been better off putting all its eggs in the anti-Bush message, others saw greater uplift - and political benefit - in hammering away at the theme of the future.
"Talking about the future is a way of talking about McCain's age and his connection to Bush without coming out and saying it," said Dartmouth College political scientist Linda Fowler, who added that it also appeals to people's "can-do attitude."
"I don't think it's the candidate's job this time to make the case that things are not as good as they should be," she said. "People know that. It's to describe how things can be better."
Last night, Hillary Clinton went further than she's ever gone in telling her followers that their lives will be better with Barack Obama as president.
Peter S. Canellos is the Globe's Washington bureau chief. 