Hillary needed to do three things last night:
(1) Tell her supporters not to vote for John McCain
(2) Tell her supporters why they should vote Democrat.
(3) Tell her supports why they should support Obama, in particular.
In my view, Hillary did the first two and didn’t even attempt the third. Her rationale for why to support Obama was nothing more than “He’s the Democratic nominee.” She delivered that message well and with sincerity, but she fell short of offering a compelling reason to vote for the Obama/Biden ticket.
Hillary could have, in a paragraph or less, done precisely what Joe Biden did on Saturday. Biden said that he had observed Obama over the course of the campaign and had come away impressed. That’s all Hillary had to say. but she didn’t. She also did nothing to disavow her comments about Obama that the McCain camp is running in anti-Obama ads.
I suspect that the speech will convince all but the lunatic fringe of her supporters not to vote for McCain. But I don’t think she convinced very many people to vote for Obama. Expect a lot of extreme Clintonites to stay home on Election Day.
Cross-posted from Facebook.
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