A Historic Evening, Brief Live Blog

I’m listening to Hillary Clinton speak, and she’s still arguing that she’s the stronger candidate and she got the most votes. Lies, but she’s in a groove.

She’s also implying that she’s the candidate of American values. Gag.

She says she’s committed to uniting the party.

She’s been fighting for a better health care system for 16 years, she says. Her followers cheer this. They don’t seem to notice that she failed.

She’s making no decisions tonight. No concession.

She wants her groupies to go to her web site and beg her to keep fighting. Best interest of her party, my ass.

Keith Olbermann points out that the venue of Senator Clinton’s speech has no television monitors or blackberry service and the people there might not know that some networks have already declared Obama the nominee.

[On to the Obama speech.]

“I will be the Democratic nominee for the President of the United States of America.” Nice.

Did you listen? Rousing speech. I’ve been writing all day and am pretty much keyboarded out, but do leave comments.

12 thoughts on “A Historic Evening, Brief Live Blog

  1. She almost had me there for a minute. I thought she might actually withdraw tonight. She’s certainly saying a lot of “getting on with something else” type things, some nice things about Obama, and showing a bit more humility than I’ve seen typically. My wife said it was too bad she hadn’t been that way during the campaign. I do think I’d have liked her a lot more if she hadn’t been acting like she was owed the nomination since the beginning.

    I’d have liked her to have called it over tonight, but it was too much to hope for. As they say, “Tomorrow is another day.”

  2. Man she has no class. She is trying to further divide this party, so her man McCain can win come November. I heard the crowd cheer Denver, Denver, Denver, or were they saying McCain, McCain, McCain.

  3. Obama sure knows how to give a speech that I like.

    I particularly like the way he’s ripping into McCain’s “change” speech from earlier tonight.

    I’d love to see a split-screen video of this speech, with Obama energetic in front of a cheering crowd on one side, and McCain wooden and stilted in front of that awful green backdrop. What a comparison!

  4. I loved Obama’s speech. He’s gonna make short work of McCopycat.

    McCain is now preaching change? Yeah, like trying to extricate ourselves from Bush’s Iraqi blunder will be waving the white flag of surrender type of change?

  5. Note that a couple of times in his incredible speech Obama very pointedly said “I will not allow this campaign or this party…” (or words to that effect) and it was as clear a statement that not only is he the nominee but it is now his party. As the presumptive Presidential candidate he is now also the presumptive head of the Democratic Party and he made that clear with those two statements.

    Her speech was all “me, me,me” and his was “us, us, us”. I do believe she just blew any chance she may have had at the VP slot. If he selects her now he’s crazy.

  6. Hey Maha, thanks for pointing out that when it comes to better health care in this country Hillary failed. For months now I’ve been asking people why, when Hillary starts talking about having the experience needed to take on the corporations and lobbyists, no one ever mentions that the one time she did so, she lost. And lost so badly that it set the cause of universal health care in this country back by about fifteen years.

    Other than that, I’m in agreement with everyone else here. Obama rose up to the occassion, Clinton fell down.

  7. popomo — that’s the whole problem with Clinton’s experience. If you look closely, in particular for legislation or policies she proposed or sponsored and successfully saw through to completion — ain’t much. I’ve yet to see anyone find something substantive she actually accomplished. She’s good at claiming accomplishments she was only peripherally involved with (S-CHIP) and she ceaselessly fights for stuff like health care but never wins. Basically, her experience is mostly at tree-peeing.

  8. I didn’t see Clinton’s speach – will be looking for a posting on the web today. The CNN team was trash-talking it for the hour before and after Obama’s speach.

    Tom (comment #5) nailed it – Obama barely mentioned himself in his speach. “We call ourselves Democrats and Republicans, but we are all Americans first…” and it was all about America. Very inspiring.

    I also like how he took the high road (no personal sniping from this campaign), he “honors McCain’s service” but drew sharp black lines between our policy goals and their policy goals across the whole spectrum. I thought the whole package was brilliant.

  9. I think it was about 10 minutes into Hillary’s speech when I began to doubt my sanity. Hadn’t I heard moments ago that Obama was now the Democratic nominee? Maybe not since Hillary seemed to be giving an acceptance speech – I said to myself.

    Following the speech David Gergen commented, “Hillary is planning a coalition government.” He got it partly right. She is demanding it.

  10. I have not been much for Sen. Clinton.

    When the campaign began I had concerns about both Obama and Clinton. I felt that Obama was right out of the box and I’ve thought we’ve been burned by politicians so new and untested that they could become anything after elected. With Hillary Clinton, I felt she had very high negatives. For instance, I think her claim to being experienced is about her chairing the health care reform committee during her husband’s Presidency. She told us she was going to go into that process and get some big changes for those concerned about the poor health care system. Well, she came out with managed health care, the system we have now. As for what happened to any universal health care proposal, she said that the problem with that was the fact that health insurance companies opposed it, and so it was never going to happen.

    I would have given her credit for standing up for a universal health care proposal, against the health insurance companies, and lost. But, this business of carrying their water in committee, so that universal health care had no advocate at all, was sneaky.

    Hence, I don’t trust her. I think she will always go into committee saying she’s for us when she’s really never going to stand against the insurance industry, the oil industry, the this industry, or the that industry. She is untrustworthy in fighting for the things that might come up against business interests.

    The burden these guys had during this campaign was to somehow make me feel better about them as candidates. Obama has addressed my concerns that he’s not had any good record by showing that he is willing to some extent to address reasonably the great issues our country faces. Well, he can get us to address the race issue. Maybe he can change foreign pllicy so that we negotiate resolutions to our problems instead of just invading other countries.

    Sen. Clinton has done a poor job of making me feel she would openly confront business interests in the service of the people of the United States.

    I’m also not likely to go with someone who first thikns she would “obliterate” Iran. That kind of direction is too much like the Bush/McCain direction in foreign policy.

  11. What I wrote the Clinon site –

    “You have a narrow window of opportunity – just a few days – to recognize Obama and fervently sign on for the good of the party. OR withhold your real endorsement in exchange for cash and/or a VP slot. That extortion will make you about as popular in the Democratic Party as Nixon was with Republicans after his resignation. Youdon’t own and can’t trade the support of the voters who supported you; they will vote Obama or McCain or sit out the Nov election, but my bet is that most of them will get over it and vote Obama. The question is what your role and legacy in the future will be.”

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