Hillary Clinton’s speech last night was very impressive. She hit all the notes she had to: linking Bush and McCain (I liked the Twin Cities line), saying unequivocally that Obama was the nominee and it was more important to make sure that a Democrat was in the White House next year, not McCain, and that Democrat was going to be Barack Obama.
The nonsense about PUMA and the Clinton dead-enders has largely been pushed along by the media: the idea of a party being pulled apart by a contest as long as the Democratic primary is a compelling narrative. Funny, then, that they aren’t mentioning the real issues that are currently dividing the Republican Party. The religious fundamentalists are not comfortable with McCain, and his courtship of them has been among the more distasteful things in an extremely distasteful campaign (Georgia was one of the first countries to convert to Christianity? What does that matter?). The two front runners for McCain’s vice presidential pick, Mitt Romney and Joe Lieberman, are obviously divisive choices for the Republicans. Their coalition is falling apart around their ears, but all the media can talk about is how Obama hasn’t courted Clinton supporters enough? Hopefully this speech can put paid to that notion.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
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Although I am largely repeating some of the doubts from Michael Tomasky in today's Guardian, it would have been nice to have seen Hillary explicitly repudiate some of the attack points she had leaned on in her campaign, and which have pointed the way for McCain et al.
While it might be putting too much faith in the media to hope this, surely there will be a return to the "can McCain keep his base solid?" narrative as the Republican convention becomes the tool of the week to prop up their ratings, but as he has no conceivable rivals for the nomination, it can't possibly be as interesting a story.
I've heard that, but I'm largely persuaded by Marc Ambinder's take: "Had she done that, all the media would focus on is the disparity between her convention praise and her primary criticism. And she would not have sounded genuine. It would have been contrived."
Still, I guess it can't have hurt. And, of course, Biden said a lot of the same things, so perhaps they're saving that stuff for his speech.
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