Hillary Clinton has formally acknowledged that Barack Obama has clinched the Democratic nomination for president. Her concession/endorsement speech was a great event, and great news for the Democratic Party. The Obama campaign NEEDED this if they were to have any hope of winning what promises to be a tough campaign against John McCain.
It remains to be seen if all of Clinton’s supporters will now be in the Obama camp. I don’t know if everybody will take it as credible that she now supports Obama, after all the negative things she’s said about him. Who can forget her statement that McCain has a “lifetime of experience, I (have a) lifetime of experience… Senator Obama (has a) a speech he made in 2002”? That and other comments she made as part of her scorched earth, throw the kitchen sink at Obama approach have probably permanently demonized him in the minds of many Clinton proponents.
What she can do very credibly, though, is attack John McCain. She needs, for example, to tell all the women who are thinking about voting for McCain that, any disrespect I got in this primary, is nothing like the disrespect I would have gotten from McCain and the GOP.
Put in another way, she would probably have more success attacking McCain than supporting Obama.
I’d love to see her throw the kitchen sink at McCain and see what sticks. If she can do that, it would be a big win for the Obama, even if Clinton’s supporters don’t have the same rapture for him that they have for her.
All Other Persons 