Hillary Pledges Support......To Her Party

[Mike]

Hillary Clinton pledges support - to the party
Wednesday, August 27, 2008, 07:38 AM GMT [General]

In the end, it was scarcely a declaration of support for Barack Obama at all. Hillary Clinton may have mentioned his name ten times - and uttered the mandatory words ("he is my candidate") - but her pledge of undying commitment was to her party.



It was necessary, she said, to get a Democrat back in the White House and (by implication) he is the Democrat we've got. She said virtually nothing about Obama's capacity to lead the nation.

In effect, she expressed the hope that he would follow her programme and priorities in office. She followed the script of the Convention which is that John McCain would be "four more years" of the Bush administration but she preceded it with the words, "John McCain is my colleague and my friend" which made the dismissal of him sound hollow.

Hillary's real objective in this speech seemed to be to secure her place as a figure in the history of the fight for women's rights. That role, she seemed to suggest, transcended the petty business of running for the presidency.

Perhaps most ominously for the Obama camp, her peroration repeated the refrain, "Keep going, keep going, don't ever stop. We're Americans - we're not big on quitting."

This lady is not for quitting either. This speech was about her and her future. And it was a real showstopper.