Day 2 Wrapup: This One Was For The Gasbags

So I was in the hall last night, albeit barely. We spent about 15 minutes and all of Lily Ledbetter's speech trying to find a seat, and the only ones forthcoming were behind the stage in the nosebleed section with a view through the rafters of a JumboTron.

Still and all, it was good to be in the room. In ascending order, I thought Mark Warner's speech was mostly wooden with brief flickers of passion; Ted Strickland's offered some OK red meat but he's not the best messenger; Deval Patrick completely lost the room, it was embarrassing; Brian Schweitzer was a knockout, credible on energy (though he has his own idiosyncratic beliefs on it like clean coal and CCS) and great taking on McCain:



And Hillary Clinton was, in a word, spectacular. Not one person in that room had a bad word to say about her performance. She delivered like a pro, calling for unity and asking her supporters to get off the sidelines and put away personality in favor of country. Digby was right, this was the best line:

"I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me? Or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him? Were you in it for that mom struggling with cancer while raising her kids? Were you in it for that boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?"

I think the supporters selfish enough to react to that with indignation are infinitesimally small (they also happen to be skilled PR mavens and Republican ratfucks. A lot of this is not real). And what's more, the pundits, the morons who have been trying to drive this wedge for months upon months, can really just shut up now. I don't know what more Sen. Clinton can do to prove to everyone that she supports Barack Obama. Though the gasbags wrote the story a week ago and then tried their best to find people to fit into it, the disunity story is a dead letter. I talked to Zoe Lofgren (D-CA) yesterday and she said all these media types are coming up to her asking about the divisions in the party, and she said "I don't know what they're talking about!" Hopefully this speech puts it to rest for a little while.

Democrats love nothing more than to criticize other Democrats, so you're going to keep seeing that (and Bill still seems to be holding a little grudge, but he's a pro and will give a great speech tonight). But overall, there's a lot of unity in the party, particularly ideologically, where the left and right flanks have actually come together on a number of issues. One PUMA delegate (in an ad that played nowhere) isn't going to change that.