Hillary's Speech

The liveblog continues...

The run-up:Fox News is reporting former Clinton supporters are chanting "John McCain!" outside the convention center. CNN just reported Bill Clinton will not be attending Obama's speech Thursday night. This will probably be a topic of discussion in the aftermath of Hillary's speech tonight and undermine anything she says about "unity." Bill's screwing it up for her again.

Opening video for Hillary: A hard rock montage to Hillary's best political moments. Odd. "Girl, You've Really Got Me Going," Lenny Kravitz's "Are You Going to Go My Way and ~~John Mellencamp's~~ Tom Petty's "American Girl." Yeech.

Moves into a segment narrated by daughter Chelsea with suspenseful orchestra music. I really do not like this montage. "Because of her there are 18 million cracks in that glass ceiling and what opened up was a whole new world of possibility for all of us," Chelsea says in the video.

Hillary takes the stage: An orange pantsuit. Reminds me of that orange tie Bill would always wear while stumping for his wife because he didn't want to do blue or red out of fear he'd look too presidential. Maybe she's trying to do the same.

Is it me or does she look lke she's going to cry?! Are we going to see tears tonight? Bill is mouthing "I love you, I love you, I love you" to her. "

Her speech: "Whether you voted for me or for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose," Hillary says. "We are on the same team. And none of us can afford to sit on the sidelines. This is a fight for the future and it is a fight we must win together."

She says she hasn't been fighting for health care and women's rights for the past 35 years to "suffer through more failed leadership. No way, no how, no McCain."

Prediction: She'll say nothing nice about Barack, but will attack McCain and talk about how fabulous her candidacy was through this whole speech.That would have been a good trade off for her.

Paints a grim state of current affairs, saying she ran for all the invisible people who can't afford health care, keep up with rising costs, etc. "Barack Obama began his career fighting for workers displaced by the global economy...and he knows that government must be about we the people, not we the favored few."

"Democrats know how to do this and, as I recall, we did it before with President Clinton and the Democrats!"

Says she can't wait for Obama to "sign into a law a health care plan that covers every single American" and for Obama to bring the troops home and "begin to repair our image around the world."

Praises Michelle Obama and says she will "be a great First Lady for America" and Joe Biden will "be a strong leader and good man." Calls him "pragmatic, tough and wise."

Here comes and attack on McCain, she opens by calling him a colleague and a friend. "We don't need four more years of the last eight years."

"He still thinks it's okay when women don't earn equal pay for equal work," she says. "With an agenda like that it makes perfect sense" McCain and Bush will be together in the Twin Cities "because these days it's awfully hard to tell them apart."

Now for some women's love fest. She's reminding everyone it's the 88th anniversary of the day women got the right to vote. The crowd is eating all this up. I am, predictably, uninspired.

Closing: Definitely one of her best speeches. She appeared genuine and soft, yet hit a fair amount of policy issues and hard critiques of the GOP.

Pundit roundup: Bill Kristol says it was a "shockingly minimal" endorsement of Barack Obama. "She endorsed Barack Obama for president because he is their party's nominee for president and not a whit further." Roll Call's Morton Kondrake concurs.

MSNBC's new star Rachel Maddow thinks "anybody who is persuadable who is a supporter of Hillary Clinton is going to be persuaded by this speech."