Hillary Asks the Question of the Day by Peggy Simpson
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| Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Some rights reserved. |
June 4, 2008
Hillary Clinton preempted the morning-after critics. She asked the question herself in a Tuesday night speech after the delegate count from South Dakota and Montana pushed Barack Obama over the top as the Democrats’ probable nominee for president.
“I understand that a lot of people are asking: ‘What does Hillary want? What does she WANT?’”
Ignoring mounting speculation that she had told the New York congressional delegation that she’d be open to the vice presidential position, which some cynics said was the start of overt lobbying for that post, she said instead:
“Well, what I want is what I have always fought for in this whole campaign. I want to end the war in Iraq. I want to turn this economy around. I want health care for every American. I want every child to live up to his or her God-given potential.”
And then she added, significantly: “And I want the nearly eighteen million Americans who voted for me to be respected, to be heard, and no longer to be invisible.”
The Hillary skeptics who bemoaned her ambition should read that and absorb the message. It means far more than being on a national ticket.
It also was as close to a personal emotional moment that she had in her 20-minute speech. She recognized the end of the 16-month primary battle but stopped short of conceding she had lost.
Instead, she talked about days when she had the strength to fight for her followers and days when she couldn’t, “and I leaned on you.” She talked of people who brought her their problems, who told her their stories about what needs to be fixed.
“I will carry your stories and your dreams with me every day of my life,” she said.
Then she segued into real-politick turf: “The question is where we go from here.”
That’s what a lot of national Democrats want to know. Some of her most prominent backers, including House Majority Whip James Clyburn and House Ways and Means Chairman Charles Rangel, urged Obama to put her on the ticket.
The what-next Hillary question roiled political waters Tuesday night and Wednesday. Some political commentators—and not just on Fox News—said it detracted from Obama’s rightful celebration as the country’s first African American likely to be a major party nominee for president.
If Obama took offense, it didn’t show. He came across as serious, cool, and collected, hardly even euphoric at the end. There were no Howard Dean-type outbursts of triumph that could come back to haunt him.
He also tried out some pointed jabs at the Republican presumptive nominee, John McCain, who had taunted Obama about his message of change in a speech hours earlier.
Obama noted that McCain had talked a lot about trips to Iraq (not mentioning McCain’s attack on Obama for going their only once) and said, maybe if he spent some time making trips to the cities and towns that have been hardest hit by this economy—cities in Michigan and Ohio and right here in Minnesota—he’d understand the kind of change that people are looking for.”
Obama got the loudest, most sustained applause from the crowd of 20 thousand when he praised his rival Hillary Clinton, who fell short, but not by much.
He called her “a leader who inspires millions of Americans with her strength, her courage, and her commitment to the causes that brought us here tonight.”
Yes, he said, they had had differences in the long primary contest. He said that made him appreciate what gets her up in the morning, even in the face of tough odds: “… an unyielding desire to improve the lives of ordinary Americans, no matter how difficult life might be.”
He predicted she will have a major policy role on those issues that count.
“When we finally win the battle for universal health care in this country—and we will win that fight—she will be central to that victory. When we transform our energy policy and lift our children out of poverty, it will be because she worked to help make it happen.” Obama said the country and the Democratic Party are better off because of her, and, he added, “I am a better candidate for having had the honor to compete with Hillary Rodham Clinton.”
Figuring out what happens next is tying the political pundits into knots. Obama had planned to take his time choosing a running mate, his staffers said, perhaps not deciding until July or August. Media critics said Wednesday it had better come sooner than that, or else the question of the day, every day, will be “what does Hillary want?”
Clinton, meanwhile, ended her speech by asking her supporters to go to her website and tell her what they thought about all of this.
It could be yet another pitch for money, as her campaign debt exceeds $20 million—but it could be a Hillary way of continuing a conversation she’s reluctant to conclude, even when no more delegate votes are up for grabs.
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