A Wednesday night to remember

Wednesday night at the Pepsi center was brilliantly choreographed and was far by the most dramatic of the week to date. A journalist sitting behind me said of Bill Clinton before his speech: “He’s got to say that he [Barack Obama] is ready from day one.” It was felt by some that when making the speech of her life, that Hillary Clinton didn’t make a strong enough case for the presumptive Democratic nominee. In a CNN interview afterwards, a female African-American delegate and Hillary diehard said that there was no way she was voting for John McCain. But she still had a distance to go over the next two months with regard to Obama. Experience was the issue she cited. She said she’s always been the one to make the calls to get people out. But the positions were apparently reversed -- now they’ll have to call her.

Her view was by that point very much a minority one within Democratic ranks. Still, one could only wonder about white Hillary supporters in Ohio or Virginia or Pennsylvania. So, the former candidate's speech didn’t fully dispel the uneasiness. In fact its very success was part of the problem. And certain elements seized on that. One media outlet even interviewed a body-language expert who said that despite her happy tangerine pantsuit, the New York senator was angry.

In the lead-up to the convention there was talk that Hillary had moved on, but that Bill was said to be still absolutely seething. The critics talked about the Clintons’ constant psychodrama and how it was hijacking the entire proceedings.. It didn’t seem a good sign that Obama aides weren’t allowed input into the former president’s speech. There was better news, however, when the delegates were released and Obama was formally nominated unanimously on Wednesday afternoon. He officially became the first African-American to run on a major party ticket. Then William Jefferson Clinton --uncharacteristically on time at 7 p.m. -- emerged to ecstatic, prolonged ovation. When the speech was over, another journalist said. “That was a home run.” There was no wiggle room. Obama and his aides could not have asked for more.

Clinton used the home-run analogy himself when he said that Obama’s veep pick “was out of the park.” It turned out that it was Kerry and not Biden who chewed on McCain “like a dog with a bone” (see Celtic Tavern post for reference). When our group surveyed the night’s proceedings afterwards, a majority thought overall that Biden did very well. (One who didn’t felt that Kerry was great -- so perhaps, the veteran senators were playing good cop/bad cop on their old friend from the Republican Party.)

A big moment came when the new vice-presidential nominee introduced his mother. And Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden clearly enjoyed her moment in the spotlight [I hope to return to the Finnegan angle in a post soon].

And then Obama’s unscheduled appearance electrified the hall. It trumped the extraordinary reception given to Clinton earlier. It put an end to talk about a divided convention and psychodramas. As Ted Kennedy had said earlier in the week, the torch had again been passed on to a new generation.