Was there a single idea in Hillary’s speech? While she had a few good moments stirring up the partisan rabble, the first half seemed devoted to how important her campaign was. Then it fell into the waterfall of phrases that are preprogrammed on the laptops of Democratic speech writers: Energy speculators, windfall profits, jobs shipped overseas (twice!), workers displaced, the favored few, affordable health care, alternative energy, mounting bills, privileged few, privatize Social Security, equal pay for equal work.
Her real theme was feminist boilerplate, to which she returned, over and again. That was no accident. It signaled to her still-rapid supporters that her resentment over losing and then being passed over for Veep is still white hot. “I support Barack Obama” is just a slogan that she had to say. In the meantime, her team of sabotagers have been fighting all day to make sure that there is a roll call vote tomorrow during which her name can be mentioned repeatedly. Her goal tonight was to play Kennedy to the 1980 Carter. She’s still angry.