Hillary Delivers

There were so many great lines in this speech.

No way. No how. No McCain.

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?

But we don’t need four more years … of the last eight years.

It makes sense that George Bush and John McCain are going to be together next week in the twin cities because these days, it’s hard to tell them apart.

It was a great combination of acknowledging her supporters, a call for unity, singing the praises of Senator Obama, and red meat attacks on John McCain. Perhaps the most important statement was, “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?” That was a direct shot at the PUMA’s specifically, and a call to arms for her disappointed supporters generally. There has certainly been a lot of chatter from the media chuckleheads regarding whether Hillary would play ball, but she clearly hit a home run tonight. It’s time to get moving towards the goal of electing Senator Obama in November, and Hillary just went a long way towards that.

This is Promising

From the Obama Campaign (through Ambinder):

A senior Obama official says that, “to a high degree of confidence,” the campaign knows that Michelle Obama’s speech went over well in the 18 battleground states that Barack Obama is focusing on.

That means, yes, that the campaign ran several focus groups last night in those states.

Obviously, this is from the Obama camp, so take it with the usual grain of salt (internal spin, etc), but this is very heartening news. The GOP has gone overboard in their attacks on Michelle, attempting to portray her as some elitist radical. I agree with Andrew Sullivan that attacking McCain last night didn’t need to be the focus. The issue was letting the American people know that Michelle wasn’t the caricature the the GOP was pushing. On that score, the speech was clearly a home run. Now, about the rest of the week…