Did anyone else have the same feeling I did during this speech?

[Occam Bandage]

It was the same feeling I had seeing Al Gore blast George Bush for "dragging America's good name through the mud:"

This is who this person is; what they stand for. This is them at their best. This is them talking with the good of the party and the nation in their sights--this is who they are without the idiotic advisors, hangers-on, and ego jockeys feeding them polls and pre-tested attack lines. This is a person who could have easily won.

Here's hoping she learns the same lessons Al did.

[EmperorHasNoClothes]

1. Yes, I think we finally saw the real Hillary today.

And I liked what I saw.

[The Night Owl]

9. An insult masquerading as a compliment. Classy.

:eyes:

[kevsand]

2. As a communications major, I always see places where the language could be improved.

As an American and a Democrat, though, I think this may have been the best speech she ever gave in her life, and better than most Democrats will ever give. She said all the things that both sides needed to hear, and I believed every word she said. We will remember it for a long time as a particular poignant moment in a historic year.

[Exilednight]

6. It was good, but it wasn't that good. Once you get a little experience ......

under your belt, you will soon see the difference between a good speech, and a great speech. This was good, but it wasn't great, nor will it be very memorable. At best; it has a one year shelf life.

[kevsand]

11. There's no need to be condescending.

I'm fifty-three years old. My formal training was some thirty-five years ago, and I have more than a little experience in politics and both speech writing and giving since then, thank you very much. I never said it was a great speech. I said that it was flawed, but possibly her best, and better than most. These are admittedly low bars to clear.

I also said that the moment would be very memorable, and it will. This is a historic year that will be remembered for the rest of the life of the republic, and as the first woman to seriously challenge for the nomination of a major party, Hillary's ultimate concession is a poignant part of that history now and forever.

[Youphemism]

3. I felt a thrill running up Chris Matthews' other leg. /nt

[cliffordu]

4. Be sure to wash your hands, God only knows where Tweety's leg has been...

[Captain Hilts]

5. She doesn't need to "learn" anything from Al. His own state didn't vote for him! nt

[JoFerret]

7. What lessons?

please say more of what those were in your view.

[slinkerwink]

8. Mark Penn did her a HUGE disservice

[grannylib]

10. I thought it was an excellent speech, well-written and delivered

and I was really surprised but she made me cry, a couple of times...and I got teary again when McAuliffe echoed her words after the speech.
I thought it was a classy, heartfelt, gracious, generous, unifying first step.
:toast: to Senator Clinton :toast:

[Tom Rinaldo]

12. Pretty much, yes.

I just read today's New York Times story about her campaign, and reading that dove tailed with your observation for me. I think Hillary has finally broken free from Bill Clinton's gravitational field now. Sure they still have a complex and important real relationship, but she no longer is the Moon to Bill Clinton's Earth, and it took this long campaign with her being the real comeback kid, not Bill Clinton, to erase the old perceptions. Hillary's voice now has become the Clinton voice relevant to this decade, while Bill resides at the close of the 20th Century; the last Democratic President but not a contemporary leader.

Hillary went through so many ugly battles at Bill's side throughout the 90's and the Right Wing Kept her under attack as their focus ever since until she ran for President herself. She is battle hardened as a result, which is a positive in many ways, but it also kept her unique form of personal passionate idealism and caring for the people of this country mostly under wraps, so as to not muddy her reputation for toughness.

The Clinton machine has been an ultimate pragmatic enterprise, which believes that unless you win the election you can't do anything good for anyone, so you have to do what it takes to win. It seems that Mark Penn represented the hardest edge of that hard edged stance, and Bill Clinton was a true believer in it. So Hillary Clinton had to work her way out from under that mentality in the middle of a hard fought campaign where so much of her energy was focused on acing her next stop on the campaign trail or containing some controversy then at play. She was fighting the media which was calling the race essentially over after February, and she was of course fighting her Democratic opponents also. She didn't prioritize confronting her own inherited political machine, one that she had come to count on during those long years under constant right wing political attack.

She was part of that Clinton machine of course, but she was more than that also. Bill Clinton was the co-pilot in the cock pit of that machine, it wasn't completely under her control when this campaign started. I think your metaphor about Al Gore is a tantalizing one to play with. This defeat of the Clinton machine was coupled with Hillary Clinton coming into her own as a leading political figure in this nation. It is her speech we are talking about now, not Bill's. And she is freed from the seeming necessity of following the sage political strategy of what had been the most effective Democratic political brain trust of the last 40 years. They lost, it's over, and she is cut loose to be herself now, the new dominant Clinton on the national political stage. I hope she uses her freedom will. I think she will.