Hillary's Big Moment

I'm back. Did you miss me?

I hadn't intended to go so long without posting, but various circumstances (some technical problems and one traumatic disruption in my personal life) got in the way.

But anyway, now I'm back. Ready to disgorge my opinions on all and sundry (especially sundry).

So Hillary finally got her moment in the sun last night -- prime time at the Democratic Convention. How did she do?

Other people thought she did better than I did. I found her speech to be disappointing. She knew what she was up there to do and in my opinion she did it halfheartedly. Once again, when the Clintons speak it's all about the Clintons. She had to make the case for Barack Obama and I don't think she did it well enough. For one long stretch (more than 800 words in a speech that only had slightly more than 2,300 words in it, total) she didn't even bother to mention him by name.

Will it matter? Will her speech appease the legions of whiny menopausal bitches who were (and, for all I know, still are) threatening to vote for McCain because they didn't get their way? I have no idea.

But Hillary's case boils down to this one passage from her speech:

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 young boy and his mom surviving on the minimum wage? Were you in it for all the people in this country who feel invisible?

I have a sinking feeling that Hillary's hordes are going to say that they really were in it for themselves -- that they saw Hillary as a proxy for their stunted lives and that Hillary's going all the way to the White House was going to make it all better, that it would be the ultimate emotional Band-Aid on the boo-boo of their lives. Which might help explain why they went so berserk when she got beaten like a red-headed stepchild by a younger, smarter candidate -- who just happened to be male.

This campaign has a long way to go, and it may well be enough nail-biter. Did Hillary do enough to bring her supporters around to Obama's side? And will there be a price to pay if it's perceived that she didn't?