Clinton rallies supporters in call for unity
By Patrick Healy and Brian Knowlton Published: August 27, 2008

DENVER: With her husband looking on tenderly and her supporters watching with tears in their eyes, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton deferred her own dreams and delivered an emphatic plea at the Democratic National Convention to unite behind her rival, Senator Barack Obama, no matter what ill will lingered.

Clinton, who was once widely regarded as the favorite to win the Democratic nomination this year, also took steps Tuesday - deliberate steps, aides said - to keep the door open to a future bid for the presidency. She rallied supporters in her speech and, at an earlier event with 3,000 women, described her passion about her own campaign. In addition, her aides limited input on the speech from Obama's advisers while seeking advice from her former strategist, Mark Penn, a loathed figure in the Obama camp.

But the main task for Clinton at the convention - affirming her support for Obama in soaring and unconditional language - dominated her 23-minute speech, and she betrayed none of the anger and disappointment that she still feels, friends said, and that has especially haunted her husband.

Declaring herself to be "a proud supporter of Barack Obama," she urged Democrats to put aside their loyalty to her and unite behind the Illinois senator - or risk continuing Bush administration policies under the presumptive Republican nominee, Senator John McCain.

"Whether you voted for me or voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose," Clinton said, beaming as those in the convention hall burst into applause. "And you haven't worked so hard over the last 18 months, or endured the last eight years, to suffer through more failed leadership."

Obama praised Clinton's speech as he watched Tuesday night from Montana.

"That was excellent; that was a strong speech," Obama said in Billings. "She made the case for why we're going to be unified in November and why we're going to win this election. I thought she was outstanding."

With the television cameras trained tightly on Clinton on stage and on former President Bill Clinton in a VIP box, the senator from New York smiled broadly at times and punched the air with ferocity during the tough talk against Republicans, while her husband looked on. And yet, reality intrudes: Many of her top fund-raisers said this week that they were still refusing to work for Obama and were angered by their treatment at the convention.

Clearly, some Clinton supporters were having a hard time letting her go.

CNN on Wednesday replayed an interview with one Clinton supporter, a black woman on the verge of tears, who said she felt more devastated than ever that she would not be able to help Clinton become the first woman president. She told an interviewer she was deeply ambivalent about Obama and might, for the first time in her life, stay home on Election Day in November.

"Hillary Clinton proved to me that she would've made an excellent president," the woman said. As for Obama, she added, "Experience counts - I don't care what anybody tells you."

But when Kelly Friendly, a Clinton supporter from Wellesley, Massachusetts, was asked if she would vote for Obama, she said: "Absolutely. She just told us to, didn't she?"

For their part, Obama's advisers were full of expectations. Several of them repeated how "gracious" Clinton had been this week. But some aides said privately that they and Obama have been eager to move on from Clinton's star turn at the convention, which has been a source of melodrama for Democrats who have not entirely healed from the bruising primary season.

Among them are the Clintons themselves: While Hillary Clinton is in the midst of a "catharsis," friends say, Bill Clinton remains angrier than people realize about the Obama campaign's portrayal of his wife as deceitful and of his administration as middling and his political tactics as, at times, racially charged. Friends have been urging Bill Clinton - who speaks Wednesday night - to move on, and counseling the couple to focus their energy and emotions on McCain. At one point in her speech, though, Hillary Clinton herself paid homage to her husband's successes - in one sense, making up for the absence of praise from Obama.

She also provided some of the night's sharpest lines of attack on McCain in her speech. "It makes sense that George Bush and John McCain will be together next week in the Twin Cities, because these days they're awfully hard to tell apart," she said, referring to the site of the Republican National Convention.

Introduced by her daughter, Chelsea, who called her "my hero," Clinton was met with a lengthy, loud standing ovation. She sprinkled her opening remarks with personal touches, delighting the crowd by thanking "my supporters, my champions - my sisterhood of the traveling pantsuits," a reference to her signature sartorial style. "You never gave in, you never gave up, and together we made history," Clinton said.

With delegates waving banners that read "Hillary" or "Obama" on one side and "Unity" on the other, Clinton encouraged supporters to rally behind Obama for the sake of struggling Americans she met during the campaign.

"I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me?" Clinton said. "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?"

Far from giving a valedictory at the Democratic convention, Clinton's advisers said she wanted the speech to reflect the leverage that she retains in the Democratic Party - that she, far more than Obama, has the influence to move her supporters to his side. Her camp did not even provide a final draft to the Obama campaign in advance of delivery, working on it until the last minute.

At the same time, advisers said, Clinton wanted to ensure that her star turn at the convention could never be portrayed as insufficiently enthusiastic, should Obama lose the election in part because swaths of her supporters ultimately did not vote for him. Clinton is almost certain to run for president in 2012 if Obama fails this time, several Clinton advisers said Tuesday, and any such plan could possibly founder if the Clintons' negative feelings show through this year.

The reports of friction between the Clinton and Obama camps were officially dismissed by both sides, and there were signs some supporters were giving up the fight, with a pro-Clinton demonstration Tuesday petering out.

Clinton also had a brief, backstage chat with Michelle Obama earlier and aides to both described the conversation as friendly. During her remarks, meanwhile, Clinton made a warm gesture to encourage women in the room to embrace Michelle Obama. "Wasn't Michelle Obama terrific last night?" Clinton said to applause. "I know a little bit about how the White House works, and if the president is not exactly on our side, call the first lady - and Michelle Obama will answer that phone."

"It's not just about politics," she said, referring to the distinctive struggles women face as candidates. Her tone broke from its determined cadence and became, for a second, slower and almost hushed. "It's really personal," she said.

Jill Abramson, Mark Leibovich and Jim Rutenberg contributed reporting.