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The fire-bright shade of orange Hillary picked to wear tonight must lie directly across the color wheel from the particular shade of punched-up blue that flanked the DNC podium. The contrast couldn't have been sharper. And I thought Hillary couldn't have been sharper, in her presentation, in her poise, in her tribute video. She was great. She just wasn't great for Barack Obama.
Here's where I felt it: "Were you in it for me?" she asked her supporters. "Or were you in it for" the young Marine, the mother struggling to make ends meet, etc. Good, that justified the minutes she'd just spent on real-people stories. Then I waited for the turn, for her to say: Because this election isn't about me. Now, it's about Barack Obama. He will make your lives better in the ways I wanted to do and would have done. Because he is ready to lead the American people. He will take us where we need to go. And now you need to be in this election for him, and so for yourselves.
OK, I don't have a future as a speech writer. But that was the mark she should have hit harder and didn't, wasn't it? She got close for a second with, "before we keep going, we've got to get going, by electing Barack Obama!" That was the kind of line she was up there to deliver. There should have been more of them. By the end, the orange was starting to look red to me, as in Scarlet O'Hara red--the bright color you wear to the party you had to be brave to come to. Dahlia, you said that Michelle Obama was brave last night. I thought that Hillary was brave tonight. But not, also, giving enough to hand to her former opponent everything he may need.