¶ … Hillary Clinton's Speech
Hillary Clinton's job at the Democratic National Convention was clear; she needed to unify her party after a closely contested race with Barack Obama. While the battle for the Democratic nomination had started out cordially, Clinton began waging personal attacks such as the infamous "not ready to answer the phone at three in the morning" campaign after she fell behind. Emotional attachment by supporters of both candidates ran high, leaving less than half of her supporters stating that they would definitely support Obama after her loss (What Hillary Clinton's speech needs to accomplish, 2008). So, to accomplish her unification goal, she needed to achieve two objectives, convincing her supports that Obama is ready for the job and making them believe that she truly wants them to support Obama.
On the first objective, Clinton falls short, but she hit a home run on the second objective, although this may have been motivated by her own goal of protecting her political future.
In her support for Obama, Clinton elaborates on a long list of reasons why she ran for president and states that these are the reasons that voters must now support Obama. She also rails against the existing Republican administration and McCain's candidacy. However, she never gets into the delicate issue of Obama's readiness to be President, something she had managed to make a real issue during her campaign and the very issue that McCain is now targeting.
There are many pleas for convincing the audience that she truly wants them to support Obama, but the most powerful is:
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