Hillary shines and overshadows Obama

WASHINGTON, Aug. 27 (UPI) -- The good news for Sen. Barack Obama Wednesday morning was that Sen. Hillary Clinton stepped up to the plate and roused up her supporters for him. The bad news was that she had to.

The Obama camp had nothing to complain about the message that Clinton, D-N.Y., delivered with such effectiveness and energy. It was a win-win situation for Hillary. She got full points for being a party loyalist and good loser and went clearly on the record to rally the party behind the clearly underperforming Obama, D-Ill.

But at the same time, the very effectiveness of her performance could but revive memories of the way Sen. Ted Kennedy, D-Mass., stole the show at the 1980 Democratic convention from incumbent President Jimmy Carter, whom he had challenged so long and so seriously in the primary campaign that year.

Like Clinton this year, Kennedy lost the primary race to a better organized opponent, but like Clinton, he gave such a knockout speech at the convention that everyone there was left kicking themselves that they were stuck with Carter, not the dynamic, exciting and charismatic Kennedy, for the fall campaign. And, of course, Carter then went down to humiliating defeat at the hands of his Republican challenger, former California Gov. Ronald Reagan.

The Kennedy-in-1980 comparison is particularly likely to hit older Democrats as the same Kennedy, now dying from a malignant brain tumor, gave a courageous and moving speech on the opening night of the convention Monday.

Clinton's loyalists, however, aren't coming meekly in line for Obama. James Carville, her husband Bill's political guru during his presidential years, made that clear Tuesday when he appeared on CNN, saying he was confident Hillary would do a magnificent job of setting the table for Obama, but it would be up to the candidate to serve the meal Thursday.

In fact, if there is one thing Obama can be guaranteed to do, it is to deliver a rhetorical main course that will have idealistic Democrats, and especially the younger generation of them, cheering from the rafters. It was that gift that delivered the Iowa caucuses for him -- and ultimately the nomination.

But Obama's problem, as we have previously noted, is not that he flubs his set pieces, but that even though he delivers them perfectly, they give him no traction with Middle America. And the high-profile performances of Kennedy, Clinton and vice presidential pick Sen. Joe Biden, D-Del., at the Denver convention are guaranteed to compound that problem rather than solve it.

Hillary's delivery nailed down her party loyalist credentials and therefore put her in pole position to seek the Democratic presidential nomination four years from now, if Obama, after all his promise and hype, crashes and burns in November.

Her speech, however, still left the Obama camp nervously biting their nails on whether her husband, Bill, the old bull elephant himself, would go rogue in his scheduled speech Wednesday night.

For all the criticism thrown at him, especially from fellow Democrats, Bill Clinton remains the only Dem to win re-election for a second term and serve it out since the death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1945.

In any case, the rapturous applause Hillary commanded underlined another troubling fact for Obama: The loyalty of the Clinton supporters at Denver is the nearest thing to a real news story coming out of any party convention for quite a while.

That very loyalty continues to throw a shadow over whether Hillary's supporters will flood the voting booths and pull the lever for Obama. Had Obama chosen another prominent woman Democrat as his running mate, such as Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius or Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, that issue might have gone away. But instead, the Candidate of Change picked a 36-year Senate veteran, venerable old sexagenarian Biden. That didn't signal change, it guaranteed gerontocracy. And it was a slap in the face for Hillary's supporters, especially the legions of Democratic feminists, as well.

Finally, Hillary's alleged responsibility for unifying the Democratic Party begs a far more important question: Why did she have to do it when it was Obama's job? The nominee should have been able to do it in his sleep by the simple fact that he was the party's choice. Yet without Hillary, Obama wasn't able to even close that basic deal.

At this convention, Hillary has overshadowed him the way Ted Kennedy overshadowed Carter in 1980 and the Rev. Jesse Jackson overshadowed the doomed Walter Mondale in 1984.

There are still big divisions and unhealed wounds in the Democratic Party. Hillary's speech papered them over and even stitched them together, but it didn't heal them. And all the rhetoric in the world thrown against Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the Republican presidential standard-bearer, in Denver this week won't solve the Democrats' problems with attracting the independent, centrist voters they need to win. To close that deal, Obama still needs to spell out plausible, attractive policies on the key areas of energy and balancing the budget in far more convincing detail than he has ever done so far. Where's the beef?