Barack Obama has clinched the nomination. Watching his speech now. He’s being gracious to those rivals who he beat, particularly Hillary Clinton. Good show. That is maturity.
I haven’t heard or seen Hillary Clinton’s speech tonight — but the blog buzz is reverberating with an echo that hers was less gracious. Obama is right to step higher and credit her as he did.
Now the real race begins, and McCain is salivating at getting back in the headlines.
Wow. Obama just said that when the nation achieves universal health care, Hillary Clinton will have helped deliver it. As usual, he’s delivering a moving, terrific speech.
Now he’s got to pull it together — and he needs to figure out how to be the force that can help the nation leap frog into new and better circumstances and get out of the political gridlock and policy incrementalism that dominate the political scene today.
I’ve been pointing to some areas in which Obama has triangulated a bit, but if his team is reading this, it’s important to keep Obama making the big leaps. What we did yesterday means less and less to how we should approach tomorrow — and he needs to instill confidence that he is not the incrementalist on important policy breakthroughs I sometimes feel he is.
I know John McCain pretty well — and this is going to be an extremely tough race, but at least it finally begins.
— Steve Clemons
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