Even after her unity speech, Hillary Clinton continues to subtly stroke her constituency. Glowing in her lime-green pantsuit as she spoke in a conference room today at the Colorado Convention Center, Clinton looked at the huge crowd in attendance and said, “If I’d known I had this many delegates…” The audience whooped knowingly at her suggestion that she perhaps should have kept fighting for the nomination after all. Clinton smiled coyly.
The issue at hand was the decision to hold a roll call tonight. Clinton said, “I believe we will leave Denver united,” but acknowledged dissent, saying her 1,920 delegates deserve “the respect and recognition that you’ve earned.” But when she made the case that her delegates should unify and vote for Obama, groups of women replied: “YOU!” When she told them that she was releasing them to Obama, she was met with a loud “NO!”
“I’m not going to tell you what to do,” Clinton said, but “I signed my ballot for Obama.” A woman delegate in her sixties from North Carolina predicted that 90 percent of Clinton’s delegates would vote for her today, not Obama. “It’s in my heart,” said Joanne Schlaginhaufen.
