Blue Spot

On the Convention - With Clinton All the Way, Now Uneasy About the Next Step - NYTimes.com

DENVER — Both Clintons’ convention speeches are now history, and the sighs of relief from Barack Obama’s team blew through here stronger than the hot winds off the Colorado plains. The Democratic nominee got all the help from his former tag-team rivals that he could have hoped for -- and then some -- in winning over the die-hard Clinton voters he will need in November.

Now “it’s up to him to bring us home,” says Susie Tompkins Buell, one of those Clinton die-hards, and a big Democratic donor. Mr. Obama’s acceptance speech here Thursday night will be his first big chance.

Ms. Buell was quoted in the New York Times earlier this week expressing frustration that Mr. Obama, the first-term Illinois senator, doesn’t get the “passion” and “commitment” that Mrs. Clinton’s supporters have for the second-term New York senator and former first lady. If so, he’s not alone.

It’s plain from interviews with voters in the months since Mr. Obama locked up the nomination that lots of Americans don’t get why the Clintonites can’t
“get over it” -- in the oft-used phrase that drives them nuts. Ms. Buell went online today to try to explain the emotional journey that has, finally, put her on Mr. Obama's side. And in interviews here, some Clinton delegates sought to shed some light of their own.

But first, does it matter that many can’t fully embrace Mr. Obama? In what’s certain to be a close election against the Republicans’ nominee-to-be, Senator John McCain, you bet.

Labels: Obama critics, Obama supporters