Hillary Clinton waves to the crowd at the National Building Museum in Washington
Hillary Clinton waves to the crowd at the National Building Museum in Washington. Photograph: Joshua Roberts/Reuters
To the cheers and screams of hundreds of dedicated supporters, Hillary Clinton today endorsed her rival Barack Obama for president of the United States.
Standing in front of an enormous American flag and facing an audience of ardent fans, Clinton suspended her campaign and said that she would keep fighting for the causes she had built her bid for the White House around.
"This isn't exactly the party I had planned," she said, and praised Obama, though it raised a mix of cheers and boos from her supporters.
"Today, as I suspend my campaign, I congratulate him. I endorse him and will throw my full support behind him," she said, wearing a trademark pantsuit and black jacket and watched by her husband Bill Clinton and daughter Chelsea.
She paid tribute to all the people who had campaigned for her. "The dreams we share are worth fighting for," she vowed.
It was an astonishing moment of political theatre ripe with symbolism and the passing of a generational torch in Democratic politics.
Clinton, for all the revolutionary potential of her bid to be America's first woman president, lost to a younger politician running on a message of change.
For all the nostalgia Democrats feel for the Clintons' reign of the 1990s, it was not enough to give her victory. Now Obama will press on with trying to unite his party behind his bid to be America's first black president.
But today was still Clinton's moment. Her loss did not look like defeat in the atrium of the National Building Museum in Washington DC. Clinton was hailed by the crowd of mainly women almost like a conquering heroine. They shouted 'Hillary! Hillary!' and gave her rounds of deafening applause. But defeat it was and now the Democratic party must perform a difficult dance to heal itself after a bitter, divisive nomination contest. That process has now started in earnest.
After months of living under the nightmare scenario of a divided party convention in Denver, the Democrats are moving rapidly to unite against McCain.
The most significant event so far occurred away from any large rally or campaign event. Around a downstairs fireplace at the Washington home of Senator Diane Feinstein, the two titans of the party, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, finally held a personal meeting last week. Just the two of them. Face to face for an hour.
The remarkable encounter, lubricated only by glasses of water, has been the talk of political circles ever since its details leaked out over the weekend. What the two talked about is not known. But they are likely to have had ample subject matter to choose from.
First of all is simply what role Clinton will play. To many of Clinton's huge support base her name on the ticket is the minimum price Obama must pay to be assured of their votes in November.
But picking Clinton is far from easy as an option. Firstly, Clinton herself may not want the job. As Al Gore found, it is no guarantee of succeeding as president and, under someone like Obama, it could end up being a 'non-job' famously derided as 'funerals and fund-raisers'.
More importantly Obama may not want Clinton in his White House. She would be a potentially under-mining figure and there is little to suggest that the two have warm feelings for each other.
But there are other issues to sort out too. Even if she is not his running mate, Obama desperately needs her genuine support. Clinton only barely lost amassed a vociferous support base of almost 18 million voters. Indeed, over the last three months she outfought Obama at almost every turn. It was just not enough to win.
Obama needs to play the peacemaker and could offer her a lead role in the Senate, perhaps spearheading efforts to get a healthcare plan to all Americans. Such a move would address Clinton's key policy platform and also exorcise the demons of her failed effort during her husband's years in office. Then there are more mundane matters like Clinton's huge campaign debt which includes millions of her own money. Obama could help her pay that debt down with his huge donor network.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/jun/07/hillaryclinton.barackobama1?gusrc=rss&feed=networkfront
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