It looks like HRC was swinging for the fences on Team Obama this weekend, in front of a union crowd in Chicago.
Reporting from The Swamp, Rick Pearson speaks of Clinton at the American Federation of Teachers Convention.
http://www.swamppolitics.com/...
"I'm here to say thank you for the privilege of working with you in this presidential campaign. It was a remarkable journey, one that I would not have wanted to make without you, and I feel very privileged that you went with me as we crisscrossed America," the New York senator told more than 3,000 delegates attending the teachers' union convention at Navy Pier.
But more than just offering her appreciation, Clinton received a standing ovation as she played the role of campaign surrogate for the man who defeated her for the presidential nomination, presumptive nominee Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.
"I bear such a sense of debt to those who gave me so much," she told the crowd, discussing the teachers she had while growing up in suburban Park Ridge.
"I want to do the same for every American and I know the only way that we can realize the promise of this country, begin solving our problems again, be respected in the world, is to elect Barack Obama the next president of the United States of America"In fact, nothing we care about is divorced from what happens in our politics," she said. "If anybody ever had a doubt as to whether it mattered who our president was, George W. Bush should have disabused you of every possible doubt that anyone might have ever entertained."
Clinton called on the union to "make this election the watershed it deserves to be."
"You can count on me to be your partner and your friend and I can't wait to see Barack raise his hand and take that oath of office and get to work," she said before departing with handshakes and pictures along the presidential candidate style rope lines that she used to frequent.
This we can use some more of. And it's easy: all a democrat has to do is attach "elect Obama!" at the end of every speech, a la Cato the Elder.
Let me also add: she got a standing ovation upon her explicit call to elect Obama. People like calls to action, like HRC calling them to action, like the idea of Obama winning, it's all good.