Just talked to someone in the Hillary camp, and there still seems to be some uncertainty about the roll-call vote issue. A critical moment will come tomorrow, when Sen. Clinton meets with her delegates and tries to convince them to vote for Obama. “She is going to do her best when the delegates meet with her, but my belief is that nothing she says is going to dissuade a certain number of delegates,” I was told. Even if that number is ten percent, the source says, that’s still a significant number of people, given that Clinton won nearly 1,900 delegates.
I asked whether Team Clinton appreciated Michelle Obama’s mention in last night’s speech. “Yes, the line was appreciated,” I was told. “It was only one sentence, it could have been a bit more than one sentence, but it was appreciated.”
“However,” the source continued, “we had a two-term president who left with a 65 percent approval rating, who Barack Obama forgot to mention when he described Ronald Reagan as a transformational figure, and who was not mentioned at all by Michelle Obama.”
I’m told that did not sit well in the hotel where a lot of Clinton loyalists are staying. “There was a palpable anger that no one in the Obama camp saw the need to mention that Hillary Clinton cracked the glass ceiling and that Bill Clinton opened the doors to prosperity and peace, and that we owe him a great debt.”
Two points. One, it can be difficult to satisfy the Clinton supporters; I thought Michelle Obama’s remark was a pretty nice gesture. And two, given the sheer number of Clinton supporters, Obama still has to try.