Flashbulbs are popping for Hillary in a way that no other candidate attracted.

She’s in her I-AM-SO-HAPPY-TO-BE-HERE-THAT-I-WILL-SPEAK-LOUDLY-EVEN-THOUGH-THERE-IS-MICROPHONE-IN-FRONT-OF-ME mode. And then, after a few sentences, she returns to her Indoor Voice.

Thanks and name-checks the leadership of the union, blah blah blah…

“We had a hearing Employee Free Choice Act. We passed it through the House, and hten we passed it through the Senate!”

(And then it will slam into a Presidential veto!)

Going on about the importance of union workers, she says “There is hardly a square foot in America that doesn’t have your fingerprints on it.” Apparently a damp paper towel is good for getting those out.

“They want to stomp out unions. They want to destroy them. If you want to be someone who stands for justice, fairness, the American dream… then you have to be pro-union… We wouldn’t have an American middle class if it weren’t for unions.”

“You can find rich people anywhere in the world, and unfortunately you can find poor people anywhere in the world. But only in America can you find the American middle class.”

Groan. Gee, mysterious how only America generated the American middle class.

She returns to her comments from the Democratic fundraiser last week about “invisible” Americans. Now she adds that soldiers in Walter Reed are “invisible” to this administration.

“America is at our best when we come together and actually try to meet our toughest challenges.” Oh, please stop it. Stop it. Those words are rhetorical tofu.

She goes after President Bush for not establishing national health care or making college affordable or any one of her usual policy priorities after 9/11. “After 9/11, the President asked us to go shopping. That was it! Go shopping! I mean I had to listen to it a couple of times before I believed it. I don’t think that’s a national goal!”

“We need a president who really believes in building America.” It is taken as a given that President Bush does not.

Davis-Bacon is a big deal to this crowd, and she just goes on and on, and contends that once she is president, the issue will be settled, now and forever.

With Rob Andrews , Democratic Congressman from New Jersey, Hillary announces she’s introducing legislation that would allow labor unions to access contractor payrolls – and the crowd goes wild.

She calls for “harsh penalties for those who violate our laws and exploit undocumented workers.” Says we “absolutely cannot accept a guest worker program without strongest labor protections and no exceptions whatsoever.” The crowd applauds, but a bit quieter than in other ones; one can almost hear the, “wait, what would those protections be? How do we know they’re enough?”

Still, the rhetoric on immigration strikes me as tougher than I expected from Hillary. Where is this pro-amnesty, pro-guest worker constituency, if the Democrats don’t want to alienate labor by voting for it?

“We know global warming is happening! We’re seeing more intense storms!” (She says, after one of the mildest hurricane seasons on record.)

Makes a reference to Halliburton moving to Dubai, and refers to companies who make record profits and “just can’t figure out how to share those profits with their workers.”

She wants to establish a national database of “second responders” those who can pitch in when a terrorist attack occurs or disaster strikes.

“To those who paint unions as un-American, as somehow unpatriotic, I say, see what I have seen.”

Okay, look. Who paints unions as un-American? I don’t always like them, I think there’s a lot of corruption and a lot of putting the luxury demands of their members above the needs of others (teacher’s unions are the classic example of this, and/or the air traffic controllers back in 1981), and I think they’re often unrealistic in their demands. But I wouldn’t call ‘em unAmerican, and I can’t remember the last major figure who did.

You know who really aren’t such a fan of unions? Workers in plants like Subaru’s in Lafayette, Indiana:

Subaru worker Steve Durham remembers attending a meeting to discuss unionizing, only to be stunned by the turnout: Just 10 of the factory’s 2,000-plus workers showed up.
But it wasn’t until he found no takers for the union fliers he tried to distribute that reality dawned.
“I couldn’t find another person to join,” he said. “I ended up throwing them all in the trash. People just aren’t interested.”

Anyway, the response to Clinton from the audience overall is very positive, but not quite as warm as it was for Edwards.

Will anyone mind if I take a bathroom break during Kucinich?

UPDATE: If Kucinich didn’t look like… well, Kucinich, he might have been a contender. As it is, he ends with the biggest arm-waving, stemwinder of a finish — it really looked almost like a seizure — and the crowd loves it. Everybody knows he’s got no shot, but he certainly is entertaining.