Liveblogging Hilary Clinton's big night
Welcome back to the Pepsi Center, which in a few hours' time will become a cauldron of roiling emotions — most of them Hillary Clinton's. There's no escaping the fact that Clinton's prime-time speech tonight will be, in part, an exercise in public therapy for the failed presidential candidate and her staunchest supporters. They think, of course, that her speaking slot should have been on Thursday, accepting the nomination. Instead, the crucial question is whether she'll show sufficient enthusiasm for Obama to convey a message of party unity — and to bring back to the Democratic fold some of the 53% of Clinton supporters who aren't already solidly behind Obama. (The other question is whether she'll show that enthusiasm by deploying her ill-advised staring-and-pointing-at-someone-in-the-audience tactic.)
On the streets of Denver today, the angry hardline Pumas have been marching. Those I spoke to last night, at an entirely surreal Republican-run 'Happy Hour for Hillary' in a gloomy bar, rejected the notion that she "has to" do anything in particular this evening: it's Obama's responsibility, they say, to unite the party. Inside the convention bubble, though, it's impossible to overstate how precisely the Clinton-Obama detente is being choreographed in an effort to make sure such sentiments don't get expressed. That will be nowhere more true than at tomorrow's roll-call vote, the precise orchestration of which will speak volumes. According to one version doing the rounds here, the Obama and Clinton teams have agreed that Hillary herself will "spontaneously" step forward, mid-way through the voting, and urge that the nomination be awarded to Obama without completing the ballot.
Meanwhile, the Clintons' every move is being scrutinised: Hillary will attend Thursday's speech at Invesco Field, we're told; Bill seemed to attack Barack Obama once again in Denver today; then again, Hillary paid a compliment to Michelle; on the other hand, Clinton's people aren't even staying in town for Obama's nomination acceptance speech.
So, yes, tonight's speech is all about ego and emotion and therapy — but how Clinton handles it tonight could really matter, come November. "Never before," said one Clinton supporter who'll be in the convention all tonight, "has how the loser of the convention loses been more important than how the winner wins." Join me here in an hour or so