Hillary's speech: a home run at the most critical moment

A few days ago, I wrote about how Hillary Clinton's speech tonight was pivotal. Moments after watching her speech, I think she knocked it clean out of the park.

Criticism of Hillary (unfair in my view) said that her campaign support for Obama had been tepid. With the world watching -- and John McCain running attach ads name-checking Sen. Clinton -- I thought she needed to deliver an impassioned oration that would answer these critiques. In a speech that sounded all the right notes, and that culminated with a stirring allusion to Harriet Tubman, she did.

Hillary didn't take the path I suggested in that earlier post -- rebuke John McCain for invoking her name in an attempt to divide Democrats -- and instead took a more positive approach, asking her supporters to remember the people affected by the policies she and Barack Obama both endorse. That's why she's a senator and I'm an armchair quarterback. Her criticisms of McCain took up comparatively little of her speech, but that wound up fitting the tenor of the time perfectly. It was a rallying cry centered around common human issues.

The floor was electrified. Even David Gergen said it might be her "finest moment in politics."

That might not be true. The best for Hillary Clinton might still be yet to come. But on this essential night, she came through for Barack Obama, big time.