Joan, I want to thank you for your praise of Hillary Clinton's speech, and I'm probably to the Barack supporters what the PUMAs are to the Hillary supporters. I would add to what you've written here that those who have criticized the speech have looked at it as if a speech were a checklist. The speech's growing chorus of critics enumerate all the points she could have made on behalf of Obama but didn't. However, one of the great rhetorical flaws of Democratic speech making in the past is that too often the speeches were written as if they were laundry lists. Effective rhetoric should be focused on a single point, a theme, an argument's controlling idea. Indeed the greatness of Hillary's speech last night was its thematic unity. Rather than listing umteen different reasons why her supporters should work for Obama's election, she developed fully the single most important reason--that if you care about the invisible Americans who inspired my campaign, you will work to elect our party's nominee. And she argued that point fully and powerfully. That's exactly what she needed to say and no more.

I'm curious as to why Amanda Fortini suggests sexism exists only in Obama's America and not in her America. Is she a Texan planning on seceding?

I'm a liberal Democrat, who has worked to elect Democrats to office for much of my adult life. I also support a public option, provided that it can reign in the rapidly escalating costs of health care that threaten to bankrupt this nation. An extension of fee-for-service Medicare to the uninsured simply won't do that. What will is reform that moves us away from fee for service to a system that pays for value. Indeed, many liberals have praised integrated health-care delivery systems like the Mayo Clinic, Kaiser Permanente, and the Cleveland Clinic as examples of how health care can be delivered more effectively at a lower cost. Ironically, none of these organizations is run by the government. However, to be clear, I'm not saying the government can't do a good job. In fact, the VA is also an integrated health-care delivery system that has been recognized in medical journals for it high standards and excellent outcomes. My point is that there's more than one way to skin a cat. What matters most is that Democrats come together around the idea of improving health care and stop bickering over litmus tests as to whether the reform be implemented in the context of a government-controlled program or a consumer-owned coop. If Republicans have behaved like nihilists, Democrats are now behaving like lemmings.