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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.
