Unity and a Man from Montana

Hillary Clinton and her Sisterhood of the Traveling Suit Pants took the Pepsi Center by storm tonight.

Her job with the keynote speech of the second evening of the Democratic National Convention was to preach unity. Without sounding like a sore loser wishing it was her speaking in two days, Clinton continued to talk about women shattering glass ceilings while repeatedly telling the crowd that had suddenly become her biggest fan club that Barack Obama was the Democrat’s only hope.

“Whether you voted for me or voted for Barack, the time is now to unite as a single party with a single purpose,” she told the crowd.

With hubby Bill overlooking the festivities from a VIP box, it would appear Hillary accomplished her mission in bridging the gap between her supporters and Team Obama. The packed Pepsi Center crowd drank the so called Kool-Aid, passing around thousands of Unity signs to wave back and forth.

Then her speech shifted to Sen. John McCain. With clever sound bites including a reference to how ironic it was that McCain and President George Bush were heading to the Twin Cities together next week, Clinton continued the theme of day two: First half of the speech pro Democrat, second half, McCain bash.

Perhaps the best of this bunch was Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer. He had the impossible speech time slot just prior to Hillary when everybody in the building would have much rather just skipped to the keynote.

But Schweitzer won everybody over with his bi-partisan talk, bolo tie and folksy and energetic style

“Can we afford four more years of the same?” asked Schweitzer, a cattle rancher by trade, while bouncing on the convention hall stage.

“No!” the crowd fired back.

Schweitzer came out of nowhere last night. No one knew who he was ahead of time, but the jovial Montana governor became a new fresh face in this campaign in just 10 minutes or so.

There was a buzz about him as he left the stage. Huh, I remember a certain senator coming out of nowhere with a breakout speech at the DNC just four years ago.

Yeah, I’m getting a little ahead of myself considering I know nothing of Schweitzer other than his prequel to Hillary speech.

—Jacob Harkins, Yellow Scene Magazine editor

More DNC coverage here.