Hillary Clinton's Unsportsmanlike Speech

Senator Hillary Clinton delivered her speech on June 3 after Senator Barack Obama reached the required number of delegates, which event supposedly ended the competition, and declared Sen. Obama the winner and the presidential nominee of the Democratic Party. Even though her supporters were expecting a decision and a new direction, possibly a concession from Sen. Clinton, instead they received a well-constructed speech with no direction as to where to go from here and absolutely no sign of her intent to give up. Considering that this was a sixteen months-long primary season, at least sportsmanship rules require a defeated party to acknowledge her opponents victory, but this was not how Sen. Clinton designed her speech.

Her first lines were “Thank you so much to South Dakota. You had the last word in this primary season and it was worth the wait.”

After suggesting that by her victory in South Dakota, her supporters had the last word, she moved on to the rest of the speech which sounded like it could have easily been her victory speech declaring her Democratic nomination. In fact, that is one of the major criticisms of her speech, that she did not acknowledge Senator Obama’s victory and his historic nomination as the first African American presidential nominee of the Democratic Party and nor did she acknowledge her own defeat.

“This has been a long campaign and I will be making no decisions tonight.” Said Sen. Clinton.

That is one thing not to rush into a decision but she could have still recognized Obama’s victory, especially that in her speech she called him a friend. So why didn’t she celebrate her “friend” victory? Probably because she still has some hidden cards up her sleeve keeping her in the race or at least in the Whitehouse.

“I am committed to uniting our party move forward stronger and more ready then ever to take back the White House this November.” Said Sen.Clinton.

The question remains, can Sen. Obama possibly work with someone, who declared that 18 million people voted for her, demonstrating the size of her supporters, which number, considering that about 35 million people voted, is more than half of the total votes. Stated differently, Sen. Clinton has a whole movement behind her and she is planning to use it.

Sen. Clinton’s game plan was not revealed last night, but it is fair to assume that she will not disappear on Capital Hill. She will stay as close to the Whitehouse as possible working on a new game plan even if that means to accept a Vice Presidential position next to a man she claimed to have less political and foreign affairs experience than she does. However, when you loose a race, you congratulate your opponent for his victory even if you have further plans to keep fighting. Some of you might say, yes, but this is politics and not sports.

hillary clinton

Print Article

Email Article

View All Articles

How to subscribe to feeds