As promised, here’s a rundown of some of my favorite quotes from CNN pundits analyzing Hillary Clinton’s speech to the Democratic National Convention last night.

Maybe it is because it’s August and the boys of summer have reached the time during the season when they decide it’s time to play with passion, but baseball analogies ruled the night.

Occasional anchor and magic-wall master John King led things off (what? I’m just following the theme):

“She’s a big game player, and this was a big-game speech,” he said.

Candy Crowley reporter/analyst (that combo is one of my annoyances, by the way) set the table, calling Clinton “a clutch player” who “delivers when she needs to.”

Longtime Clintonista James Carville added some power:

“There are skill sets and skill levels in politics, just like in anything else. You saw a lot of pitching so far, but this was a major league fastball,” Carville said, going on to marvel how it wasn’t only the brilliance of the speech itself, but Clinton’s delivery of it, that made it so remarkable. He described Clinton’s growth as a speaker since an earlier event – perhaps the funeral of Coretta Scott King? – when her presentation … well, hadn’t been worthy of the majors.

“This is a bad night for Hillary haters in the press,” Carville said. Repeating himself, he said, “There’s a skill level in politics. You’ve just seen what a Hall of Famer looks like.

“If you’re a Republican, you had a bad night tonight.”

But it was Huffington Post political director Hilary Rosen who cleared the bases:

Clinton’s speech was “a clarion call of grace and power,” Rosen said. In effect, she said, Clinton was saying to her wistful supporters, “‘I am not your therapist.  I am a Democrat, and you need to get it together and vote for Barack Obama if you care’” about the issues important to Democrats: Turning the economy around, getting out of Iraq, etc. 

An unBegala-like Paul Begala merely offered a tally sheet of how many times Clinton mentioned Obama’s name in the speech – no fewer than 10 times, he said – and noted that she was “much more consciously feminist” than she had been earlier in her campaign.

(Maybe he was still shell-shocked from having sounded an uncharacteristically humble and conciliatory note—“I was wrong”—after Mark Warner’s keynote address earlier.)

But in the end, at least for the “Ragin’ Cajun,” it came down to food.

“This is the opening of a three-act play,” Carville said, referring also to tonight’s speech by Bill Clinton and Obama’s nomination acceptance speech tomorrow. “They are going to have one heck of a salesman come in and get voters to sign on the bottom line.

“But people are going to decide how much they like the veal after Thursday night.”
And as for Jeffrey Toobin dubbing Montana Gov. Brian Schweitzer “the star of the night” before Clinton and “the Barack Obama of 2008” and Alex Castellanos calling Clinton’s address “the lesser of two evils speech?” The only explanation is that those two missed the strongly worded advice the New York Democratic Party gave its delegates.

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