The stage is set for one Democrat and one Republican to take each other on in a presidential race, now that Sen. Hillary Clinton has thrown her support behind her Democratic rival, Sen. Barack Obama..
Clinton ended her 17-month campaign for the Democratic nomination Saturday. To the cheering supporters who overflowed the National Building Museum in Washington D.C., Clinton spoke of the high points, emotional moments and, perhaps more importantly to the Democratic Party, the road ahead.
NPR's David Greene, who spent much of the campaign season traveling with Clinton, tells host Renee Montagne that he wasn't sure what to expect from Clinton's speech. Her advisers were sending signals that she might not really end the campaign, that she might find a way to keep it going and might not fully endorse Obama.
"So when she ... said she wanted everyone to fight as hard as they could to make Obama president, that was news," Greene says.
He was also struck by how much of Clinton's speech was devoted to the importance of her campaign to women.
She made a decision early in the campaign to play up her strength and experience and to play down her gender. But women saw her campaign as a movement, even if she wasn't really encouraging it, Greene says. "In many ways, she was giving a nod to that reality, oddly enough, on the day she was dropping out."
Now Clinton says she'll do anything that Obama asks of her, and Greene says her supporters hope that means getting a spot on the ticket.
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