DENVER – Hillary Rodham Clinton last night en dorsed the Democratic nominee for president.
And while that nominee is Barack Obama and she made repeated references to his name, she may as well have been talking about Jimmy Carter, Martin Van Buren or William G. McAdoo – any Democrat from anytime in history.
PHOTO GALLERY: Hillary At The DNC
It was a marvelously rousing speech that brought Democrats here to their feet repeatedly and was by far the best speech of the convention.
But instead of a lusty endorsement of the iconic, transformative figure that Obama has become within the party, she gave a firm endorsement only of Democratic principles and values.
After ticking off the highlights of her own campaign platform, she said, “Those are the reasons I ran for president. Those are the reasons I support Barack Obama and those are the reasons you should, too.”
If there were any Obama doubters left in the hall – and certainly there were – she offered an even more vague plea.
“I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me?” she asked after once again telling the story about a Marine who during her campaign implored her to help his buddies back in Iraq.
“Or were you in it for that young Marine and others like him?”
She may as well have been talking about Dennis Kucinich or Mike Gravel.
When she got to the economy, Clinton said Obama will “revitalize” it.
But then she immediately fell back to a general endorsement of the Democrats’ economic policies as well as something even more dear to her.
“Democrats know how to do this,” she said of reviving the economy. “As I recall, President Clinton and the Democrats did it before. And President Obama and the Democrats will do it again.”
The closest she came to a specific embrace of Obama and his policies was a brief nod to “change,” the buzzword he used to defeat her.
“Barack Obama began his career fighting for workers displaced by the global economy. He built his campaign on the fundamental belief that change in this country must start from the ground up, not the top down,” she said.
But even that is vague enough that it could have been said about any number of Democratic politicians, most especially her own husband.
churt@nypost.com