Beyond the Dome

Hillary Rodham Clinton has many challenges when she addresses the convention tomorrow night: Throw her support to Barack Obama, make it sound like she means it, get her supporters on board in more than a halfhearted way. But most of all, she has to give a speech that’s not all about her.

Judging from her speech to the Hispanic caucus this morning at the Colorado Convention Center, she might still have some work to do on the last part.

Clinton did make an impassioned plea to her supporters to “work as hard for Barack Obama as you have for me” — the same line she used at the New York delegation breakfast earlier in the morning.

But along the way, she managed to throw in a lot of references to her own career and her own accomplishments, sounding very much like the presidential candidate she was until early June.

“I have worked on behalf of farm workers for a very long time,” Clinton said. “I stood on the floor with Bob Menendez and Ken Salazar during the immigration debate, arguing for comprehensive immigration reform…. My first job in politics was registering Hispanic voters in South Texas…. In my campaign, across South Texas from El Paso to San Antonio to Corpus Christi, I’ve reunited with some of the people I worked with. I even met some people I registered to vote.”

Eventually, she did circle back to Obama, and with a line that seemed perfectly test-marketed for the big speech tomorrow night. “Let us remember what we were fighting for,” Clinton said. “We were not just fighting to elect a particular person president. We were fighting to take our country back.”

Like it or not, though, everyone will be focused on whether Clinton really has gotten over her loss. If she sticks to the parts about uniting behind Obama, she just might be able to shut the chatter down once and for all. If not, she probably won’t.