Hillary Clinton delivers.

Byline: The Register-Guard

Hillary Clinton dropped the prime-time payload that Barack Obama so desperately needed Tuesday, exhorting her supporters - at least 20 percent of whom have said in recent polls that they intend to vote for John McCain rather than Obama - to set aside their lingering bitterness and disappointment and to close ranks behind their party's winner.

"I want you to ask yourselves: Were you in this campaign just for me?" she asked Democratic delegates at the party's convention in Denver.

"You haven't worked so hard over the last 18 months, or endured the last eight years, to suffer through more failed leadership. No way. No how. No McCain," she said at another.

It was a speech of remarkable grace and generosity that betrayed none of the lingering bitterness and resentment that she, and many of her followers, still feel in the wake of a brutal six-month primary in which she received 18 million votes and came within agonizing inches of winning the nomination.

It also was a speech that demonstrated the impressive rhetorical and political skills that Clinton honed in a campaign that pushed both candidates - and the Democratic party - to the limit and beyond. Widely regarded as the most powerful she has ever delivered, it could help position her for another run for the White House four years from now, especially if Obama fails to win this November - a fact that surely was not lost on her many loyal supporters.

But Clinton left not a scintilla of doubt about her support for Obama: "Barack Obama is my candidate - and he must be our president," she said at one point. "I support Barack Obama," she said at another. If that wasn't clear enough, she later added: "We need to elect Barack Obama."

No equivocation in those remarks - or in her incendiary criticism of McCain. "It makes sense that George Bush and John McCain will be together next week in the Twin Cities," she said, referring to the site of the Republican National Convention, "because these days they're awfully hard to tell apart

Clinton provided no new ammunition for the McCain campaign, although the Republican presidential candidate's arsenal is overflowing with Clinton quotes from the primary, some of which already have begun cropping up in Republican advertisements.

They include Clinton's comment last December, when she said: "So you decide which makes more sense: Entrust our country to someone who is ready on Day 1 ... or to put America in the hands of someone with little national or international experience, who started running for president the day he arrived in the U.S. Senate." Or this flamer from March 2008: "I know Sen. McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House. And Sen. Obama has a speech he gave in 2002."

But Clinton did her absolute and necessary best to put to rest any doubts about her support for Obama - and to urge her frustrated supporters to follow her lead. And on Wednesday, she released her remaining convention delegates as Democrats prepared to formally deliver the party's nomination to Obama.

Clinton's speech heightened speculation about what her husband, former President Bill Clinton, would say in his scheduled prime-time speech Wednesday night. But anyone listening closely to Hillary Clinton's speech got a strong hint when she handed the compelling legacy of 1990s prosperity and peace - the one on which she based her own campaign - to her former foe.

"As I recall, we did it before with President Clinton and the Democrats," she said to loud applause. "And President Obama and the Democrats will do it again."

Now, it's up to Obama to take that baton without fumbling it and run the final leg of the presidential marathon. The convention comes as Obama's once-commanding lead in the polls has evaporated and he finds himself in a dead heat with a Republican opponent who not long ago few even gave a chance of winning his own party's nomination.

When Obama accepts his party's nomination tonight, he should begin by giving his vanquished foe the same strong, genuine and unqualified acknowledgement that she so generously gave him.

It remains to be seen whether Clinton supporters ultimately will heed her plea and unite behind Obama, but she has done everything possible to ensure that outcome.

The rest is up to Barack Obama.