Stellar Speech....by a master.

Bill Clinton Speech Asks Undecided Voters To Hang On, Give Obama Another Chance

Former President Bill Clinton, in his speech Wednesday night to the DNC, asked undecided voters to give President Barack Obama another chance.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -– Bill Clinton made the nation a big promise Wednesday night, pledging to those still struggling that their economic fortunes will turn around if they reelect President Barack Obama.

“A lot of Americans are still angry and frustrated about this economy," Clinton told a spellbound audience of delegates at Time Warner Cable Arena. "If you look at the numbers, you know that employment is growing, banks are beginning to lend again, and a lot of housing prices are even beginning to pick up.

“But too many people do not feel it yet,” he said, and then vowed: “If you will renew the president's contract, you will feel it. You will feel it.”

He paused, and then added, “Folks, whether the American people believe what I just told you or not may be the whole election. I just want you to know I believe it. With all my heart I believe it.”

The rest of Clinton’s nearly hour-long speech was a detailed litigation of the main charges that Republicans have made against Obama.

But those few sentences -- an acknowledgment that the nation is still stuck in an economic slump, a promise that a second Obama term will bring better times, and a quick, sly slip into analyst mode -- were the key moments of the speech.

It was an honest, forthright appeal to the voters who will, by all accounts, decide the election -- those who voted for Obama in 2008, but who have found themselves disappointed, wanting to believe in the president they supported four years ago, but not sure they will. Strikingly, Clinton's line about the possibility that Americans may not put their faith in the president was not in his prepared remarks. 

Clinton only mentioned Republican Mitt Romney a handful times, but laid out a framework that he said defines this election. “If you want a winner-take-all, you’re-on-your-own society, you should support the Republican ticket,” Clinton said. “But if you want a country of shared opportunities and shared responsibility -– a we're-all-in-this-together society -- you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.”

Clinton, whose mastery of the stage left him several possible ways to attack Romney, notably did not skewer the Republican's record at Bain Capital, or his other weaknesses, instead focusing his argument in general against the GOP philosophy. (Clinton worked a stint for the consulting and private equity firm Teneo Capital. Co-founder Doug Band is a close Clinton adviser. Clinton listed his income from Teneo on a recent disclosure form as greater than $1,000, though it gives no upper limit.)

Holding fire on Bain left the speech absent a zinger to sum up Romney. Instead, Clinton saved the zinger for tax cuts for the rich, warning that Romney will "double down on trickle-down."

He paraphrased Ronald Reagan: "As another president once said, 'There they go again."

In reframing last week's GOP message, he employed equal parts mockery, wonkery and plainspeak.

In short, he said, the Republicans came to Tampa to deliver a simple message about Obama: "We left him a total mess, but he hasn't cleaned it up fast enough, so fire him and put us back in."

Clinton hit Paul Ryan in the same style. The GOP vice presidential candidate had attacked Obama for cutting $716 billion from Medicare, when his own budget proposal included those same cuts.

"You gotta give him one thing. It takes some brass to attack a guy for doing what you did," Clinton said.