In terms of accomplishing what it needed to accomplish, sure, Hillary Clinton's speech was a home run, a grand slam, a tape-measure shot across Waveland Avenue (look that up, and without a link!).

But I can't help but feel the same feeling I've felt watching lots of her speeches, and believe me, I have. It could have been a lot more.

I strove to watch this thing from the point of view of one of her supporters – the one in five of her primary-season voters – who not only did not vote for but actively does not like Barack Obama. Who are these people?

They may be immature politically. And they are. I have made my views on that clear. But they aren't stupid. They know John McCain has pledged to put anti-abortion judges on the bench. They know John McCain has moved to the right on taxes and drilling and loads of things. They are well aware of all the logical and rational reasons that they shouldn't be flirting with voting for John McCain, but they're thinking about it anyway.

Did this speech persuade them? I'm honestly not sure. For all her general avowals in Obama's behalf, there were a few specific things she did not do in the speech.

First, she didn't vouch at all for Obama's character. She didn't say anything like, "I have served in the Senate with this man, and I competed with him on the campaign trail for nearly two years. And as heated as things got sometimes, I can tell you that he is a person of profound judgment and decency and heft who will be a great leader," or something along those lines. Establishing that she had some degree of personal affinity for the nominee would have hit the Pumas in the breadbasket. She chose not to do it.

Second, she didn't say anything about Obama's ability as commander-in-chief. I'd argue she was under a special obligation to do this, at the very moment when McCain is running an ad using her famous quote from February in which she said that she and McCain brought a lifetime of experience to the job of leading America in the world, while Obama had a speech he gave in 2002. I honestly thought that she would reference that ad specifically and say something like, "Well, I'm Hillary Clinton, and I do not approve that message."

Imagine the applause. But she left all that hanging. And indeed the statement the McCain campaign issued immediately after the speech drove this point home, pointing out that Clinton had said nothing about Obama's ability to be the commander-in-chief. And I have to think the omission was conscious.

Third, it was interesting to me how she articulated the stakes of people opposing Obama. "I want you to ask yourselves," she said. "Were you in this campaign just for me? Or were you in it for" various unfortunate citizens she'd discussed previously. That was the traditional "invisible people" trope she used often during the primaries.

Well, that was her trope, but it wasn't Obama's, and it just struck me as an odd way to make the argument for why any Democrat just has to vote Democratic instead of voting Republican. You have to vote Democratic because you don't believe in starting hideous wars of choice; because you care what the rest of the world thinks of us; because you don't want to let one of America's great cities die from incompetence and neglect; because you honor and cherish the constitution; because you believe that government agencies should do what they are professionally assigned to do, and not conduct ideological witch hunts; because you want a government that answers to the people and doesn't manipulate them and strike fear into them.

Clinton instead cited: jobs going overseas, oil company profits and the need to build a green economy. Look, these are important things. But they are focused-grouped things, and they are at this point practically throw-away lines. She did not, to my thinking, drill down to the kinds of specifics that would punch liberal women (and some men) – the people who are here in Denver and were raptly watching – in the stomach and make them understand, "Wow, maybe I really am being kinda stupid here."

She also didn't really attack McCain very hard. George Bush's name was mentioned just once. About one-eighth of the speech was devoted to McCain. And she just didn't say that Obama is ready for the Oval Office, which is a big part of her backers' opposition to him.

She's getting great reviews tonight, as I'm writing, and I can understand why. Cable television will probably quiet down on the disunity meme for a while. There were plenty of positive sound bites.

But I will bet anyone my mortgage: in one or two weeks, some polls will come out, and the TV pundits will marvel, "So that barn-burning Hillary Clinton speech didn't create party unity after all." She left too much unsaid tonight. And the unity, I still think, will come, but it will come in October. And it will come more because of him than her. But in the short term, she did at least manage to change a negative narrative – at least for 24 hours, until her husband speaks, which is the next drama.