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Bill Clinton last night praised Barack Obama for “hitting one out of the ballpark” when he picked Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate. But I heard several Democrats say they thought Biden’s subsequent Pepsi Center acceptance speech was flat, at times inauthentic sounding. “He sounded like a political hack,” one Democrat who closely watched the speech told me; this Democrat was bothered in particular by the laundry list of complaints about John McCain’s positions, followed by the rhetorical refrain: “That’s not change, that’s more of the same.”

To me, Biden’s speech did sound conflicted (thus perhaps giving rise to that complaint that it sounded inauthentic). On the one hand, the Delaware senator was ripping McCain. On the other hand, he was calling McCain by his first name. “John thinks the economy is doing well…John wants to give tax breaks to corporations” etc. Biden and McCain have been long-time colleagues, in the Senate, a place that prides itself on its clubby-genteel house rules. Biden even admitted “John McCain is my friend.” So, he probably is conflicted about pillorying one of his long-time Senate buddies. And when he called McCain by his first name, he sort of personalized the Republican in a way that took some of the edge off his attack – which I can’t imagine the Democrats want him to do. They want an attack-dog, off-the-leash….

The best part of Biden’s speech was the heartfelt introduction given by his son – and then Biden’s teary-eyed reaction to it. That seemed real – as did his personal recollections and embrace of his family.

But it’ll take more than Biden to provide the Democrats with the “bounce” in poll numbers that they hope to get out of the convention. So far, the Democratic ticket has not seen a bounce in its poll numbers - the virtually automatic 5-10 point jump that normally comes with a good convention and all the publicity it garners (part of that might be attributable to the very aggressive GOP campaign to spoil the Democratic party which I blogged about two days ago). In fact, a few polls (Rasmussen and Gallup) have shown McCain continuing to close the gap on Obama even during the Democrats’ convention. Not a good sign....for Democrats.

Bottom-line, if anyone hit one out of the ballpark Wednesday night – speech-wise – it was Bill Clinton. Now his speech was, so far, the most masterful one of the convention…not only in purely technical speech-making terms but also possibly in terms of acting; after all, wasn’t it Bill who was supposedly the least reconciled to Hillary’s defeat at the hands of Obama? Whether it was an act or not, Bill gave the convincingly generous speech that Hillary was supposed to have given the night before to heal the Obama-Clinton wounds.

I ran into Lt. Gov. John Garamendi Wednesday, at the Pepsi Center, making the rounds of the radio talk shows. His pitch was that his party is still in transition; that the Clinton-istas are in the painful mourning phase of their loss - not to worry, in time, they’ll be fully on board with Obama.

Maybe, maybe not. The real danger is NOT that the Clinton-istas would vote for McCain so much as they would not open their checkbooks to Obama, walk precincts or man phone banks for him.

If it's any solace to Democrats, it’s the same dilemma McCain faces with his own party’s hard-line conservative wing.

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