Hillary Clinton talks up 'green-collar' jobs in convention speech
Convention speech, in which Clinton calls onetime rival "my candidate," may put to rest key dispute over which politician had the best plan for five million green-collar jobs.
DENVER--During the primary campaign, Hillary Clinton lashed out at her rival, saying she was the only candidate with the right plan "to create 5 million new, green collar jobs." She dismissed Barack Obama thusly: "My opponent doesn't have much experience creating jobs at all."
Through his Web site, Obama responded that he had a better plan to create "5 million green collar jobs."
On Tuesday evening here at the Democratic convention, the Democrats' intra-party dispute over who had the best plan to create "5 million green collar jobs" officially ended. In a speech that extolled the virtues of working together to defeat Sen. John McCain, Clinton said her onetime rival from Illinois "is my candidate and he must be our president."
Joined by her husband, Bill Clinton, and daughter, Chelsea Clinton, the New York senator acquiesced on the green-jobs point. Obama will "transform our energy agenda by creating millions of green jobs and building a new, clean energy future," she acknowledged.
Except for Clinton loyalists, including some delegates who staged a rally in her support outside the Pepsi Center, this may put to rest the key question of who had the more efficacious plan--while not answering who came up with it first. The Obama campaign's "factcheck" site claims that "Obama advocated for green-collar jobs for years--and unveiled his plan a month before Clinton unveiled hers." (In an article titled "It's Not Easy Being Green-Collar," Forbes outlined this dispute.)
The issue of green jobs is likely to reappear again in the general election this fall, and Obama has some competition. McCain, the Republican candidate for president, also says he has a plan for green jobs, but doesn't seem to say how many millions of jobs he'll create: "Green jobs and green technology will be vital to our economic future. There is no reason that the U.S. should not be a leader in developing and deploying these new technologies."