If there was any doubt how much Barack Obama’s supporters despise Hillary Clinton, then his Super Tuesday rally here in Chicago tonight made things loud and clear.
At 9.46pm, in a ballroom in the bowls of Chicago’s Hyatt Regency hotel – shortly before Mr Obama appeared to declare “we do not need the final results to know our time has come!” – Mrs Clinton appeared with her husband Bill on a giant screen carrying CNN’s election night coverage.
Mrs Clinton, dressed in a bright yellow suit before her supporters at a rally in New York, beamed and clapped on screen, but was drowned out here by boos, and chants of “No she can’t, no she can’t”, a juxtaposition to Mr Obama’s historically derivative call to arms of “yes we can”.
Then, for the first time in an evening when the crowd had listened transfixed to each state-by-state result from this giant monitor, the sound was turned off.
Mrs Clinton could be seen delivering her speech – due to a technical glitch the phrase “Statue of Liberty in this great city” slipped out – which immediately triggered shouts of “No! No!”
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At 10.41pm, Mr Obama appeared with his wife Michelle, to the strains of U2’s ‘Beautiful Day’. He delivered a powerful speech with new elements from his standard addresses, and more than ever with the cadence and vocabulary reminiscent of Martin Luther King.
Watching him intently, as he declared that “this time will be different”, was Jesse Jackson, the African American civil rights leader and Democratic presidential candidate in 1984, and 1988 – a year when he won 11 nominating contests, the first African-American man to mount a nationwide presidential campaign.
Mr Obama was gracious about Mrs Clinton, saying as he did in a debate last week that he would remain her friend whatever the outcome of their nomination battle (in truth, the campaign has engendered deep and mutual antipathy). Then, without using her name, he drew the distinctions that have formed the basis of his campaign.
“We owe the American a real choice. We have to choose between looking backwards and looking forwards.” Then he said: “Tonight, I want to speak directly to all those Americans who have not yet joined this movement” - the idea of a “movement” is one of the Clinton camp’s greatest fears - “but are hungry for change. We need you.”