Hillary Clinton’s speech yesterday has gained her wall-to-wall positive press accross traditional and web-based media, all of it deserved.

There was a certain degree of uncertainty before Clinton gave her concession speech yesterday. Past experience had taught everyone, even the pundits, to be wary of predicting what Clinton would say. She was supposed to concede graciously and endorse Barack Obama, but the general agreement was “I’ll believe it when I see it”.

Well they’re believing it now, as Clinton met and surpassed all the expectations of her speech and garnered positively glowing praise across the media and blogosphere.

The Washington Post noted that Clinton gave a “full-throated endorsement” and never allowed even the slightest bit of ambiguity into her backing of Obama. No one could look at her speech and ever say she wasn’t making herself clear.

The LA Times follows suit, saying that Clinton “solidly” backed Obama and noting that the speech was “emotional” and “unequivocal”.

Other media used words to the same effect: unwavering, determined, “throwing herself behind”, backing, supporting, endorsing, joining. Also inspirational, emotional, gracious, elegant, poignant, historic and groundbreaking. Lots of thesauruses have been well thumbed these past 24 hours.

The (pro-democratic) blogosphere has been even more enthusiastic. Areas of the net that have for months lacked much positivity about both candidates, instead opting for their favorite, are positively overflowing with cuddly niceness and unity now. Comments from Far Left Field thanks Senator Clinton for her speech with the headline “The day has Come“. Andrew Sullivan leads with a flattering picture of Clinton under the headline “Yes She Did“. TPM does a short technical commentary praising the construction of the speech itself.

Obam, who has for weeks been praising Clinton on his stump speech, was obviously very pleased with the speech, saying:

“I am thrilled and honored to have Sen. Clinton’s support,” Obama said. “But more than that, I honor her today for the valiant and historic campaign she has run. She shattered barriers on behalf of my daughters and women everywhere, who now know that there are no limits to their dreams.”

The Obama campaign website has a banner on the front page at present saying “Thank You Senator Clinton” and that links you to a place where you can write a message of gratitude to Clinton.

I watched the speech, available below, and liked it. I was actually more worried about the crowd than the senator. Even if I didn’t support her, I know she’s a professional, and once it was clear she wasn’t going to be ambiguous, I relaxed. The crowd was another matter, it wasn’t clear she’d be able to convince them that she was sincere and that if they trusted her they needed to trust her enough to work for Obama. Her first endorsement of him was met with cheers AND boos (though I commend the cheering supporters for doing their best to drown out the boos) but she soldiered on until they were only cheering. She made clear that she wasn’t going to change her mind because of some booing, and generally did a good job of bringing the crowd with her, some more willingly than others.

Here’s the full speech: