AS Hillary Clinton finally conceded defeat to Barack Obama yesterday in the Democratic primary campaign, her wake took on at times the air of a victory celebration.

Her barnstorming performance in the ornate hall of the National Building Museum in Washington was a reminder to supporters of what might have been, had she only found such exhilarating form earlier in the campaign.

While she cautioned her supporters against worrying about “What if?”s and urged them to give their wholehearted support to Obama, she also threw in some reminders of how powerful a figure she still is among Democrats.

Supporters were flown in from the states across America where she had beaten her rival, from Ohio to West Virginia, as if to underline the fact that the Illinois senator had failed to win the popular vote – at least the way she was counting it.

“Eighteen million of you from all walks of life, women and men, young and old, Latino and Asian, African-American and Caucasian, rich and poor, gay and straight, stood here with me and I will continue to stand strong with you,” she said.

After a list such as that, it was a wonder anybody was left to vote for Obama. Yet he is on a path, with her support, to become America’s first black president.

Meanwhile, plans were under way to keep a core team of advisers and fundraisers in place who would be loyal to her rather than Obama, ensuring that her status was duly respected.

Dick Morris, her husband’s former adviser, was unimpressed: “Why won’t Hillary just concede that she has lost and pull out of the race? Why does she persist in keeping her delegates in line for her and not releasing them to Obama? Why does she feign party unity while in fact undermining it?”

Clinton, 60, expressed confidence that there would be a woman president one day.

“Although we weren’t able to shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you it’s got about 18m cracks in it,” she said.

Obama joined in the praise of Clinton as a feminist pioneer, thanking her for her “valiant and historic” campaign. “My daughters and women everywhere . . . now know there are no limits to their dreams,” he said.

Her speech was expertly crafted with one eye on the immediate future – an audition for the vice-presidency – while aiming for a long-term place in the history books whether or not Obama offers to make her his running mate.

Clinton compared her spirit of optimism to his and, borrowing his slogan, said she was standing with him to say: “Yes we can!”

The underlying message was that a unity ticket between them would be unbeatable – a debatable proposition as far as Obama is concerned.

But it was not the only echo of her former opponent’s rhetoric. “Together, Senator Obama and I achieved milestones essential to our progress as a nation, part of our perpetual duty to form a more perfect union,” she declared.

The same phrase from the preamble to the United States constitution was the title of Obama’s groundbreaking speech on race in Philadelphia, which helped him to survive the damaging controversy over his former pastor, the Rev Jeremiah Wright, and his sermons damning America.

The reference bound them together as candidates with the same interest in electing a Democratic president, while emphasising that they were both making history.

The Washington Post described her speech as a “full-throated endorsement” and so it was. It was also an attempt to put her on an equal footing with the victor – or as near it as possible.

Even as she was bidding farewell in Washington, another send-off was being prepared in New York, where she is senator. Every day last week brought a fresh event calculated to upstage Obama.

Sally Bedell Smith, author of For Love of Politics, a portrait of the Clintons, was struck by Clinton’s bizarre nonconcession speech last Tuesday, the night Obama obtained the 2,118 delegates needed to win the nomination. “When I saw Hillary trying to steal Obama’s thunder, it reminded me of the day she and Bill left the White House in 2001. They held a rally at Andrews air force base as President Bush was being sworn in. The television news had split screens. No outgoing president had ever done such a thing.”

At the time, Bill Clinton said, “I’m still here,” as the plane revved up. “We’re not going anywhere.” The same message was delivered yesterday to Obama, even as she gave him her ringing endorsement.

As Clinton was speaking, Obama was spending the weekend quietly in Chicago with his daughters Malia, 10, and Sasha, 7, who invited some friends for a birthday party sleepover last night. He also promised to take Michelle, his wife, on a date. In a burst of confidence, Obama, 46, told a local television station that he backed Chicago for the Olympic Games in 2016 and that, by then, “I’ll be wrapping up my second term as president”.

The latest polls showed only a slight bounce for Obama, though, placing him just two or three points ahead of John McCain, the Republican nominee.

Critical to Obama’s success will be his ability to rally Clinton’s supporters, from white blue-collar workers to the older women who provide the backbone of the Democratic electorate and turned out in huge numbers for the former first lady.

Gloria Steinem, the feminist who complained early on that the “sex barrier” to the White House was not taken as seriously as the “race barrier”, said: “I don’t know any Hillary or feminist supporter who isn’t going to support Obama.” She wondered, however, whether they would vote for him enthusiastically.

Clinton urged them to put aside their misgivings about Obama, despite her harsh words about his lack of experience and fitness for office throughout her campaign: “Just think how much more progress we could have made over the past 40 years if we’d had a Democratic president . . . We cannot let this moment slip away. We have come too far and accomplished too much.”

Obama is preparing to give women a more prominent role in his predominantly male-run campaign and is tipped to bring on board Patti Solis Doyle, Clinton’s former campaign manager, who was sacked in the spring after a string of defeats.

At a campaign rally in Virginia last week, a state that Obama believes he can wrest from the Republicans, middle-aged white women behind the podium held placards proclaiming: “Time 4 Unity”.

On stage with Obama was Jim Webb, a Democratic senator and former Republican defence official with a macho reputation and Scots-Irish background, who describes himself as the only politician with a “union card, two Purple Hearts and three tattoos”.

Tipped as a vice-presidential contender, Webb has the task of reaching out to low-income white voters in the hills of Appalachia, running from Ohio to Tennessee, who turned their backs on Obama. Tomorrow Obama will embark on a two-week tour in the hope of winning them over.

Obama’s campaign enjoys a significant fundraising edge over that of McCain, 71, after raising $272m in the past 18 months.

The Obama and Clinton camps are tentatively beginning to merge their fundraising apparatuses after Hillary told leading donors on a conference call: “He needs to know all of you. He really needs your help.”

She is planning to keep her core donor team in place, however, so she can control how to dispense the cash. Clinton’s finance chairman predicted that her supporters could bring in a further $200m but warned that the amount could depend on whether Obama picked her as a running mate.

Clinton has not fully accepted her vanquished status, despite her eloquent speech. The New York senator merely suspended her campaign last night, ostensibly so that she could raise money to pay off her $30m debts. A transition team has been appointed to negotiate the terms under which she will campaign for Obama – a somewhat bizarre case of the defeated usurping the role of victor, since losers rarely get to set the conditions.

Robert Barnett, a Washington lawyer who handled Tony Blair’s multimillion-dollar book deal, and Cheryl Mills, another lawyer and confidante, are expected to bargain hard for help with settling Clinton’s debts, including an $11m personal loan that she made to the campaign.

Clinton is believed to be haggling over the extent to which she will be Obama’s highest-profile campaigner against McCain, as well as over the guarantee of a star turn at the Democratic National Convention.

Bill Clinton’s role will also be up for discussion. Her campaign was “supposed to be about the restoration of the Clintons”, said Carl Bernstein, Hillary’s biographer. “One of the things she is looking for is a role for Bill Clinton in her campaign because he is looking for rehabilitation.”

The appointment of Barnett is a hopeful sign, Galston believes: “He never browbeats, he shoots straight and he hasn’t got an enemy in Washington.” But the message from Clinton was: make me vice-president or I just might upstage whoever it is.

She may ultimately be willing to take on the role of piloting universal healthcare legislation through the Senate.

Obama devoted much attention last week to soothing Clinton’s feelings instead of concentrating on taking the fight to McCain. He rushed to a “secret” meeting with her at the Washington home of Dianne Feinstein, the California senator, on Thursday, which was more about process than substance, according to an Obama aide. The question of a joint ticket was not raised.

Democrats fear there is plenty of time for more trouble on this issue before the party convention in late August. Lanny Davis, one of Clinton’s most vocal advocates, claims to have secured 25,000 signatures for his new online petition VoteBoth.com. “Obama needs her. It’s possible he can win without her, but he can’t lose with her,” Davis said.

The website Hillaryis44.com, which has often been described as a backdoor route into Clinton’s war room, was even more explicit. “Obama is unelectable and not qualified to be president,” it declared starkly.

After her endorsement, Obama claimed: “I am a better candidate for having the privilege of competing with her in this campaign.”

If the marathon campaign toughened up Obama, who has little executive experience, it also exposed some key weaknesses. Republicans believe they are well on their way to defining Obama as a dangerous left-winger.

Grover Norquist, the influential Republican lobbyist and tax reform crusader, describes Obama as “a guy who came into politics through two of the ugliest routes: the Chicago political machine and the politics of racial grievance through his church”.

The Republican National Committee has assembled a 1,000-page dossier highlighting everything from his indulgent attitude to drug dealers as a legislator in the Illinois state senate to large grants awarded to allies, including the Chicago hospital where his wife worked until recently.

The RNC’s website proclaims: “Meet Barack Obama.” It has a section devoted to Tony Rezko, the Syrian-born property dealer who bought part of the back garden of Obama’s house in Chicago and who was convicted last week of influence-peddling.

“Obama has reacted with extraordinary equanimity to all the insults over the course of the campaign and it shows more than anything that he has presidential temperament,” said Bedell Smith. As yesterday’s speech proved, he also has a powerful new advocate. But should Obama stumble, she is still standing.

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