His keynote speech on the second day of the Democrats’ nominating convention in Philadelphia was filled with jokes about his wife’s fussiness over drawer liners and praise for her get-things-done attitude. “I was still in awe of more than four years of being around her at how smart and strong and loving and caring she was and I really hope that her decision … to marry me was one she would never regret”. The touching stories capped a night sagely created to introduce voters to the Hillary Clinton that her friends say we would love, if only we knew her the way they do.
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Now, as she pursues the presidency in her own right, he took the opportunity to reintroduce her to the public, spending most of his time on stage rehearsing the years before she became a national figure. “You just have to decide – you just have to decide which is which”, he said. “The real one calls you when you’re sick, when your kid’s in trouble or when there’s a death in the family”.
With soft-spoken tales of her early life, their law-school courtship and the birth of their daughter Chelsea, Hillary Clinton’s husband used an hour of primetime television to re-introduce a woman known to American politics since 1992. “But good for you”, he added.
Clinton, who aides say wrote his speech himself, is likely to focus on the former first lady’s role as a wife and a mother rather than as a politician.
It began with a walk down nostalgia lane as he recounted the personal history of their life together, beginning at Yale Law School, continuing on in Arkansas, and coming under the national spotlight during two terms in the White House as the Clintons became one of the most politically powerful couples in US history.
Drawing on his 40-year marriage with Hillary Clinton, former President Bill Clinton told the nation stories Tuesday night about a remarkable partnership that could make history again-for both of them. “She will never quit on you”. And I can’t believe we’ve put the biggest crack in that glass ceiling yet. She was joined by several women, one of them a young girl who stood at her side.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump posted a two-point lead over his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, according to a Reuters/Ipsos opinion poll released on Tuesday, the first time he has been ahead since early May.
“She had a childhood that made mine look like a piece of cake”, he said.
Former President Bill Clinton portrayed his wife Hillary on Tuesday as a force for change and a longtime fighter for social justice as he made a case for her historic 2016 bid for the White House.
When protesters from the Black Lives Matter movement interrupted his campaign speech in April, Clinton engaged in a shouting match with them as he tried to defend the crime bill.
Lauren Manning, who survived burns over 80% of her body in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center, said Clinton “had my back” as a senator from NY. “You know it because she spent a lifetime doing it”.
Allies say the former president understands his mission – to promote his wife’s experience and personal qualities, not relive his own presidency. And he finally got her to visit him in Arkansas, where she took a teaching position and started the first legal aid clinic in northwest Arkansas.
Also appearing in Philadelphia on Wednesday will be Vice President Joe Biden. Only the Clintons can excite and then exasperate their fellow Democrats with such dizzying predictability.
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The political drama with Sanders and controversy over Democratic National Committee emails that show staffers seemingly working against him has done little to dampen the excitement among Clinton allies.
