Former U.S. President Bill Clinton took the stage at the Democratic National Convention tonight, but he didn’t just speak as a an experienced politician; he also gave his testimony as Hillary Clinton’s spouse of over 40 years.
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By night’s end, the Clinton campaign hopes to have moved past the dissent that somewhat tarnished the convention’s opening day.
But what it does outline is her support among the Democratic establishment, which was recently saddled with controversy when an email leak showed former party chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz expressed open contempt for Bernie Sanders’s campaign during the primary season.
“It was a lapse, but she says to his credit, he tried to break it off, tried to pull away, tried to manage someone who was clearly a “narcissistic loony toon” but it was beyond control”, Blair wrote in her notes about a September 1998 conversation with Hillary Clinton.
Hillary Clinton waves to the crowd after delivering her “official launch speech” at a campaign kick off rally in Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park on Roosevelt Island in New York City, June 13, 2015.
Clinton previously ran for the Democratic nomination in 2008 against President Barack Obama.
Bill Clinton told the convention in a keynote speech that Hillary had been an activist for social justice since the couple’s early days as law students together. “It takes a president who not only holds these beliefs but acts on them”, she said, per CBS News. Clinton says Gingrich said she did a good job.
“So it is with a full heart that I’m here today to nominate Hillary Clinton to be the first woman president”.
In his subsequent 1992 and 1996 presidential nomination acceptance speeches, Clinton drew in a nationwide audience with a simple, hopeful message and shorter delivery.
Bill Clinton had the spotlight Tuesday night.
In November, she will take on Republican Donald Trump. Moments after Mrs Clinton claimed the nomination, a group of Sanders supporters left the convention and headed to a media tent to protest what they said was their being shut out of the party. The experience of becoming a grandmother, in particular, seems to have softened Clinton as a candidate, helping her become more comfortable grounding her candidacy on her personal background and family story.
“She always wants to move the ball forward”.
Clinton now heads into the general election as the nominee of a splintered party that she will have to work to unify. The “Fights Of Her Life” segments focusing on Clinton’s accomplishments were interspersed with videos featuring Trump’s comments opposing abortion and bemoaning that women’s pregnancies hurt businesses.
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Sanders spoke for Vermont, his home state, at around 6:53 p.m. ET after the delegation first asked to pass on announcing its vote count, given in alphabetical order by state. Clinton praised Hillary for starting a legal aid clinic in Arkansas and for holding hearings and proposing standards to bring up the state’s low education numbers while he served as governor.
