JOHN YANG: At the White House, President Obama prepared for his last convention as president.
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“Hillary Clinton has the passion and understanding to support grieving mothers”, said Sybrina Fulton, whose son Trayvon Martin was killed in 2012. Others are kind of ho-hum about it.
After the nomination was conferred, some of Sanders’ supporters left the convention floor and voiced their grievances about Clinton and the Democratic National Committee to the press.
So the tone of the convention is, say, mixed.
For a man more accustomed to delivering policy-packed stem-winders, Clinton’s heartfelt address underscored the historic night for Democrats, and the nation.
Trump, a 70-year-old NY businessman with no experience in political office, has hammered Clinton as untrustworthy and cast America as a place where security threats abound and law and order are breaking down. At the end of the vote, Sanders himself moved to select her as the nominee. He finally convinced her to take a walk with him, he said, and “we’ve been talking and laughing ever since”.
But for papers stuck without a good, relevant photo of Clinton at deadline, there were other options besides simply running a picture of her husband.
Martha McKenna, a Clinton delegate from Maryland, said the night felt like a celebration for Sanders’ campaign as well as Clinton’s. I saw that when I met them, I see that every time I see them together. “And they know that they can have those same aspirations”.
Backers argue that Clinton’s strength is not as a campaigner but as a hard worker, and once she gets a job, she adopts a “workhorse” approach that impresses even adversaries. “I said, ‘I know most of the young Democrats our age who want to go into politics, they mean well and they speak well, but none of them are as good as you are at actually doing things to make positive changes in people’s lives.’ So I suggested she go home to IL or move to NY and look for a chance to run for office”. “We need to see consistency, and we need to have her firmly on board on issues that are progressive”, she said. I got close enough to touch her back, but I couldn’t do it. “And it was special to witness that”.
In an interview with NBCBLK in November, Reverend Daughtry said that this year’s convention, now underway, would be “the most diverse and the most forward-looking convention that we’ve had in recent history”. It was a very symbolic gesture; however I think a couple of things have to happen before we achieve unity.
Sanders received an overwhelming ovation at Wednesday morning’s Texas Delegation Breakfast.
He told them that, indeed, they had to keep going. But Sanders also said the number of superdelegates would be reduce by 60-percent in four years by the Democratic Party.
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Many were instead thinking of voting for Jill Stein, the Green Party’s presumptive nominee. He then touched on her experience as a lawyer with the Children’s Defense Fund and her service as a New York Senator and Secretary of State. And a chant started up: “Bernie or Jill, Bernie or Jill …”
