My overriding impression from four days of the convention in Philadelphia is just how confident the Democrats are about this election. The most memorable part of her speech Thursday wasn’t her praise of the American spirit but her crystallization of doubts about her opponent: “Ask yourself: Does Donald Trump have the temperament to be commander-in-chief?”
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And Clinton seemed to hint at this issue when she said: “I get it that some people just don’t know what to make of me”.
She pointed out that this was risky thinking and then-haha!-went after Trump’s masculinity.
He ended the series of tweets in typically blunt fashion: “No one has worse judgment than Hillary Clinton – corruption and devastation follows her wherever she goes”. It would take another three decades before the party was willing to bet on a woman for the big ticket again-an entire generation of women came of age with no memory of the Ferraro candidacy-and this time the party faithful had called a woman to the top. “I said that because I know that Donald Trump couldn’t tell the difference”.
But the heart of the speech was an argument for unity and inclusion, and the emotional climax of the night was a searing attack on Trump by the father of a Muslim US Army captain who died in Iraq trying to stop a truck bomb, saving other members of his unit.
“Donald Trump has a passion”, Kaine observed in his speech to the Democratic convention on Wednesday.
Trump was officially named the GOP presidential nominee at the Republican National Convention on July 19. Her mother-a motherly mother, a womanly woman who looms large in Clinton’s autobiography. Even a walkout by 200 or so Sanders diehards-out of 1,900 delegates-didn’t unravel the determined coalition that the Clinton and Sanders teams worked hard to fuse.
On the second day, it was Clinton’s husband, former US president Bill Clinton, who took centre stage, and who sought to portray his wife as a person, not a politician. Many people are angry about police shootings of black men. ‘She can’t have it both ways. there’s no way she can establish that she’s the change. She claimed responsibility for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, a program passed by a Republican Congress and signed into law by President Bill Clinton. Earlier that morning, the Republican nominee sent a campaign letter to his supporters urging them not to tune in. How do you square it? And when was the last time you heard a presidential candidate use the words “systemic racism”-as something that needed to be eradicated-in a speech?” The best line from the speech – “America is great because America is good” – was lifted without recognition from Alexis de Tocqueville from nearly two centuries ago.
Sean Spicer, who works for the Republican National Committee, tweeted that Clinton lifted the phrase from political scientist Alexis de Tocqueville.
Obama: “I’m Barack Obama, running for president and I approve this message”. Clinton is promising new investments in clean energy and transportation infrastructure that would create jobs in areas where high unemployment has lingered after the Great Recession. “She said that what anxious President Kennedy during that very risky time was that a war might be started-not by big men with self-control and restraint, but by little men, the ones moved by fear and pride”. Imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis. “She spent the evening talking down to the American people she’s looked down on her whole life”.
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“There’s a lot to do”, acknowledged Clinton, a departure from the campaign’s recent insistence that Trump was exaggerating the pain felt by working families.
