The delegates and the media would have loved her no matter what. Rather, they said, his goal was to make the case for Clinton’s qualifications while squarely addressing the broader national debate over America’s values and moral character in the wake of Trump’s rise. The final speaker to do that on Clinton’s behalf was her daughter, Chelsea, who spoke ahead of her mom on Thursday night.
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Progressives remain wary of Clinton’s foreign policy because of her vote for the Iraq War, which she has since called a mistake.
Barack Obama summoned the charisma and oratory that catapulted him to the White House eight years ago, to enthuse the country to rally behind Hillary Clinton on Wednesday night.
Explain what she wants to do. That’s what matters. That’s why we can take the food and music and holidays and styles of other countries, and blend it into something uniquely our own.
Philadelphia looks a lot more like a Bernie Sanders policy conference than it does a 1990s Bill Clinton Democratic Leadership Council, tie-dye-under-oxford-shirt celebration. He testified to her virtues as a would-be president in a way only a current president could.
Tell the story of her campaign and her presidency.
Confronting a “moment of reckoning”, Hillary Clinton is casting herself as a unifier for divided times and a tested, steady hand to lead in a volatile world. People say, “I’m with her, I guess”, with all the enthusiasm of a recalcitrant child being dragged to school at 7:30 in the morning. What will our economy look like, and how will that be different from what we have now? What will our relationship be with allies and adversaries overseas? “He said he was going to be the president for all people and I definitely think he has lived up to that”, said Antonio Hayes, a Maryland delegate from Baltimore and state legislator who represents the same district where Freddie Gray was killed.
For all the efforts to reintroduce Clinton to the country, including a handful of resets during her 15-month campaign, her allies saw the convention as a chance to reshape perceptions, whether formed by Baby Boomers over the course of her nearly three decades in public life or by millennials in the years since she left the State Department in 2013.
“It takes a president who believes not only in the potential of his own child, but of all children; who believes not only in the strength of his own family, but of the American family”, the first lady said. This three-part structure (problem, solution, why only this candidate can deliver it) is at the rhetorical heart of every successful presidential campaign. It’s becoming a genuine argument about what America is and how it can succeed. But it’s a significant gamble given high “wrong track” sentiment in the country and residual fatigue over Democratic control of the White House. “Donald Trump consistently smears the character of Muslims”, he said.
She offered plenty of sanctimonious blather that showed a complete lack of self-awareness.
One of the things that couldn’t fail to strike someone who watched the Republican Presidential primary with even a moderate amount of interest was Donald Trump’s obsession with numbers reflecting people’s interest in his candidacy.
As the USA presidential race moves out of the national convention phase and into the long slog to November 8, party loyalists in this Democratic enclave are trying to make sense of what is arguably the craziest and most unpredictable presidential election in generations.
On first glance, her two-button white pantsuit on Thursday appeared to have wider lapels than jackets she has worn in the past, and overall, the pantsuit didn’t seem as matronly as some of the tweed and embroidered jackets she has worn before. Only her pollster knows for sure, but whatever it is, she’ll never have a better chance to hammer home that argument.
“She’s been there for us, even if we haven’t always noticed”, he said. When you cast your ballot, what kind of statement are you making about yourself and who you are? When they voted for Barack Obama, they were proclaiming themselves part of a new America, diverse and cosmopolitan and unafraid of the future.
Clinton needs to give the best speech of her life.
“America has changed over the years”, Obama said. You’re bitter and afraid and you want a strong leader who will restore what has been lost. When Clinton yells in speeches, it grates.
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There were initial questions of whether it was even a good idea for Clinton to speak. When asked to name her accomplishments, her supporters rush to the internet to find a supportive Huffington Post or New York Times column.
