Making history as the first female major United States party nominee for president, Hillary Clinton said Thursday that America faces “a moment of reckoning”, and aggressively cast Republican nominee Donald Trump as a divisive figure stoking fear across the country.
Advertisement
“None of us can raise a family, build a business, heal a community or lift a country totally alone”.
“We didn’t come here to fear the future, we came here to shape it”, Obama said.
Clinton and running mate Tim Kaine will speak about economic opportunity, diversity and national security, themes hammered home during their party’s convention.
Confronted by a Republican nominee they view as a demagogue, Democrats say with a growing sense of urgency that it is imperative for their party to embrace racial diversity, inclusion and bipartisanship as the key to defeating Donald Trump.
Still, Clinton, who isn’t known for her oratory, will aim to move others like him. “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons”, she charged.
“Donald Trump says America is weak, that we’re in decline”.
She acknowledged some people still do not know her well.
Thursday night, Trump’s acceptance speech could have been summed up with the quote, “The only thing we have to fear is … if you have 90 minutes and I will tell you about all of them”. Yes, America’s destiny is ours to choose.
One of Clinton’s challenges is drawing support from those who preferred her primary rival, U.S. Sen.
“America is once again at a moment of reckoning”.
“We’re going to make it clear that we don’t want to forget those people”, Clinton said later in the Columbus speech.
Her speech came on a night filled with emotion as she became the first woman to lead a major presidential ticket. The surprise popularity of Sanders often put Clinton on the defense, having to explain why she was the best fit for the job.
The Democratic event, packed with celebrities and well-received speeches by President Barack Obama, first lady Michelle Obama and former President Bill Clinton, had reached more viewers than the Republicans for each of the first three nights of their respective conventions.
Retired marine general John R. Allen, a former commander in Afghanistan, will underscore the same point. “God help us. I’m a New Yorker, and I know a con when I see one”, Bloomberg said.
She laced policy prescriptions with personal anecdotes and criticisms of Trump.
Clinton also reached out to Republicans and to followers of primary rival Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist USA senator from Vermont.
As she often has in the past, Clinton cited as her guiding principle a favorite teaching from her Methodist faith: “Do all the good you can, for all the people you can, in all the ways you can, as long as ever you can”. “Or when he mocks and mimics a reporter with a disability”, she said.
Hillary Clinton set Donald Trump up perfectly. They both garner high “unpopularity” ratings.
Advertisement
In a written statement, the Republican candidate said Clinton and the Democrats live in a “fantasy world” that ignores the threat of Islamic State terrorism, porous borders with Mexico and millions of Americans who have stopped looking for work as bad trade deals send jobs overseas.
