In a roll-call vote that culminated at 6:38 p.m., delegates from the state of South Dakota provided the votes necessary to top the 2,382 needed to nominate Clinton, a former first lady who was elected to the Senate in 2000 and served as secretary of state for four years under President Barack Obama. After a seven-hour marathon session of the convention, the audience had been somewhat sleepy before Clinton’s speech.
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He focused also on the birth of their daughter Chelsea, and when he and Hillary took her to college to college. The significant time devoted to the character testimonials underscored the campaign’s concerns about how voters view Clinton.
Bill Clinton during his convention speech.
He cites her work as first lady in winning congressional approval for a children’s health insurance program and a bill that made it easy for parents to adopt children.
“This woman has never been satisfied with the status quo on anything”. “People say we need change”.
Among those in the crowd are Massachusetts Sen.
Clinton’s backing by former White House residents – including former Vice President Al Gore, who endorsed her but isn’t appearing at the convention – doesn’t necessarily speak to the candidate’s popularity among voters.
“I move that Hillary Rodham Clinton be placed as the nominee for the Democratic party for president of the United States”, he said. She makes people’s lives better.
He notes she started a legal aid clinic and an advocacy group for children that still exists. “My experience is it’s a pretty good thing to follow her advice”. “Actually doing the work is hard”. In a light touch, he recalls that she declined his initial marriage proposals.
“The real one”, Bill Clinton said, has collected lifelong friends “who have gone all across America” – at their own expense – “to fight for the person they know”. “She tried to empower them”. Eventually, the narrative of Hillary’s commitment to bringing about positive change came to dominate Clinton’s remarks (and he spawned a hashtag, #TheRealOne).
In a symbolic show of party unity, Clinton’s former rival, US Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, told the chairwoman from the convention floor that Clinton should be selected as the party’s nominee at the dramatic climax of a state-by-state roll call at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia. In an election season dominated by outsiders promising change to a corrupt or “rigged” system, Bill Clinton made Hillary out as a woman who didn’t just talk about change but got on the ground and made it happen for herself.
Clinton’s speech was an effort to offer a glimpse of the human and private side of an oft-debated public figure who has been in the national public life for three decades. “It really took off when I met and fell in love with that girl”.
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The former president is describing how he met Hillary Clinton as a law student at Yale University in 1971. Clinton has met privately with the mothers and held events with them, and they’ve become an emotional force for her campaign.
