The Democrats’ campaigner-in-chief, President Barack Obama, had breathed new life into a convention that had seemed sullen over unmet expectations and racked by doubts about an imperfect nominee. But Clinton should still apologize for her mistakes to the country, without overdoing it. As best I can tell, she put no true national secrets or American personnel at risk in her emails, and while Benghazi was a tragedy that might have been preventable, no one can be ideal in times like these.
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Clinton appeared unannounced on the platform soon after to soak up the roar of cheering Democrats.
Clinton, resplendent in a white suit, came out to “Fight Song” and chants of “Hillary, Hillary” as many delegates around the arena waved American flags. “Don’t let anyone tell you we don’t have what it takes, we do”, she said.
Clinton has walked through fire to get to the stage where she will stand on the final night of her convention. And we will build a path to citizenship for millions of Americans who are already contributing.
Wednesday’s display was the picture of diversity that Democrats have sought to frame the whole week: The first African-American president symbolically seeking to hand the weightiest baton in the free world to a woman.
Obama alluded to that remark as he ripped into Trump as a “self-declared savior promising that he alone can restore order as long as we do things his way”.
“We don’t look to be ruled”, the president said. It explains the rise of Sanders and Trump better than any other single factor or phenomenon. That Hillary Clinton is a woman of unique accomplishments is undeniable, but on Tuesday night her husband, former president Bill Clinton, took what felt like astonishing pains to remind us that she, too, was once just a girl, an anonymous girl whose remarkable attribute was that she “wore no makeup”.
“I expected coming into the convention that there would be a big push to bring the Sanders supporters in but it’s actually been the opposite”. Many were invigorated by a movement-sparking Sanders campaign, an effort to which many of these Minnesota delegates devoted countless hours of organizing, phone calling, and door-knocking. But there was a spring in their step and smile on their face when those at the Democratic National Convention left for home late on Wednesday night.
Updegrove also said that Clinton’s selection of Virginia Sen. It was a Biden special, rich with his regular-guy folksiness, misty-eyed storytelling and hard hits.
But even his critics have got to acknowledge that as a matter of political stagecraft – of tone, of emotional range and of contrast to the fulminating Trump – Obama gave a convention speech for the ages. “That’s a bunch of malarkey”.
The speech marks the official beginning of what is likely to be the most negative and bruising general election battle in recent American history. She will be tasked with winning the trust of a public deeply skeptical of her honesty, polls show.
James Campbell, a professor of political science at the University at Buffalo who has written a book about political polarization, said that in addition to “lighting into Trump”, there are two other topics she should be sure to include: an appeal to supporters of Bernie Sanders, and an acknowledgement of her own shortcomings.
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It was a bold move on Clinton’s part, not least because there are a lot of voters who don’t feel especially optimistic right at this moment for all the reasons Hillary laid out in her speech: stuck wages, limited mobility, and exclusion from economic growth.
