The shoot-from-the-hip billionaire believes he can make headway in those states with blue-collar white men, a demographic that has eluded Clinton and was unlikely to be swayed by a convention that heavily celebrated racial and gender diversity.
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Ratings from Nielsen showed that 2.2 million more people had tuned into watch Trump’s acceptance speech last week than Clinton’s on Thursday. If the person at the top of the Democrats’ ticket was Mr. Obama – “the man of hope”, in Ms. Clinton’s phrase – that might be the dynamic that defines this race. They were to hold a rally in Philadelphia before setting off on a bus tour of Pennsylvania and OH, two states that could be pivotal. Tim Kaine looked on from the convention floor.
But, just as the Republican Party’s internal differences were on display a week ago in Cleveland, the Democrats struggled to show a unified face to the nation.
“He insisted that America is weak” and he is the only one who could fix it. “It set off alarm bells”, Clinton said, noting that the founding fathers in nearby Independence Hall created the US form of democracy.
Her efforts will focus particularly on places “that for too long have been left out and left behind, from our inner cities to our small towns, Indian Country to Coal Country”, she said.
Selling that message will depend on whether Clinton can reach voters walled off by longstanding distrust.
As Trump embraces a slogan, “America First”, the Clinton campaign is stepping up its criticism of him for saying one thing – while the products he sells at his Trump properties are not made in the U.S. Secretary Clinton’s recent vice presidential pick makes us question that she will run the kind of economically populist campaign it will take to defeat Trump.
Finally, on Thursday night, in the speech billed as the most important in her political life, Clinton sought to tell her life story.
Eight years after she gave a milestone speech endorsing then-Sen. “Your cause is our cause”, she said, although boos were audible at points in the speech.
“Just get us emotionally up for the election, I think a lot is going to come down to turn out so if she can bring a little inspiration and get us excited”.
Girl power took a back seat by the time Clinton spoke. “The family I’m from, well no one had their name on big buildings”, Clinton said in a reference to Trump, whose name is plastered across his properties. “Your cause is our cause”.
Yet resentments lingered throughout the convention, with a handful of attendees heckling during her address others wearing neon shirts in protest.
Another one complained that there “there’s nothing Democratic about this!”
So, after conventions, candidates numbers increase. I worked for Ronald Reagan.
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And it teed up the Democrats’ frame for the election: Clinton’s view of an optimistic, inclusive America (“Stronger Together”) juxtaposed against Trump’s vision of a country being ripped apart by terrorism, bad trade deals and a corrupt political system that he alone can save.
