(AP Photo/Mark J. Terrill).
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Hillary Clinton’s speech Thursday night, coming at the end of a Democratic National Convention filled with incredible speeches, has left the Trump campaign seriously flailing in its search for a response.
And he recited why he thought Democrats have a strong edge over Republicans in November, listing party positions promoting gay rights and other social issues.
She presented a sharply more upbeat view of the nation than her rival Trump offered when Republicans nominated him last week and even turned one of former USA president Ronald Reagan’s signature phrases against the NY real-estate developer.
Chelsea Clinton embraces her mother, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, as she introduces her at the convention.
Of course, we can’t jump the gun on how it will play with those voters who aren’t already solidly with her or against her. I saw several people – including some Republican operatives and pundits – say that the convention looked like a Republican convention.
Charging that Donald Trump “wants us to fear the future and fear each other”, Hillary Clinton took him on with the most powerful line in her party’s tradition. Donald Trump has crossed the boundary from liar to potential mental illness. The shoot-from-the-hip billionaire believes he can make headway in those states with blue-collar white men. That group of voters has eluded Clinton and was perhaps a hard sell after a Democratic convention that heavily celebrated racial and gender diversity. In the average of national polls compiled by RealClearPolitics, Trump was three points behind Hillary Clinton before Cleveland; now he’s one point ahead.
Clinton added that the country thrives when the middle class thrives, and that to get our democracy working as it should, Supreme Court justices who will get money out of politics and expand voting rights need to be appointed, and, if necessary, a constitutional amendment to overturn Citizens United must be passed. She was no doubt given an endless stream of tips about what to say and how to say it, but in the end, the candidate and the campaign made a decision to “let Hillary Clinton be Hillary Clinton”. The effort to portray Trump as unfit for the presidency carried over, too.
“As of tomorrow, we have 100 days to make our case to America”, she said.
“Donald Trump can’t even handle the rough-and-tumble of a presidential campaign”, she said.
Retired Marine Corps four-star General John Allen, who endorsed Clinton Thursday and slammed Trump for his promise to compel the U.S. military to engage in war crimes, also came under Trump’s angry gaze. Kaine told CNN he found the Republican gathering “dark and depressing'”.
Kaine said “there’s still an bad lot of fix work” to be done on the economy, particularly with regard to job creation. “None of us can do it alone”, she said.
She made clear that she had no intention of ceding economically discontented voters to Trump.
The convention provided hours of glowing tributes to Clinton, including deeply personal testimonials from her husband, daughter Chelsea Clinton and Obama. I treasured every moment of this week and hope that my posts enabled me to share some of those experiences with you. “Your cause is our cause”.
In a first for a Democratic convention, a number of Republican economic and foreign policy leaders hammered home the point.
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The final night seemed a flop until about 9 p.m., when a man named Khizr Khan, a Muslim immigrant whose son died saving the lives of 10 of his fellow soldiers in Iraq, came to the stage.
