For Democrats who spent last week throwing stones at Republicans’ troubled convention in Cleveland, the scene was a painful reminder of their own glass house.
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Seeking to avoid a televised display of disunity, Bernie Sanders on Monday urged supporters to line up behind Democrat Hillary Clinton and claimed victory in deposing and sidelining a top party official.
Linda Groverman, 62, of Blue Bell, said she’d vote for Clinton, but quickly noted the former secretary of state was far from her first choice.
The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee said she seemed to be the only thing the GOP agreed on. Perhaps most troubling for the Clinton supporters gathering in Philadelphia this week: 68% now say Clinton is not honest and trustworthy, her worst rating on that measure in CNN/ORC polling.
Officials say the videos and speeches in this year’s convention will demonstrate a consistency of character over her lifetime, including her activism on issues such as child welfare, health care and women’s rights.
They argue that voters still don’t really know Clinton, despite her decades in public life and multiple autobiographies. Her departure comes a few days after the publication of 19,000 hacked emails, which the Vermont senator said confirmed his belief that the national party played favorites for Clinton during the primary.
There hasn’t been a significant post-convention bounce in CNN’s polling since 2000.
Clinton’s team knows they can’t easily flip her trust ratings, which, along with Trump’s, are among the lowest of any presidential candidate in memory. Another 20% think they need more information.
‘Boy, do I believe in it now more than ever after seeing what was presented last week, ‘ she said.
In recent weeks, Clinton has begun to acknowledge that she has a problem. The emotional impact of learning about her mother’s mistreatment as an orphan was formative.
“She’s got a lot of experience and I can’t stand Trump”, she said.
‘I think that it’s fair to say there’s been a concerted effort to convince people like that young man of something, nobody’s quite sure what, but of something, ‘ Clinton replied. “I’m going to talk about what he’s done, how he has hurt people in business time after time after time”. They have the opportunity to draw away more votes from Hillary than from Trump, with the levels of disgust over DNC corruption. These include suburban college- and non-college-educated women. Clinton has 2,814 when including superdelegates, according to an Associated Press count.
“It becomes a timeless narrative”, said Mo Elleithee, a 2008 campaign official who’s now a Georgetown University scholar. And 48 percent said it did not reflect their views. “They just know she’s had a lot of controversy around her”.
While Clinton is beating Trump by a almost two-to-one margin among those aged 18 to 29, almost one in five are undecided, according to a new Harvard Institute of Politics poll.
The poll was probably not much influenced by news of the Wikileaks hack of the DNC, which reveals even deeper corruption at that party in favoring Clinton over Sanders.
“The stars of the Democratic Party are all on board”, said Patti Solis Doyle, a Clinton 2008 campaign manager.
Clinton’s “stronger together” message will remain the overarching theme of the four-day convention. The share of Republicans who say their party is “united now” climbed from 16% pre-convention to 24% post-convention, but about half (49%) say it’s not united now, but will be by November, and there are still about a quarter who say the party won’t unite at all.
Philadelphia speakers include Anastasia Somoza, who was born with cerebral palsy and spastic quadriplegia and interned in Clinton’s Senate office; Karla Ortiz, an American citizen whose parents are undocumented and fear deportation; and Lauren Manning, one of the most severely injured survivors of the September 11 terror attacks whom Clinton helped to secure the medical care.
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Trump also led Clinton by a fifth of a point in the RealClearPolitics average, only the second time this election cycle in which he had overtaken Clinton in the website’s collection of polls. “It’s the first part she needs to focus on”, he said.
