Hillary Clinton officially claimed the Democratic nomination for president Tuesday night, becoming the first woman to be nominated by a major party.
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Rendell says the Democratic Party won’t be able to get 100% of Bernie Sanders supporters to vote for Clinton, but he believes they could get up to 90% by November.
Taking on the role of devoted political spouse, the former President declared his wife was an impassioned “change-maker”.
“She always wants to move the ball forward. That is just who she is”, Bill Clinton said of his wife, keeping an audience of thousands of delegates rapt throughout his 45-minute speech, which marked the convention’s halfway point.
“Some people say, ‘Well, we need change”.
Although the outcome was virtually a foregone conclusion, the state-by-state vote saw rowdy displays on the convention floor.
A handful of diehard Sanders delegates fumed over their candidate’s defeat, but they were drowned out by ecstatic Clinton supporters. Several wept and embraced.
It’s hard to overstate what Obama has at stake as he implores voters to elect Hillary Clinton during his speech to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Delegates thrust placards in the air, forming a mosaic of “H’s” that coated the stadium floor.
Unlike others who may be voting for Hillary Clinton this November, however, Bill Clinton has been with her since the early 1970s. “She will never quit on you”.
The aspiring first-ever First Husband said Hillary had “big blonde hair, BIG glasses, wore no makeup and she exuded this sense of strength and self-possession that I found magnetic” when he first met her.
While he made a forceful case for Hillary as president, his speech was heartfelt and folksy, exposing the personal side of a woman most adult Americans have known for a quarter century.
“In the spring of 1971, I met a girl.” .
“Tell me you wouldn’t cut off an arm to have somebody like that in our party”, GOP strategist Rick Wilson said of his fellow Republicans after the speech.
Of course, nothing Clinton said Tuesday night dispelled the deep divisions that continue to fracture the party’s identity-a rupture evidenced by the persistent protests outside the convention from movements like Occupy and Black Lives Matter.
His wife, Clinton said, has been inaccurately portrayed as a two-dimensional caricature: “A real change-maker represents a real threat, so you’re only option is to create a cartoon”.
“One is real, the other is made up”. “The real one calls you when you’re sick, when your kid’s in trouble or when there’s a death in the family”. It was a contrast to the Republican convention in Cleveland. where nominee Donald Trump largely relied on celebrity sports figures, business colleagues and actors such as Scott Baio and a smattering of reality TV personalities.
Bill Clinton’s speech struck a unifying tone, an all-important quest by organizers ahead of President Barack Obama’s address to the convention Wednesday and Hillary Clinton’s acceptance speech Thursday.
Tace Geesaman, a Nevada delegate and single mom, walked out after Sanders’s plea feeling betrayed. “That’s just who she is”, he said.
“They’re talking at us, they’re telling us to fall in line”, she added.
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“The president will talk about who we are as a country and that we are better united than divided, and that we’re better together than apart”, said White House spokesman Eric Schultz.
