Kaine told CNN’s Alisyn Camerota that joining Clinton onstage Thursday night after she accepted the Democratic nomination was “a very, very emotional moment” and called Clinton’s speech “such a contrast” to Republican nominee Donald Trump’s speech at the Republican convention.
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The trip through Pennsylvania and OH, which started Friday, looks to take advantage of a problem within the Republican Party: That around 20% of Republicans have an unfavorable view of their newly-minted nominee. Bernie Sanders, her primary season rival, saying, “I’ve heard you”.
Clinton and Trump will face off in their first presidential debate in late September.
Joined on the bus tour by her husband, Bill Clinton, running mate Tim Kaine and his wife, Anne Holton, Clinton stopped at a toy and plastics manufacturer in Hatfield, Pennsylvania, where she and Kaine cast Trump as a con artist out for his own gain. 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.
When attendees at the Republican National Convention erupted during Trump’s speech there last week in “lock her up chants”, the GOP nominee resisted the urge to go along with those chants.
And Clinton offered an open hand to backers of Vermont Sen.
“We beat her by millions on television”.
“I don’t have a sense of humor about cyberterrorism”, Kaine said.
WNED averaged a 3.0 rating for the speeches by the Clintons and a 1.8 rating for the speeches by the Trumps.
Asserting Clinton’s national security capabilities were a group of military leaders, including retired Gen. John Allen, the former deputy commander of the wars in the Middle East, who called Clinton the kind of “commander in chief America needs”.
On Thursday morning, Trump’s campaign sent a fundraising email urging supporters not to tune into Clinton’s acceptance speech.
“Here’s the sad truth: There is no other Donald Trump”, Clinton said.
Earlier in the night, Doug Elmets, a former aide to Ronald Reagan, tried to cut into comparisons made between Trump and the Republican icon and former president.
“Trump says he wants to run the country like he runs his business?” “I’m a New Yorker and I know a con when I see one”.
In no small part the divisive, politically self-serving rhetoric on race from President Obama and Clinton has contributed to the abysmal state of race relations.
“Given the mass walk-outs, protests, and the fact she was booed 18 times at her acceptance speech, it would seem Hillary Clinton ought to be focusing on locking down her base”, Michael Short, spokesman for the Republican National Convention said.
The stakes are high: A loss to Trump could not only end Clinton’s political career, it could be a devastating coda to her and her husband’s political legacy and leave the Democratic Party weaker than it has been in a generation.
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There’s some polling to give them comfort.
