He evoked Ronald Reagan, something that drew criticism from Clinton when they were rivals.
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The address will bookend Obama’s career-launching address to the Democratic convention in 2004, his contentious 2008 primary battle with Clinton and his eight years in office.
“If you’re serious about our democracy, you can’t afford to stay home just because she might not align with you on every issue”, the president said.
Echoing Ben Franklin’s announcement, at the close of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, that the founders had established “a Republic, if you can keep it”, Obama told the delegates assembled in the same city that our “democracy works, but we’ve got to want it”. “America isn’t about ‘Yes he will.’ It’s about ‘Yes we can'”.
“Look, we Democrats have always had plenty of differences with the Republican Party, and there’s nothing wrong with that; it’s precisely this contest of ideas that pushes our country forward”, he said. “But what we heard in Cleveland last week wasn’t particularly Republican – and it sure wasn’t conservative”.
President Obama described an optimistic, hopeful picture of America in a speech Wednesday night at the Democratic National Convention, pointedly diverging from the more foreboding tone of the previous week’s Republican event. “There is only one candidate in this race who believes in America’s future and that’s Hillary Clinton”, Obama added, to deafening cheers.
Disclosure: Donald Trump is the father-in-law of Jared Kushner, publisher of Observer Media.
Chelsea Clinton is no stranger to campaigning.
Trump’s comments fed Democrats’ contentions that the billionaire businessman is unqualified to be commander in chief.
On Tuesday night, Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, offered an impassioned speech for her, recounting his courtship of her in the 1970s while they were in law school and family life with their daughter, Chelsea, through the past 30-plus years.
Barack Obama is tipped to highlight Hillary Clinton’s toughness in an address to the Democratic Convention. Tim Kaine, contrasted Trump’s unpredictability with their candidate’s steadiness.
“I can say with confidence there has never been a man or a woman, not me, not Bill, nobody, more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as President of the United States of America”, Obama said, quipping, “I hope you don’t mind, Bill, but I was just telling the truth, man”.
JOHN YANG: Also on the program tonight, Vice President Biden, and Hillary Clinton’s choice to be the next vice president.
Mr. Kaine, a former governor and now first-term senator from Virginia, is relatively unknown on the national stage. She’s ready because of her heart.
“We do know that there’s a slice, however narrow, of those persuadable voters that are still making up their minds”, Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon told reporters in Philadelphia as he previewed her remarks.
Adopting a new role as political spouse and would-be First Gent, the 42nd president, in a bid to make his wife the 45th, presented her softer side in an effort to dispel the hard public image of his wife and the Republican caricature of “Crooked Hillary”, as Trump likes to label her: a law-breaking rogue politician who should be locked up over a long and checkered history of scandal. And he sought to remind Americans about her years of civil service and experience, saying she’s “been in the room”.
A consistent message has been Clinton’s perseverance.
The Republican nominee caused howls of outrage Wednesday, with a reference to thousands of Clinton emails held on a private server that were deleted. “I say Trump is a fraud”.
She and others said Obama’s speech will help energize Democrats.
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But not before he leveled some of his fiercest attacks yet at her GOP opponent Donald Trump. accusing him of trying to “rule” Americans like a king, mocking his plans to enforce immigration laws and build a border wall, and saying America’s greatness “does not depend on Donald Trump”.
