'I
get it': Hillary Clinton seeks to finally explain her authentic self
to America
Democratic
nominee says: ‘The truth is through all these years of public
service, the ‘service’ part has always come easier to me than the
‘public’ part’
“I
get it that some people just don’t know what to make of me.”
It
was with this humble admission that Hillary Clinton sought to
reintroduce herself to a nation that has journeyed with her for over
two decades.
Sabrina Siddiqui in
Philadelphia
Friday 29 July 2016
06.40 BST
As one of the most
well-known public figures to ever accept a party’s presidential
nomination, Clinton arrived at the finale of the Democratic national
convention on Thursday faced with a daunting task.
Millions bore
witness this week as a cadre of the party’s brightest stars
delivered soaring testimonials to Clinton’s qualifications and
character. Among them were her husband Bill Clinton and Barack Obama,
two of the most skilled orators American politics has ever known and,
as the men Clinton seeks to succeed, predecessors with whom her own
rhetorical gifts are often compared.
Donald Trump takes
Twitter bait and responds to Clinton's DNC speech with online salvo
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Now it was her turn.
But taking the stage
in Philadelphia, as the first female presidential nominee of a major
party in US history, Clinton sought to emulate no one. Addressing the
tens of thousands of jubilant supporters inside the arena and the
millions of Americans watching at home, she had but one overarching
goal: to persuade the skeptics who she really was, how she got there
and why they should join her.
“My job titles
only tell you what I’ve done. They don’t tell you why,” Clinton
said.
“The truth is,”
she then acknowledged, “through all these years of public service,
the ‘service’ part has always come easier to me than the ‘public’
part.”
It was a break from
the defensive tone with which Clinton has often responded when
pilloried as unable to connect with voters or as unlikable in the
eyes of the public; that she is the victim of a rightwing conspiracy
or being treated unfairly. The relentless attacks she has faced in
her expansive career, culminating in this election with the phrase
“lock her up” becoming a slogan among Republican Donald Trump’s
supporters and even some Democrats backing Bernie Sanders, have
firmly shaped her public persona.
But Clinton’s
acceptance speech was about much more than her – measured and
methodically crafted, it was a direct rebuke of Trump’s embrace of
authoritarian governance. And so, rather than shunning her critics,
she ventured instead into the role of unifier to articulate the
threat Trump posed to the very public service to which she owed her
presence onstage.
“Our country’s
motto is e pluribus unum: out of many, we are one,” Clinton said.
It seemed at the
start of the election year that the moment Democrats witnessed on
Thursday night in Philadelphia might elude her.
On a chilly January
weekend, she stood inside a gymnasium in Iowa with one month
remaining until the first contest of the Democratic presidential
primary.
Roughly 700 voters
had braved the freezing temperatures to see Clinton speak, then a
feat for her campaign and paling in comparison with the thousands
flocking to see Vermont senator Sanders across the country.
As the nominating
contests began, she would go on to effectively tie with Sanders in
Iowa and lose the state of New Hampshire – casting doubt over the
trajectory of her campaign and whether Clinton was, after all,
destined to break “the highest, hardest glass ceiling” in which
she had put 18m cracks eight years earlier.
But she pressed on,
adopting the issues Sanders championed under the moniker of
progressive pragmatism. She fought to keep in her fold the reliable
coalitions of African American and Latino voters in the early states
of South Carolina and Nevada, while scrapping for votes even in the
rural states she was always likely to lose, such as West Virginia and
Kentucky.
Hillary Clinton
accepts the Democratic nomination for president: read the full
transcript
Read more
Sanders supporters
remained dubious of her intentions; a faction of them were still not
on board as she formally accepted the nomination on Thursday night,
jeering through many points of her speech only to be resoundingly
drowned out by chants of “Hillary!” from the vast majority of the
arena.
But Clinton
crystallized her approach on Thursday by doubling down on the
progressive platform crafted alongside Sanders.
“Whatever party
you belong to, or if you belong to no party at all, if you share
these beliefs, this is your campaign,” she told them.
The triangulation –
a staple tactic of her husband’s in the 1990s – was not in
substance but in tone, due to what she dubbed as “a moment of
reckoning” that could redefine America and its principles.
“Powerful forces
are threatening to pull us apart. Bonds of trust and respect are
fraying,” she said.
“And just as with
our founders, there are no guarantees. It truly is up to us.”
America, in other
words, could not afford to roll the dice on a potential Donald Trump
presidency. And as on the stump, it was when laying into her opponent
that Clinton truly hit her stride.
It was at a national
security speech in San Diego in June that the former secretary of
state received her highest accolades to date, unpacking the inherent
contradictions of Trump’s foreign policy in the rare role of an
attack dog albeit with flashes of humor.
Clinton continued
the assault on Thursday, but not simply for the purpose of riling up
her party against a figure they have come to loathe. It was once
again a plea for unity, an attempt to reach for votes even in the
most unexpected corners – including the moderate Republicans and
independents who couldn’t stomach voting for Trump.
To them, she offered
a simple olive branch: “Join us.”
“I will be a
president for Democrats, Republicans and independents. For the
struggling, the striving and the successful,” she said.
“For those who
vote for me and those who don’t, for all Americans.”
Whether it will
prove a winning message in the countdown to November remains to be
seen. But Clinton is at least aware of one thing: there will always
be those voters who just don’t know what to do with her.
Five
takeaways from Clinton’s biggest speech yet
She
exits the convention on a high with a good speech and strong support.
Now the hard part begins.
By
Glenn Thrush
7/29/16, 7:26 AM CET
PHILADELPHIA –
Hillary Clinton wants you to vote for her.
Or, go ahead, vote
against Donald Trump.
She’s not picky.
Wearing white to
differentiate herself from her black-hat opponent, indifferent to the
stray protest shouts rattling around the eaves of the Wells Fargo
Center, Hillary Clinton defined the 2016 campaign against Donald
Trump as a light-and-darkness fight between good and evil.
Here was history –
Clinton was the first woman to accept the nomination of her party in
the country’s history – but history buffeted in the maelstrom of
the most bitter, negative and most unpredictable election in modern
history. And that history took second place to Clinton’s electoral
imperative of making Americans like her – or at least like her
enough to cast a vote for her.
Yet the defining
characteristic of Clinton’s big night was just how much of it was
devoted to someone who wasn’t her, and wasn’t even in the hall –
Donald Trump, whom she defined as a clownish, bullying existential
threat to democracy who needed to be beaten as badly as she needed to
be elected.
“A man you can
bait with a Tweet is not a man you can trust with nuclear weapons,”
she announced, in the punchiest laugh-cry-shiver line of the night.
Here are five
takeaways from the most important speech of Hillary Clinton’s life,
and maybe Trump’s.
It was a pretty good
speech. But was it good enough? Trump’s acceptance speech in
Cleveland last week was a post-modern mash-up that culminated with
his claim that Trump, and only Trump, could save an angry, hell-bound
country. Clinton’s address was, by contrast, a standard 20th
Century speech, an optimistic Bill Clinton-style State of the Union
address with a pointed and effective attack against Trump tacked on
like a warhead.
Clinton is an
erratic, oft-awkward political performer who has given a few
fantastic speeches – typically at pivotal moments in her career
(Beijing in 1995, the “Glass Ceiling” address at the end of the
epic 2008 primary season, to name two]. But she’s given her share
of lousy ones too, and the trend before the biggest speech of her
life on Thursday wasn’t especially encouraging. As she’s gotten
older, and more practiced at the campaign game, Clinton has become
more confident in her own abilities to determine what energizes her
audience. That’s not always a good thing. More often than not,
however, she indulges her own preference for exhaustive specificity
at the expense of inspiration.
This was one of her
better efforts – a long amalgam of principle and policy, yes –
but one leavened with a bit of self-deprecating humor that conceded
her shortcomings as an electoral leading lady. “The truth is,
through all these years of public service, the ‘service’ part has
always come easier to me than the ‘public’ part,” she said.
And, as usual, she
benefitted from having an effective and disciplined organization
behind her — when Bernie-or-Bust haters began heckling her from
several delegations, including California, her supporters had been
drilled to drown them out with chants of “Hillary!”
Clinton is a
hard-to-sell candidate, with baked-in negatives north of 50 percent
(five to 10 points lower than Trump’s unprecedented disapproval
ratings) and a personal story that is almost universally known by
anyone old enough to vote for her. Yet for all the impediments, there
were flashes of emotion and sincerity that have often eluded her in
other settings, and flashes of I-didn’t-know-that-about-her
novelty.
Most importantly,
her speechwriters cleverly diverted the audience gaze from the
candidate herself, defining her best attributes through the moving
narratives of regular people more relatable than her, a dozen small
anecdotal mirrors to catch Clinton’s reflected virtue.
Yet even in striking
classic fight-for-the-little-guy Democratic themes, she had an eye on
drawing the contrast with Trump, whom she portrayed as the most
divisive public figure of her lifetime. “I will be a president for
Democrats, Republicans, and Independents … For those who vote for
me and those who don’t. For all Americans,” she said.
All about the
bounce. Clinton’s team accomplished many intermediate goals during
their four days in Philly: The Obamas delivered a husband-and-wife
tandem of historic speeches; Bernie Sanders went from being a
renegade to a team player — helping to stamp out the last glowing
embers of the revolution he sparked in New Hampshire; Clinton was
applauded by several dozen speakers (led by her husband) who sought
to reverse her negative image.
And none of that
matters, not one bit, if Clinton can’t reverse Trump’s recent
surge in the polls with a discernible convention bounce. She won’t
get the 14-point boost her husband got in 1992, but she’ll take
anything that moves the dial, that is to say roughly the recent
average uptick of three or four percent.
The GOP’s
Cleveland convention was, by any conventional measure, a big gooey
muddle-message fondue of negativity; but Trump seems to have gotten a
lift of between three and seven points. Robby Mook, Clinton’s
campaign manager, told me that Trump’s recent rise – to parity or
a few points ahead, depending on the survey – was the result of a
ho-hum convention bounce, but analysts like 538’s Nate Silver see
the trend-line as an extension of a swoon that began with the FBI’s
controversial decision not to press charges against Clinton over her
use of a homebrew email server while secretary of state.
Either way, Clinton
needs a boost as the campaign enters the serious season.
Don’t worry –
but don’t be quite so happy. The Obama-Clinton alliance is wedded,
by definition, to a message of tempered contentment, measured
success, and a domesticated definition of “change” as liberalism
on a leash.
History shows most
presidencies are won on hope-and-change optimism not Trump-ian
hopelessness and change. But history is in a particularly
perverse mood this year. In vanquishing the Sanders challenge, the
Clinton campaign drove the anger from the convention – but they
also purged Sanders’ angry energy, his sense of urgency and
discontent that reflects the country beyond a relatively satisfied
party base. Obama can tout his legacy, and his approval ratings are
at a second-term high – but seven in 10 Americans think the country
is on the wrong track. “People are still pissed off,” Sanders
campaign manager Jeff Weaver told me a few hours before Clinton’s
big speech.
Clinton is doubling
down on hope, and when I asked one of her advisers why the speech
wouldn’t contain an extended recitation of the country’s ills,
the person looked at me like I’d torn a Clinton/Kaine yard sign in
half. When Sanders suggested that Obama hadn’t sufficiently
attacked income inequality, Clinton pivoted to accuse the Vermont
senator of attacking an impeccably progressive Democratic icon.
Senior Clinton strategist Joel Benenson (Obama’s longtime pollster)
told me in a podcast this spring that 2016 is a base – not a
swing-voter – election and most Democrats felt pretty good about
the country, compared to those unhappy Republicans.
Clinton recognized
the frustrations of the working class in her speech, but anger was
seasoning, not the staple. “Some of you are frustrated – even
furious,” Clinton intoned. “And you know what? You’re right …
Democrats are the party of working people. But we haven’t done a
good enough job showing that we get what you’re going through, and
that we’re going to do something about it.”
‘Hillary’ the
movie was as good as Hillary Live. Making Clinton likeable, restoring
the trust she’s squandered in the email scandal and Wall Street
speech controversy, is every bit as important a task as knee-capping
Trump. Clinton (who famously demanded a “zone of privacy” around
her family during her husband’s 1992 campaign) has a hard time
doing that – because of her own natural reticence or the aggregated
apprehension of being attacked for two decades. Her best moments are
her most candid, but they have been few and far between – and
seldom in the glare of a press conference or TV interview.
Introductory videos
have been a staple of conventions since Ronald Reagan, but the
15-minute “Hillary,” directed by Shonda Rhimes and Betsy Beers,
was especially important because it featured an extended, relaxed and
emotional interview with Clinton about her mother’s struggles, her
work for children and families, and her efforts on behalf of 9/11
first responders.
An emotional
highlight: The story (aimed implicitly at Trump, and repeated from
the podium) of her being bullied as an elementary school student –
only to have her mother tell she was a “coward” to back down.
She’s on her own
now. Conventions are cosseting events, about summoning the armies,
and surrounding the nominee in a protective circle. That’s never
been truer than for Clinton, who exits her convention with some of
the highest negatives in the history of presidential elections.
For four days she
was lauded by surrogates who were, in many cases, better at making a
case for her election than she was. They’ll still have her back –
and Sanders is set to use his magic with youth voters on her behalf
over the summer – but winning the election is now almost entirely
in her hands.
Authors:
Glenn Thrush
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