Can Hillary sate desire for change?

Donald Trump’s fear-mongering GOP-convention-closing rant in Cleveland earlier this month — later described by Hillary Clinton as “70-odd minutes — and I do mean odd” — conveyed a mostly inaccurate image of an America besieged by illegal immigration, violent crime and economic panic. In Philadelphia, at their own convention, the Democrats, too, warned of an imminent threat, though theirs was undeniable.

“Does Donald Trump have the temperament to be commanderin-chief?” asked Hillary Clinton during her closing address. “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.” It was among the pithier of countless pleas over the week urging Americans to fear Trump and to reject him.

But unlike the Republicans, the Democrats did not stop with fear. They also attempted, and in many ways succeeded, to offer a positive vision of a better nation and how to get there.

Clinton’s nomination itself provides a symbol of hope. During her 2008 presidential run, she shied away from discussing the historic prospect of a woman in the Oval Office. In Philadelphia, she embraced it. “Standing here as my mother’s daughter, and my daughter’s mother, I’m so happy this day has come,” she said. “Because when any barrier falls in America, for anyone, it clears the way for everyone. When there are no ceilings, the sky’s the limit.” Indeed, that we may now be on the verge of seeing a black president succeeded by a female one is evidence of progress barely thinkable in the very recent past.

Hopeful, too, was the convention’s emphasis on gun safety. Not since 2000 has a Democratic convention dwelled on the issue, which many in the party still see as a political third rail. Clinton has aggressively campaigned on a host of sensible measures to curtail wide and easy access to deadly firearms. What happened in Philadelphia should be a source of optimism for the many Americans who despair that their politicians lack the will and courage to tackle the country’s epidemic of mass shootings and the bloody minded commitment to guns that underlies it.

On broader substantive policy, Bernie Sanders’ classy Clinton endorsement made a compelling case that there’s much for progressives to admire in the Democratic platform. With a significant federal minimum wage hike, Wall Street regulations, climate change policies, college tuition breaks and health-care reform — the Democrats are offering more than simply a sane alternative to a scary demagogue.

Clinton has delivered a double-barrelled appeal: fear of Trump, and hope of progressive, albeit incremental, change. The question is, will that be enough, especially given lingering distrust of Clinton as an establishment candidate, and the apparent desire among many voters, including many in her own party, for something like a political revolution?

In a stirring address, President Barack Obama put Clinton’s candidacy in the context of America’s long march toward a more perfect union. He said Trump will lose “because he’s selling the American people short. We are not a fragile . . . people. Our power doesn’t come from some self-declared saviour.” Rather, it is through incremental, collective action that the U.S. has become the country it is. “That’s our birthright — the capacity to shape our own destiny.”

But what Trump understands — or, more likely, intuits — is that many Americans now feel they have been denied that birthright. That they have been excluded from their politics and their economy. That their destiny is no longer theirs to shape. In their very different ways, Sanders and Trump both spoke to these voters. And for many of them, the prospect of Trump blowing up the status quo might justify the risk that he’ll blow up something less abstract.

Clinton’s tricky challenge will be to represent a safe alternative while at the same time speaking to those many voters for whom incremental change will not seem enough. Should she fail, the long march to a more perfect union may take a harrowing and perilous turn.