HILLARY MAKES HISTORY — NOW THE WORK BEGINS
History was made Thursday night as Hillary Rodham Clinton took the Democratic National Convention stage and formally accepted her party’s nomination to seek the presidency of the United States of America.
Now it’s up to her to run a good campaign and up to us to elect her.
Her job Thursday night was to excite us, and she did — harkening back to something she said years ago that has remained in our collective psyche: “It takes a village” to raise a child. Likewise, to nurture a country.
Her job to rouse us was no small feat — following the magnificent speeches the night before in support of her from President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden, as well as the moving, inspirational speeches on Tuesday of First Lady Michelle Obama and former President Bill Clinton.
Politico, on Thursday, noted that speech-making is not Hillary’s forte — “for the exact reasons she’d be a good president.”
Her speeches are, writes Matthew Yglesias, “over-stuffed with ideas … flattened out like a computer merge” of a dozen different ideas.
“It’s a process that’s really bad at delivering memorable oratory, but actually makes a lot of sense as a model for running the executive branch,” Yglesias notes. “Why mention one of her policy ideas for helping working mothers in Ohio when she could mention three? Why mention working mothers in Ohio without also mentioning a policy for manufacturing jobs?” But that then is exactly the point. She’s a great listener, a great thinker, a well-prepared planner and executive. And then she gets to work getting things done. Shaping coalitions, hammering out agreements, building consensus — being the mom and traffic cop and moral glue that have allowed her to accomplish so much in public service over her lifetime.
As one two-term president (Obama) said to another twoterm president and the world Wednesday: “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.”
Surely the GOP tweets were flying long before Hillary waved and walked through the balloons at the end of her acceptance speech Thursday — tweets that held some form of the word trust in a knife-like jab.
But the intended slight is just GOP spin because there is no other smear they can throw.
She has education, experience, temperament, grace, intellect — and yes, she has trustworthiness, in spite of the vulnerabilities left to her from world affairs while she was Secretary of State.
On a side note: Did anyone find Donald Trump trustworthy on Wednesday when he looked straight into a television camera and suggested Russian hackers find 33,000 Hillary Clinton emails that he falsely claims are missing? (They aren’t missing by the way. FBI investigators have said they found thousands of work-related emails on her server that were not among the 30,000 she turned over to the State Department. These would be the ones she said months ago were deleted because they were personal. FBI Director James Comey said there is no evidence these emails, recovered from the server, were deleted in an attempt to conceal information.)
Yet Trump, a man who wants to be president, is suggesting an enemy country spy on a lifelong public servant and another American presidential candidate. Do you find that trustworthy? Did you find Trump trustworthy when, after a collective GOP gasp, he claimed Thursday morning that he was just being sarcastic? Do you find him trustworthy when, even IF he were “just being sarcastic,” he would actually utter these words in front of all America?
So enough already with the false assertions that Hillary has a trust issue. She does not, and listening to her opponents repeat the falsehood over and over will not change that.
Likewise, enough with the national media asking, as did reporters did all day Thursday leading up to Thursday night’s address: Can she own her flaws? Will she level with her audience and acknowledge her imperfections?
She has. Several times. Here’s just one, from September of 2015: “As I look back at it now, even though it was allowed, I should have used two accounts. That was a mistake. I’m sorry about that. I take responsibility,” Clinton said in an interview with ABC News. And don’t forget the hours and hours and hours of “owning it” during congressional hearings. On Thursday night, we watched real history being made. We watched Hillary Clinton become the first woman to accept a major party nomination to seek the office of president of the United States. What a day! Now the real work begins.