RALLY TO BE TEST OF TRUST
As Democrats convene, Clinton’s character assailed
PHILADELPHIA — Democrats gathering to nominate Hillary Clinton for president this week hope to present a picture of tranquillity that contrasts with the discord and dark visions of America on display at the GOP convention in Cleveland.
But delegates pledged to Vermont Sen. Bernie Sand- ers, Clinton’s vanquished foe, may prove hard to keep in line. And the task of changing perceptions of Clinton, viewed increasingly by voters as untrustworthy, will be a challenge, analysts say.
Clinton’s perceived character flaws would be more worrisome to Democrats if her GOP opponent were someone other than Donald Trump, whose overall unfavorable ratings are worse than Clinton’s. Democrats were buoyed by the Republican infighting in Cleveland, notable in the jeering that flooded the hall when Texas Sen. Ted Cruz refused from center stage to endorse Trump.
Nonetheless, in Clinton, Democrats know they have a nominee dogged by her past, a candidate who took an excruciatingly long time to defeat an opponent who identifies as a democratic socialist. Her vulnerabilities, brought home in polls showing a neck-and-neck race with Trump, underscore the need for a flawless convention before the gun sounds on the general
election campaign.
“We have our work cut out for us. This election is not guaranteed,” said U.S. Rep. Lloyd Doggett, D-San Antonio, among superdelegates from Texas. “It will take a united party that includes those who did not have Hillary Clinton as their first choice or were lukewarm on her.”
Democrats open the four-day proceedings Monday with their ticket in place now that Clinton has chosen Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine as her running mate.
Kaine, 58, a party moderate and former Democratic National Committee chairman, is known for his affability as well as his national security credentials. He is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Armed Services Committees. He will address the convention Wednesday night.
Kaine was viewed by many delegates as a wise, if cautious choice. The Harvard Law graduate spent time as a missionary in Honduras and is fluent in Spanish, credentials helpful to Clinton in her appeal to Latino voters. He would be just the second Roman Catholic vice president; Joe Biden is the first.
Unlike the loquacious Biden, Kaine is known as a measured politician not plagued by verbal gaffes. Drawing distinctions
But Kaine may do little to assuage supporters of Sanders, many of whom rooted for the selection of firebrand Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.
“We in the new generation of Democrats don’t want the same old, same old, and the Kaine pick represents that,” said Rick Trevino, a high school teacher in San Antonio and a Texas delegate pledged to Sanders.
Along with first lady Michelle Obama, the Monday night lineup features Sanders, who for 14 months waged a campaign against Clinton from the left on a host of policy matters. His signal to supporters in a meeting hours before the convention opens could go a long way toward determining the tenor in the Philadelphia gathering.
Right out of the gate, Democrats will begin drawing distinctions with Trump-led Republicans on immigration, an issue viewed as fertile territory for Democrats in Nevada, Colorado and several other battleground states.
Among headline speakers Monday is DREAMer Astrid Silva, who arrived in Nevada from Mexico at age 4 and struggled much of her life until granted a work permit under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. ‘Reveal our values’
On Tuesday evening, former President Bill Clinton, the most enduring American politician in the modern era, will present a stark contrast to warnings by Trump of rampant crime when he is joined by Mothers of the Movement. The group features mothers of African-American men and women who have been killed by gun violence or while in police custody.
Both President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will speak on Wednesday night. And for her acceptance speech on Thursday night, Clinton will be introduced by daughter Chelsea.
Jamie Dorff, of Leander, is among speakers this week who will aim to counter impressions left by a refrain at the GOP convention on Clinton’s alleged shortcomings related to the attacks in Benghazi, Libya, in 2012 that left four Americans dead. Dorff’s husband, Patrick, was an Army helicopter pilot who died in Iraq in 2004 while searching for missing servicemen.
She will highlight Clinton’s efforts as a senator from NewYork who helped hike the death gratuity to $100,000 from $12,000 for families of soldiers and Marines who perish during hazardous duty.
Clinton, in a fundraising letter Friday, said Democrats will “reveal our values” at the convention, noting what she calls the most progressive Democratic platform in history.
The appeal to Sanders supporters remains to be seen even though Sanders won concessions, among them endorsement of the $15 an hour minimum wage. Superdelegate skirmish
There promises to be no Cruz-like floor drama from Sanders, who endorsed Clinton on July 12. But in many of his followers, the combative spirit remains alive.
Sanders delegate Karina Quesada, 37, of Houston, is hoping for the unimagined in Philadelphia.
“I would like a miracle, Bernie coming out as the nominee,” she said. “There’s still kind of a hope there.”
Many of Sanders’ nearly 1,900 delegates remain irked at the platform’s evasiveness on the TransPacific Partnership, which Texas delegate Theresa Haas, of Houston, referred to last week as “a real be- trayal of genuine progressive and Democratic values.” She was East Texas field director for Sanders.
Critics hope, at the least, for a floor vote on a minority report that denounces the proposed 12-nation trade pact embraced by the Obama administration.
Many of Sanders’ loyalists also are pushing a rules change to do away with superdelegates, which they regard as a Democratic Party contrivance that rigs the primary process against outsiders. More than 100,000 people have signed a petition aimed at bringing the matter to the convention floor.
How far Sanders’ restive delegates are willing to go in expressing their displeasure could depend on his directions. He planned on Monday what an email invitation to his delegates called “a very special meeting,” with unspecified goals beyond “to keep the political revolution going strong.”
Throughout the week, speakers will seek to address perceptions about Clinton complicated by FBI Director James Comey’s as- sertion this month that said she’d been “extremely careless” handling her emails with a private server.
Clinton’s challenge showed starkly in Quinnipiac polls a week later in the battleground states of Florida, Ohio and Pennsylvania, each of which showed Trump scoring better — by double digits — when voters were asked which of the two they regarded as the most honest and trustworthy.
“When you look at the polls in a variety of ways, it becomes clear that this trust deficit is a serious problem for her,” said pollster G. Terry Madonna, director of the Center for Politics and Public Affairs at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, Pa.
“She’s been around so long and involved in so many controversies. And once people get an impression, it’s hard to change,” he said. Humanize Hillary
Allan Lichtman, political historian at American University and author of the book “The Keys to the White House,” said Democrats need to humanize Clinton.
“She has to dissipate this aura surrounding her that she is arrogant and untrustworthy and present herself as a warm human being,” he said.
Lichtman sees other challenges for the Democrats: Present substantive solutions that he believes were scarce at the GOPconvention; offer a tone that is far more positive than what sounded in Cleveland; and keep “loose cannon” Bill Clinton under control.
Beyond the grim portrait of America that Trump offered in his acceptance speech, delegates headed to Philadelphia claimed to be stunned by the harshness at the Republican gathering. Chants of “lock her up, lock her up” sounded during New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie’s “prosecution” of Clinton from the dais, and a Trump adviser on veterans’ affairs went so far as to assert that Clinton “should be put in the firing line and shot for treason.”
“It’s disgusting and scary,” said Kim Frederick, a Clinton delegate from Houston who founded the nationwide HRC Super Volunteers for Clinton two years ago.
“I’ve been tuned in to politics since I was a little girl, and I’ve never seen anything like it. I worry for my future, and I worry for the next generation’s future,” said Frederick, 38. Clinton ‘authentic’
Gloria Rodriguez, 68, of San Antonio, is among Texans who need no injection of enthusiasm. Rodriguez, who founded Avance, a nationally known social service organization, has known Clinton since her Arkansas days and later accepted an invitation from her to speak at a White House conference on early childhood education.
A 17-year-old photo of Rodriguez with Clinton displays prominently on a GoFundMe website, a tool that helped her and more than a few other convention-goers handle Philadelphia’s exorbitant lodging costs this week.
“She’s authentic to me; never has she deviated from her beliefs,” Rodriguez said of Clinton. “I believe the opposition is very dangerous and that we need to understand the consequences of our vote. It will have an impact on all of us, on the way we relate to one another, and on our children’s future.”