What will Hillary Clinton cover in her speech tonight at the convention?

PHILADELPHIA — The first time Hillary Clinton attended a national political convention it was as an intern helping Nelson Rockefeller win over Republican delegates in 1968.

The last time it was to publicly swallow her pride and rally support for her 2008 primary rival Barack Obama, who stood in the place she wanted to be standing in that night.

But tonight, the stage is all hers.

It’s hers to tell her story. It’s hers to persuade people to trust her. It’s hers to make the case for both continuity and change. And it’s hers to lose.

She is expected to talk about income inequity, problems at home and abroad and other issues unnerving voters.

She is also expected to talk about her solutions — and her opponent’s lack of them — and to continue the theme of optimism that has pervaded the convention here in the Wells Fargo Center so far.

Her acceptance of her party’s nomination tonight puts her just one one step away from putting the ultimate cap on a life full of firsts and onlies: first female president of the United States.

It’s something she and her supporters have argued she’s been preparing for all her life.

She was the first student speaker at a Wellesley College commencement, first female partner at the Rose Law Firm, first director of a legal aid clinic at the University of Arkansas, first first lady to lead a White House task force, first former first lady to serve in a presidential cabinet, first secretary of state to visit 100 countries, first first lady to have a West Wing office, first U.S. senator to simultaneously serve as first lady, and first host of a White House webcast.

There are also a few firsts she would rather forget, but they will haunt her through the general election campaign against no-holdsbarred Donald Trump.

She was the first first lady to deal with widespread public knowledge of her husband’s philandering, the first first lady to be subpoenaed by a grand jury, and the first former first lady to be subpoenaed by a hostile congressional panel.

She has had moments of triumph and popularity — during her time as secretary of state her approval ratings were high and she became a hot social media property as people posted a picture of her in sunglasses looking at her cell phone and captioned with quotes that characterized her as a casually worldconquering force, putting foolish men in their place.

She has had spectacular lows — the failure of the health care reform she helped craft and push during her husband’s first term, her husband’s impeachment and the public airing of his unfaithfulness, her loss in 2008.

And painfully, the woman who seems to connect with people on a one-to-one basis and in small rooms loses that as soon as the room gets bigger. On the world stage, she is criticized as stiff, boring, wonky, untrustworthy and worse — the opposite of her husband, the former president who extolled her virtues in a speech that drew rousing applause on Tuesday.

“She’s insatiably curious, she’s a natural leader, she’s a good organizer, and she’s the best darn change-maker I ever met in my entire life,” he said.

Tonight it’s her turn to speak for herself.

But she will also be speaking for her party, a divided one that is trying to reunify following an unusually contentious primary.

“We’re going to see a lot of her talking to Bernie [Sanders] supporters, talking about the platforms of Bernie’s that she has take on to assure them that she’s listened to what the Bernie supporters and the young people want,” said Abbe Depretis, a Temple University professor of social movements.

“People have been divided and this is a speech about bringing everyone back together.”