On Thursday night, Hillary Clinton showed up in Philadelphia to formally accept the Democratic Party's nomination for president, giving a speech that told her life story and framed her as the candidate of public service, responsibility, and cool resolve. She preached the values of ordinary Americans—"builders" is what she called her family. She ran through a wish list of Democratic positions on a laundry list of progressive issues ranging from systemic racism and gun control to climate change, healthcare and reproductive rights, and campaign finance reform. And she painted Donald Trump as a dangerous loose cannon who couldn't be trusted with nuclear codes.
It was the first time the nominee had addressed the convention this week, but It felt like a rerun. It wasn't a bad speech, exactly, but it also didn't do much to expand on the themes that have been expounded on again and again by Clinton's squad of surrogates throughout the convention. The candidate herself takes a workhorse approach to oratory, driving in her talking points like she's hammering nails through drywall, and on Thursday, she hit her marks again, helped along by the enthusiastic crowd.
But she suffered from the comparison to Barack Obama, whose convention speech the night before touched on many of the same notes that Clinton's did, but with rhetoric that soared rather than walked. The former secretary of state even quoted Obama when the crowd booed at the mention of Trump's name, telling them "Don't' boo—vote." But it sounded a bit flatter, and a bit less cutting, coming from her.
Throughout the speech, Clinton struck an expansively inclusive tone, welcoming supporters of Bernie Sanders—many of whom have been protesting her nomination since the start of the convention—under the Democratic Party's tent. "I want you to know, I've heard you," she told these voters. "Your cause is our cause. Our country needs your ideas, energy, and passion." She also promised to "be a president for Democrats, Republicans, and independents. For the struggling, the striving and the successful. For those who vote for me and those who don't."
This too was another iteration of the Democratic National Convention's central theme, countering Trump's naked and xenophobic appeals to older white voters with a wave of diversity and an emphasis on identity politics. Over the past four days, speakers in Philadelphia have included disabled people, a trans woman, mothers of the victims of gun violence, a little person, teens, cops and their families, veterans, a 73-year-old school board member and mother of a dead soldier, and a recently naturalized US citizen who had come to the country as an undocumented immigrant.
Each speaker—a list that included the current president, vice president, and first lady, as well as a former president and would-be White House spouse, Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, and Chloe Grace Moretz, among others—offered a story of hard luck upbringings and immigrant ancestors, or a fresh explanation of Trump's essential badness and a new metaphor for how all Americans are connected.
Since the convention kicked off on Monday, Democrats have spent the week making the party's tent as big as possible—large enough to accommodate former New York City mayor and noted oligarchist Michael Bloomberg and the liberals who despise his administration's aggressive policing policies, or former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the peace activists who tried to drown out his speech with chants of "No more war!" All of these people, the liberal argument goes, can agree that Trump is garbage, and will therefore line up behind Clinton this fall, even if some of them aren't totally happy about it.
But even as Obama, Biden, and Bill Clinton brought down the house this week, the primary question lingering over the convention was basically, "Her?" Sure, nearly anyone can get behind some good old-fashioned Trump bashing, but the Democratic convention was a reminder that Clinton herself is also eminently bashable. On Wednesday, Obama dismissed attacks against her by saying that she has been "under a microscope for 40 years," and "during those those 40 years she's made mistakes." But opposition to Clinton was on display even inside the convention hall, where groups of Sanders delegates wore glow-in-the-dark neon shirts and mostly refused to applaud with everyone else.
Gary West, a Sanders delegate from Texas, told me he stayed silent throughout Clinton's speech. "We didn't want to disrespect her" by heckling, he explained. "But we didn't have anything to say." When asked if he'd vote for Clinton in November, he said, "We'll see."
Other anti-Clinton Democrats weren't as circumspect. As the nominee began her acceptance speech, some audience members in the upper deck of the arena heckled the nominee with wordless yelling, until they were either silenced or kicked out. Other pockets of Clinton critics occasionally burst into chants over the course of the night, although they were drowned out pretty quickly by the nominee's own fans.
Though much of the anger directed at Clinton seems inarticulate or without a clear endgame, it's also true that, so far, she has proved a flawed messenger for the Democratic Party's liberal agenda. As evidenced in Philadelphia this week, her rhetorical abilities pale in comparison to politicians like Obama and Joe Biden (not to mention her would-be First Man, former President Bill Clinton.) After Biden gave one of the convention's most devastating denouncements of Trump on Wednesday, there was open speculation among convention-goers that had the vice president decided to run, he could have beaten out Clinton for the 2016 nomination, and would be crushing Trump in a general election fight by now.
Convention speakers ladled praised Clinton's long list of qualifications, and on Thursday Democrats emphasized the milestone that electing the first female president would represent. But resumes don't inspire, and you want something more than mere competence from a historic figure. "Hers is the poetry of doing," Ted Danson said earlier Thursday—but in a speech you also want some actual poetry, and in that regard Clinton fell a bit short.
in her speech, Clinton referenced her now 20-year-old book, It Takes a Village. The book was about society's role and impact on children—but it could also refer to the collective effort involved in her presidential campaign. While her own performance was anticlimactic, the Democratic convention showed that Clinton has a figurative village of passionate and high-profile campaigners who can sell her candidacy before her. And it looks like she might need all of them.
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