Thread: Dem sales job on Hillary Clinton moves into high gear

Dem sales job on Hillary Clinton moves into high gear



07/27/16 01:16 AM EDT

PHILADELPHIA — The selling of Hillary Clinton moved into top gear here on Tuesday night as Democrats nervous about two "Ds" — disunity and The Donald — sought to give their newly minted nominee a shot of momentum.

Every move on Tuesday seemed calculated to shore up a vulnerability on Clinton’s part.

Former President Bill Clinton delivered a 42-minute speech extolling his wife’s record as a “change-maker” that was leavened with romantic reminiscences.

Clinton’s primary rival, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), doubled down on his endorsement of her during the late-afternoon roll-call vote that officially sealed her nomination.

The candidate herself appeared, via video from New York, to an uproarious reception. In brief remarks, she embraced her history-making status as the first female nominee of a major party.

Democrats are hoping that Tuesday’s events will be enough to turn a corner, at a time when GOP nominee Donald Trump has edged into a lead in polling averages. Polling and statistics expert Nate Silver, an oracular figure to many liberals, has asserted that Trump would be the favorite to win a presidential election held right now.

While some Democrats believe Trump is merely benefiting from a typical post-convention bounce, others are expressing worries about Clinton’s candidacy.

Clinton has the worst favorability ratings of any major-party nominee of modern times, other than Trump. Her poll numbers on honesty and trustworthiness are dismal.

A CNN poll released on the first day of the Democratic National Convention indicated that 68 percent of Americans do not consider her to be honest.

Worse still, Clinton is having trouble unifying her own party after a much tougher-than-expected primary with Sanders and a first-day distraction involving hacked emails that showed the Democratic National Committee pressing the scales for Clinton.

The first two days of the convention have been all about restoring party unity while pumping up Clinton.

Bill Clinton’s remarks — which earned mostly positive but some mixed reviews — tried to turn her longevity in public life into an asset, even at a time when the electorate seems furious with the political establishment and hungry for change.

The video link-up to New York was clearly aimed toward boosting excitement about Clinton’s candidacy among young women, a demographic that has proved more resistant to her charms than she or her advisers would like.

And Sanders’s nomination of her from the floor sought to end the bitterness that had marred the first day of the party’s quadrennial gathering, where mentions of Clinton’s name were met with loud boos from hard-line supporters of the Vermont left-winger.

Democrats will be looking to the two remaining days of their convention to give Clinton an even bigger boost.

President Obama will deliver an address on Wednesday night, as will Vice President Biden, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine, Clinton’s pick for her own running mate.

Tuesday was supposed to be Bill Clinton’s night. But, while the audience in the arena paid rapt attention throughout his speech, its effectiveness to the broader public was open to question.

The former president certainly had strong moments, especially in the way he accumulated evidence that Hillary Clinton “always wants to move the ball forward,” as he put it. He cited her early work with children and on civil rights, as well as her record as first lady, New York senator and secretary of State.

He also sought to rebut some of the most often-heard criticisms of his wife. Citing people who said, negatively, “she’s been around a long time,” he added, “She sure has — and she sure has been worth every single year she’s put into making people’s lives better.”

He also sought to tackle other negative perceptions of his wife head-on. He argued that the difference was simple between how she had been characterized at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland last week and the picture he was presenting: One was “the real one” and the other was “made up.”

“You just have to decide which is which,” Clinton said to loud applause.

Bill Clinton’s re-telling of the couple’s life story — and love story — also had to make some conspicuous omissions.

The narrative he presented was affecting in part, such as when discussing his first meeting with his future wife or the couple seeing their daughter, Chelsea, off to college.

But its chronological structure surely caused some viewers to wonder, even as it was being delivered, what Clinton would say about the late 1990s, which were marked by the scandal over his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. The answer: virtually nothing.

Likewise, his account of his wife’s work noted some accomplishments with narrow appeal — his wife was “the first senator ever in the history of New York to serve on the Armed Services Committee,” he said at one point — while ignoring her vote in favor of the Iraq War.

Her record on trade — a sore point at this convention with Sanders supporters — was dismissed in classic Clintonian style: “She voted for and against some trade deals.”

Still, those finer issues were of little concern to the adoring crowd.

And the delegates erupted when Hillary Clinton’s image appeared on the huge screens over the stage a short time later.

Her appearance came at the end of a video showing past presidents — all male, of course — in black and white. Clinton appeared in color, introduced via a graphic that alluded to her long-held desire to break the nation’s highest glass ceiling.

Clinton described her nomination as “an incredible honor.” She also said that “if there are any little girls out there who stayed up late to watch,” they could be the next female president. The camera than panned out to show Clinton with her arm around a young girl.

To critics — and even to some edgy members of her own party — that could seem like a candidate getting ahead of herself, however.
Victory in November, even against so idiosyncratic a candidate as Trump, is no done deal.

Democrats will be hoping Clinton can reestablish herself as the clear favorite before the stage is dismantled here late on Thursday night.

http://thehill.com/homenews/campaign...into-high-gear

Hopefully there will be some blockbuster dirt dug up on this woman. The misadventures of the Clinton Foundation alone should be enough to hang her out to dry. Unfortunately even corrupt money tends to give politicians momentum.