I think Hillary Clinton probably exceeded expectations with her acceptance of the Democratic Party nomination. It took awhile for her to get going, but she got stronger as the speech went on.
Don’t let me be misunderstood. I’m not with her. Never will be. But if this is the Hillary Clinton who shows up at the debates then Trump might be in for much more than what he bargained.
Perhaps the most striking thing about the speech is when she made reference to the Constitution, specifically the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia in 1787. Now, of course, Hillary is paying lip service to the Constitution. But she sure talked about it a lot more than Trump who mentioned it exactly once in his RNC acceptance speech a week ago. If you had said a year ago that the Republican presidential nominee would mention the Constitution in his acceptance speech less than Hillary Clinton you could have got odds. Well, it’s been a very odd year and the Republicans aren’t the party of Reagan anymore. No doubt some Republicans will sit up and take note.
I found it interesting when Hillary gave a shout out to Bernie Sanders and his supporters. She said, “Your cause is our cause.” Loosely translated this means, “I need your votes.” Of course, she didn’t win all of them over. Her supporters chanted her name every time they heckled which must have been a half dozen times during the speech. So she’ll have her work cut out for her.
Her platform is boiler plate liberalism with some bones for Bernie supporters (i.e. public infrastructure projects and free tuition at public colleges paid for by the wealthy as if they aren’t already footing most of the bill.) She also tried to have it both ways at once praising the Dallas Police Department and later accusing police of systemic racism against African-Americans and Latinos.
Hillary boasted about how she sweats the details when it comes to prescription drugs and mental health beds. I wish she had sweated the details when it came to our diplomatic personnel and security staff in Benghazi. Or when it came up to setting up her e-mail.
Still, Hillary spoke more about ISIS than any other convention speaker (save for General John Allen who endorsed her earlier this evening). The Convention was considerably less enthusiastic about her plans to defeat ISIS than any other aspect of her program.
The one area where Hillary and Trump are in simpatico is on the question of companies “shipping jobs overseas”. Both she and Trump would put a stop to that. How you stop the mobility of capital in a free market economy without hurting the economy isn’t exactly clear to me. But it’s good political rhetoric and they will both continue to use it.However, Hillary was effective in critiquing Trump regarding his habit of making his merchandise abroad. One of her best lines was, “Trump talks about making America great again. Well, he could start making things in America.”
Two more anti-Trump lines which stood out were when Hillary said, “A man who can be baited with a Tweet is a man who can’t be trusted with nuclear weapons,” followed by the even more succinct, “There is no other Donald Trump.”
Again, I’m not buying what Hillary is selling. She says she isn’t out to take away our guns or repeal the 2nd Amendment. But then why praise Australia’s gun confiscation program? Hillary can deride Trump’s rhetoric but this i a woman who said earlier this year that she considered both Iran and Republicans to be her enemies. Speaking of Iran, she boasted about putting a cap on Iran’s nuclear weapons program. How can Iran’s nuclear weapons program be capped as long as they enrich uranium. Let’s remember that we don’t allow Japan and South Korea to enrich uranium.
Notwithstanding this Hillary has come to fight and Trump is sorely mistaken if he thinks she is going to roll over and play dead for him.
On the other hand, this election could be determined by external forces namely Wikileaks. In which case, it will be a question of what’s more ruinous? Trump tax returns or Hillary e-mails – State Department or DNC?
