Roger Rabbit?
“The choice is clear,” she said in Philadelphia.
The former secretary of state, senator and first lady used her convention address to pitch an optimistic message, even accusing Trump of taking his party from “Morning in America” to “Midnight in America.”
On the sidelines, Trump accused Democrats of creating a “fantasy world” at their convention and spreading a false message that “everything is wonderful.”
And he bashed Clinton's address on Twitter:
But Clinton said, “He wants us to fear the future and fear each other,” later announcing she accepts the nomination with “humility, determination and boundless confidence in America's promise.”
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“He loses his cool at the slightest provocation,” Clinton said. “Imagine, if you dare, imagine … him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis. A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”
After a primary campaign – and convention week – riven by party clashes, Clinton also used the address to reach out to Bernie Sanders supporters, telling them, “I want you to know, I've heard you. Your cause is our cause.”
The speech was still interrupted many times by noisy protests, which were soon drowned out by Clinton loyalists chanting, “Hillary!”
Meanwhile, gearing up for a cross-country campaign against Trump for every last vote, she openly reached out to disaffected Republicans and independents, as she vowed to fight for working people.
“I will be a president for Democrats, Republicans, independents, for the struggling, the striving, the successful … for all Americans together,” she said.
A day after embracing Obama on the convention stage in Philadelphia, Clinton on Thursday also defended the sitting president’s record and suggested she’d build upon it -- a move that could rally the divided base, but also make it easier for Trump to brand her campaign as representing four more years of the status quo.
GOP boss Reince Priebus said in a statement after her address, "Hillary Clinton is the ultimate Washington insider at a time when Americans are eager to break with eight years of a Democrat status quo, and there’s no doubt her longtime pattern of shady conduct and double standards will continue if she is elected president."
But Clinton said Thursday that Trump does not offer “real change.”
Clinton, even as she reached out to Republicans and independents, laid out a largely liberal agenda that at times echoed themes from Sanders’ campaign that have weaved their way into the party platform, on issues ranging from taxes to the minimum wage to immigration to health care.
She also took up one of Sanders’ marquee agenda items and vowed to work with her former primary rival to “make college tuition-free for the middle class and debt-free for all.”
Her address capped a dramatic week in Philadelphia that started with the abrupt resignation of party Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz amid yet another email scandal and ended with an all-hands-on-deck push for unity meant to ease unrest among Sanders supporters and others who spent the convention railing against the Democratic establishment.
Even on the final day, protesters organized events to encourage voters to de-register from the party. And as delegates streamed past the perimeter for the speeches, a contingent of anti-Clinton protesters shouted at the gates, “Hell no, DNC, we won’t vote for Hillary!”
The big question going forward is whether Democrats’ divisions are more damaging for their chances in November than are the Republican fractures for the GOP. While Trump rival Ted Cruz infamously did not endorse him in Cleveland, and Sanders did endorse Clinton, the Vermont senator’s supporters have been far less willing to forgive and forget and rally behind their party’s nominee. Also unclear is whether Clinton will enjoy a bump in popularity out of her convention, as several recent polls have shown Trump climbing after Cleveland.
Despite some suggestions by leading Democrats that the Philadelphia affair would stay positive, the week was equal parts Clinton advertisement and Trump take-down. Speakers brazenly ridiculed and caricatured Trump throughout as a selfish businessman who has no actual plan to execute his campaign promises.
Clinton ally and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo accused Trump of using “fear and anxiety to drive his ratings.”
Chelsea Clinton, though, the former first daughter and an important surrogate on the campaign trail, offered a pause from the attacks as she described childhood moments and painted a personal picture of Hillary the mother and grandmother.
“Every single memory I have of my mom is that regardless of what is happening in her life, she was always, always there for me,” she said, describing how her mother will now “drop everything” for a few minutes of FaceTime with her grandkids.
Chelsea filled in the biographical details for her mother the way Ivanka Trump did for her father at last week’s convention.
For his part, Donald Trump, who has held his own events and stayed in the headlines throughout the Philadelphia gathering, weighed in again Thursday, just hours before her speech. At a rally in Davenport, Iowa, he said Democratic convention-goers are telling “lies” and spreading a false message that “everything is wonderful.”
“At Hillary Clinton’s convention this week, Democrats have been speaking about a world that doesn’t exist. A world where America has full employment, where there’s no such thing as radical Islamic terrorism, where the border is totally secured, and where thousands of innocent Americans have not suffered from rising crime in cities like Baltimore and Chicago,” Trump said in a written statement.
The Democrats’ closing convention night, though, included a sharper security focus than earlier in the week. Retired Marine Gen. John Allen, who led troops in Afghanistan, vouched Thursday for Clinton as the candidate who can keep the country “safe and free.”
“America will defeat ISIS,” he vowed, naming the terror enemy that seemingly was glossed over by earlier convention speakers. As he spoke, competing chants of “USA” and “No More War” broke out in the audience.
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