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Democratic convention live: Bill Clinton to speak on night Hillary nominated
Democratic convention live: Bill Clinton speaks after Hillary formally nominated
(35 minutes later)
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Albright describes her travels with Clinton:
Clinton reveals he took a couple days off to watch all six police academy movies back-to-back.
We went to Prague, where I showed her the city of my birth and made her eat Czech cabbage, which she didn’t like very much. And introduced her to Vaclav Havel, which she did like very much.
Fact check: when did Police Academy six come out?
Albright says that as secretary of state, Clinton helped “restore our reputation around the world.”
Then Clinton lost a gubernatorial election. She said go back to work. They went back to work. And in 1982 he became the first govenor in Arkansas history to be elected, defeated, elected.
“I’m reminded how important it is that the person who represents our nation is trusted by our allies and who listens more than she talks.”
My experience has been, it’s a pretty good thing to follow her advice.
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Here’s former secretary of state Madeleine Albright. Only three names on the program after her: Bill Clinton, Meryl Streep, Alicia Keys.
By 1979, Clinton was the nation’s youngest governor. He asked Hillary (we’re going to call her that for clarity’s sake?) to develop a health care program for rural and remote areas.
“Tonight in Philadelphia we nominated someone with Truman’s fighting spirit to be our next president, Hillary Clinton,” Albright says.
“It wasn’t the only big thing that happened that spring...we found out that we were going to be parents. On February 27, 1980, 15 minutes after he got home from the national governor’s conference in Washington, Hillary Clinton’s water broke. Chelsea was born just before midnight.
“In this era, with these threats, we need a leader who has the experience and judgment to keep America strong, secure and safe.”
It was the happiest moment in my life. A miracle for me because my father died before I was born. And the absolute conviction that my daughter had the best mother in the whole world.
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Like it or loath it, it's safe to say this first spouse speech is not plagiarised. Intense, and sometimes awkwardly, personal.
02:56
Now here is Ima Matul, sex trafficking victim and advocate.
She thanks Klobuchar. She says she never could have imagined sharing such a stage. She grew up in Indonesia. When she was 17 she was promised a nanny job in Los Angeles. Instead she spent three years being abused. When she finally escaped, she found a home with an advocacy group. Then “I found the strength to organize survivors from across the country,” she says.
Kind of a lot of people in the arena are talking through this testimony. It’s ... rude?
Matul says that Clinton had fought to end the slavery, which “is happening right here in our backyard. Every day I hear stories just like my own. Still I have hope.”
Matul says there’s growing awareness of the problem and a commitment to finding a solution.
Klobuchar stands next to her as she speaks.
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02:47
Here’s Senator Amy Klobuchar, from Minnesota. “We are all more secure when women and girls have the opportunity to lead with their heads high and their strides strong, Klobuchar says. “That leader is Hillary Clinton!”
That’s applauded, but the singsong bit that comes next is a bit clumsy:
She sees a world where girls are not captured and sold but are fearless and bold.
Then she tells the story of a victim of sex trafficking. We’re about to hear in person from another victim.
Klobuchar on Clinton:
When she said women’s rights are human rights, she made sex trafficking a violation of those rights. She didn’t just say it anywhere. She said it in China…
When women are held back, democracies falter. When women are held and treated as sex slave, tyrants rule.
And if that means playing the woman card, Donald Trump, let me tell you, there are hundreds of millions of women around the world who are ready to play that card. And in the United States of America it’s called the voting card.
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Final section of this truly extensive look at Hillary Clinton’s truly lengthy record in public life. This section is titled:
Rodham mentioned she liked a house. He bought the house and told her she had to marry him then. “The third time was a charm.” They were married 11 October 1975. “I married my best friend.”
FIGHTS OF HER LIFE: SECRETARY OF STATE
I was still in awe at how smart and strong and loving and caring she was, and I really hoped that her choosing me... was a decision she would never regret.
Scheduled to talk are senator Amy Klobuchar; Ima Matul, sex trafficking survivor and advocate; and former secretary of state Madeleine Albright.
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It will be interesting to follow this section in the hall – and then on Twitter:
03:25
spoiler alert: a certain incident in Libya will not be mentioned in this video on SecState Clinton's tenure
Clinton: “I was still trying to get her to marry me. The second time I tried a different tack. I said, I really want you to marry me, but you shouldn’t do it.
She said, that isn’t much of a sales pitch.
I said, I know but it’s true. And it was true.”
Because of the young Democrats our age, Clinton explained to her, none of them “is as good as you are at actually doing things.” He said she should go home to run for office.
He finally got her to come to Arkansas. The people at the law school were so impressed they offered her a teaching position. She moved. And she was a stranger. It was more rural and conservative than what she knew.
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Clinton continues. “Then she went down to south Texas.”
The Texas delegation is really excited about the shout-out.
Rodham registered Mexican-American voters. “Then in our last year of law school, Hillary kept up this work. She went to South Carolina to see why so many African American boys were being jailed as adults.
Always makin’ things better.
Meanwhile, let’s get back to business. I was trying to convince her to marry me. I first proposed to her on a trip to Great Britain [on Ennerdale Water]... I asked her to marry me and she said I can’t.
I went home to law school. Hillary moved to Massachusetts to keep working on children’s issues.
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03:19
Clinton remembers meeting Rodham’s crotchety, conservative father. Her mother was different, he recalls. She was more liberal. “Knowing her was one of the greatest gifts Hillary ever gave me.”
Clinton describes Rodham’s evolution of her social conscience. The civil rights movement, he says, convinced her to become a Democrat. He talks about Rodham’s summer internship interviewing workers in migrant camps for senator Walter Mondale’s subcommittee.
She got so involved with children’s issues that she actually took an extra year in law school ... working to determine what more could be done for children.
Hillary opened my eyes to a whole new world of public service by private citizens.
Bill Clinton sounds like he's trying to make America fall in love with his wife the same way he did.
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Dean was totally sandbagging us. Was he being deliberately dull before that joke, which had the arena in stitches? Here’s what he said:
Clinton describes standing in line with Rodham to register for classes:
Go to HillaryClinton.com to donate right now and help make history. And volunteer, because this race is going to be won on the ground.
I thought I was doing pretty well, until we got to the front of the line and the registrar looked up and said Bill, what are you doing here, you registered this morning?..
In Colorado, and Iowa, and North Carolina and Michigan, and Florida, and Ohio and Pennsylvania, and then we’re going all the way to Washington, DC!
He says he asked her on a walk.
Good times.
We’ve been walking and talking, laughing together, ever since. We’ve done it in good times and bad, through joy and heartbreak. We cried together this morning” at a friend’s death.
Gotta give Dean credit. Takes a man to laugh at himself.
We built up a lifetime of memories.
Howard Dean just poked fun at his Scream Moment. WAY funnier than hot messes Al Franken & Sarah Silverman. Low bar, I know. But still.
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Howard Dean pic.twitter.com/VuQAtAOFRz
03:14
Move the scene to the law library. Rodham catches Clinton staring. She walks over and says:
Look, if you’re going to keep staring at me, and now I’m staring back, we at least ought to know each other’s names. I’m Hillary Rodham, who are you?
I was so impressed and surprised, that whether you believe it or not, that momentarily, I was speechless.
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03:12
Wow they love Bill Clinton. There he is. Skinny as a rail. Tasteful dark suit and electric blue tie. Is that the Charlie’s Angels theme? Some instrumental disco.
Clinton kind of jogs over to the lectern. But the crowd is not going to let him start. All those sticklike signs make the crowd look huge and very dynamic. It’s rather disorienting.
He says thank you a bunch of times. Then he starts.
In the spring of 1971 I met a girl. The first time I saw her, we were appropriately enough in a class on political and civil rights. She had big blond hair. Big glasses. She wore no makeup. And this sense of strength.
After this class I followed her out, intending to introduce myself. I got close enough to touch her back, but I couldn’t do it... I might be starting something I couldn’t stop.
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Dean re-enacts famous scream
All the delegates, and a lot of the crowd, have tall narrow white signs on sticks they are getting ready to wave like crazy. They say “America.”
We’re trying to resist posting this 2004 footage but in our defense the present-day Dean onstage, with this dutifully dull (it seems to us) speech, isn’t giving us much reason to...
The tribute video to Bill Clinton is still running. He just might win this election.
Oh wow. He did it.
What song will he come out to? Any bets? Fleetwood Mac?
He just did this again. Brilliant:
And, Dean. https://t.co/94OgLMIxFK
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Now here’s former Vermont governor and party bigwig Howard Dean.
He looks great. Hasn’t aged a day. Where’s Vermont? There they are, looking happy.
It’s just after the 9.30pm hour, so Dean is getting into the big primetime audience. But landing squarely in the middle of that audience will be former secretary of state Madeleine Albright, who is scheduled to talk about Clinton’s record in that role.
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02:30
Speaking now is Ryan Moore, who according to the DNC flier “has spondyloepiphyseal Dysplasia dwarfism and has known Hillary Clinton since 1994 when they met during the fight for health care reform.”
He’s from South Sioux City, Nebraska. He goes back 20 years with Clinton, too. “Hillary asked to hear our story,” he says. “For me, quality affordable health care was more than a privilege and even more than a right. It was an absolute necessity...
Here’s what I can tell you from my years knowing Hillary Clinton. She’s compassionate. She remembers details about my life from years earlier. ...
Every time I have a big operation coming up, I always receive a note from Hillary, full of … kindness. ...
Most of all, she’s genuine.
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Next section: FIGHTS OF HER LIFE: HEALTHCARE
We’re watching the video now. Lots of good retro footage of Clinton and her Arkansas accent.
Actress Erika Alexander of The Cosby Show (?) and Living Single will introduce this section.
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Congressman accuses Trump of cashing in on 9/11
Representative Joseph Crowley of New York has just said that Donald Trump “cashed in” on 9/11, “collecting 150,000 in federal funds ...even though in the days after the attack he said his properties” were fine.
Crowley:
Donald Trump saw a little payday for his empire. It was one of our nation’s darkest days. But for Trump, it was just another opportunity to make a quick buck.
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Sweeney:
“When we needed someone to speak for us, to stand with us, to fight on our behalf, Hillary Clinton was there every step of the way.”
Next up is Lauren Manning, a former Cantor Fitzgerald employee who spent more than six months in the hospital after 9/11 recovering from severe burns.
I fought in tribute to my friends and colleagues at Cantor Fitzgerald that I loss that day.. and all who were killed. To honor our troops on the front line... and I fought to return to my young son, 10 months old at the time.
I fought as hard as I could so that the terrorists would not get one more. Hillary Clinton stood with me through that fight. And in the darkest of days and the hardest of times, the people that show up in your life are the ones that mean everything...
As a woman working in business for years I know you have to be tough. In that woman is a hell of a tough person....
When New York needed her, she was there. I trusted her when my life was on the line, and she came through.. because that’s who she is. Kind, caring loyal. She had my back.
She was there for me, and that’s why I’m with her.
Manning’s account is powerful, and she’s applauded earnestly.
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02:10
New section. It’s “FIGHTS OF HER LIFE: STANDING UP FOR 9/11 FIRST RESPONDERS & SURVIVORS.”
Here onstage to introduce it is actress Debra Messing, of Will & Grace fame. She’s talking about how New York City endured 9/11 and its aftermath. The crowd is talking right along. A bit of an awkward disconnect now between the easy move of the crowd and the pictures – here are the pictures and videos – of running people covered in dust and the wreckage of the buildings.
The video uses a clip of then-mayor Rudy Giuliani saying “the health department is not concerned.”
Then it cuts to Clinton saying, “The government didn’t tell the truth. They told people the air was safe. It wasn’t safe.”
Then onscreen is Joe Sweeney, who was a detective with the NYPD on September 11, 2001, and who dug through the rubble for survivors. He says, “she got the hospitals onboard, she got us care... she had our back, we knew that. And that’s what you want in a president.”
The video wraps and Sweeney walks out to speak.
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02:05
Senator Barbara Boxer now. She’s known Hillary Clinton for more than 20 years. Which is in this crowd doesn’t even really count as a long time. “And my daughter was married to her brother so my beloved grandson is her beloved nephew,” Boxer adds, which puts her indeed closer than most.
Boxer says Clinton is a mom who knew her daughter well.
The crowd is kind of loud as Boxer speaks, wavering in its attention and very chatty. The ledge behind this press filing section is lined with emptying beers, which compete for space with the feet of reclining attendees (not delegates, mind you – these comfortable folks have no business to conduct, probably). The room is full again, and still filling – the flow is incoming. Someone must’ve gotten ahold of the playbill for the 10 o’clock hour, which bears the names Bill Clinton, Meryl Streep and Alicia Keys.
But the crowd does applaud Boxer when she says, “she’s still standing!”
And she’s applauded for a pointed defense of abortion rights:
Well I have a message for Donald Trump and Michael Pence. WE are not going back to the dark days, when women died in back alleys. We are never, ever, ever going back. Ever.
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01:54
We realize we neglected to list what the six sections are, of this part of the program.
They are:
FIGHTS OF HER LIFE: KIDS AND FAMILIES
FIGHTS OF HER LIFE: SOCIAL JUSTICE
FIGHTS OF HER LIFE: WOMEN AND FAMILIES
FIGHTS OF HER LIFE: STANDING UP FOR 9/11 FIRST RESPONDERS & SURVIVORS
FIGHTS OF HER LIFE: HEALTH CARE
FIGHTS OF HER LIFE: SECRETARY OF STATE
We are in the “women and families” section. There’s still plenty of Clinton experience to sort through. The night is young, from a policy perspective.
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01:52
Lena Dunham: 'deal us in'
Next up are actresses Lena Dunham and America Ferrera.
“Hi, I’m Lena Dunham, and according to Donald Trump, my body is like a 2.”
“And I’m America Ferrera, and according to Donald Trump, I’m probably a rapist.”
[Ferrera has Honduran roots.]
They continue:
“We now what you’re thinking, why should we care what some celebrity says about politics? And we agree. But he is the Republican nominee...”
They say they are “proud to say, ‘we’re with Hillary.’”
Dunham: ‘As Hillary Clinton says, deal us in.”
They announce a program in which people can text the campaign and get official women cards in return.
They end by saying “Love Trumps hate!” and walk off arm-in-arm.
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01:48
Richards: Women will beat Trump
Cecile Richards, the Planned Parenthood president:
“Make no mistake about it. Women’s health and rights are on the line and on the ballot this election.”
Then she gets a big applause by vowing that women will win the election for Clinton, which in fact is almost positively how it will happen if it happens:
Donald Trump “says pregnancy is an ‘inconvenience’ for a woman’s employer,” Richards says.
Well Mr Trump, come this November, women are going to be more than an inconvenience. Women are going to be the reason you’re not elected.
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Elizabeth Banks asks whether there are any women in the house.
They applaud.
“Yeah. No duh. We’re half the population! We’re everywhere! And Hillary Clinton knows this.”
The “fight of her life” this section focuses on is “women and families”.
Banks introduces a video of Donald Trump saying nasty things about women. It’s ugly enough that it actually wins some boos from a crowd that hasn’t seem particularly interested in conducting one-minute-hates targeting Trump.
Then Cecile Richards, president of the Planned Parenthood action fund, taes the stage.
