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Democratic Convention: Clinton Advisers Preview Speech
Democratic Convention Day 4 Takeaways: Over? She’s Just Starting
(about 5 hours later)
Right Now: Watch the last night of the Democratic convention with our real-time analysis (or just get the highlights).
PHILADELPHIA — Hillary Clinton stepped into history. Her daughter, Chelsea, lent a hand. And supporters of Bernie Sanders packed up their signs, some of his admirers still unmoved by Mrs. Clinton as the clock ran out on the Democratic National Convention. Here are our takeaways from the convention’s last night:
PHILADELPHIA — Hillary Clinton will take the stage on the final night of the Democratic National Convention to formally accept her party’s nomination. But before the balloons drop, speakers will highlight issues facing women, with a particular emphasis on workplace fairness and pay. The Clinton women, Chelsea and her mother, will close out the evening. Here are some of the things we’ll be watching:
Bill Clinton took pains this week to cast his wife as a “change maker.” You will not hear Mrs. Clinton object.
Hillary Clinton will close out her nominating convention Thursday night with a speech that will seek to rebut what aides called the caricature of Mrs. Clinton that came out of the Republican convention that nominated Donald J. Trump in Cleveland last week.
But under the brightest spotlight of an election brimming with outsider fervor — powering Donald J. Trump to the Republican nomination and Mr. Sanders to unexpected success — Mrs. Clinton presented herself as something different. She is a creature of the system and unapologetic about her résumé.
“We want people to see the woman, the full three-dimensional person that she is,” said Jennifer Palmieri, the communications director for the campaign.
“Sometimes the people at this podium are new to the national stage,” she said, preparing to tick off her many titles. “I am not one of those people.”
John D. Podesta, the chairman of the campaign, said that Mrs. Clinton has spent the past few weeks soliciting ideas for the speech from friends and aides who know her best.
It is a gambit premised in part on her atypical Republican opponent — and a hope that promises of incremental change might sound more palatable when the alternative is viewed as truly dangerous.
“She heard from a lot of voices,” Mr. Podesta said. “But this is in her voice. This may be the most personal moment on the campaign to be talking to a big audience about what you want to do for the future of their life.”
“I sweat the details,” Mrs. Clinton said. Voters might not. But she is betting, at least, that they think someone should.
Mr. Podesta and Ms. Palmieri discussed the final night of the Democratic convention — and Mrs. Clinton’s speech — in an interview with The New York Times.
Demonstrations inside and outside the convention hall this week made clear that Mrs. Clinton had some work to do to persuade at least some die-hard supporters of Mr. Sanders.
Mrs. Clinton will be following exceptionally well-received speeches by some of the best orators in the Democratic Party, led by President Obama and Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. on Wednesday night. “Maybe she doesn’t hit those soaring notes,” said Mr. Podesta, who has long been a part of the Clintons’ inner circle. “But I think what she’ll be doing is what the American people want to see from her, which is telling and talking about what connects the fights of her life, going all the way back, with what she wants to do for the country.” Watch the full conversation.
On Thursday, she seemed to acknowledge as much, quickly addressing them directly with a simple message: I hear you.
Chelsea Clinton has come a long way from the days in her mother’s 2008 presidential campaign when she was so press-shy she rarely uttered anything in public. Recall the time she told a 9-year-old “kid reporter” for Scholastic News that she didn’t take questions from the news media.
“Your cause is our cause,” she said, thanking Mr. Sanders for placing issues of economic and social justice “front and center, where they belong.”
This time though, her mother’s campaign has sought to make more use of her. And Thursday night, she will face her biggest audience yet as she tries to sell Mrs. Clinton to the American public. The inevitable comparisons will be made to Ivanka Trump’s well-received speech in Cleveland. The biggest question is how she will depict her mother. Will we hear about the Mrs. Clinton who has been an advocate for women and girls? Will the speech be a more intimate portrait of a nurturing mother with stories from her childhood we haven’t heard before? Or both?
Total unity has been elusive, and could remain so. As Mrs. Clinton accepted the nomination, some Sanders delegates stood stone-faced, occasionally booing or silently protesting.
No one could close a trust deficit with the American people as large as Mrs. Clinton’s in one speech. But Thursday night will be the beginning of what could be her biggest challenge in the general election: making voters think she is trustworthy. One way of accomplishing this — which the Clinton campaign has spent much of the convention trying — is to make Mr. Trump appear so erratic, untested and thoughtless that the idea of him becoming president would be too much, even for those who mistrust her. But she will also want to make the election more than a protest vote against him. And to do that she will have to begin to smooth her image — with this speech.
During the Republican primary race, Mr. Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigration appeared to do nothing but help at the polls, even as rivals objected with varying degrees of outrage.
Mrs. Clinton cannot escape the fact that she will be seen by many voters — and harshly caricatured by the Trump campaign — as running for a third term of the Obama White House. The problem is, history is not on her side. The incumbent’s party tends to lose after two terms. But President Obama has built a formidable political coalition, one that was in full and animated display Wednesday night when he addressed the convention. She will need to nod to his accomplishments yet set herself far enough apart to show that she will take the country in a new but not entirely different direction.
Democrats appear convinced they can win the argument among the wider electorate. And they may have found their most potent voice: Khizr Khan, an American Muslim whose son, Humayun S. M. Khan, was killed in Iraq.
No candidate is perfect. And this year both nominees have more than their share of weaknesses. With questions lingering about her decades in public life — her use of a private email server, her judgment as secretary of state and her handling of her personal life — she could try to level with her audience and acknowledge her imperfections. And that may go a long way toward helping her display a trait many voters say she lacks: authenticity.
In a stirring address, his stoicism building to a controlled simmer, Mr. Khan challenged Mr. Trump on behalf of “patriotic American Muslims” everywhere. “You have sacrificed nothing,” Mr. Khan said, his wife standing silently beside him, “and no one.”
On the third day of the convention, Mr. Obama, seeking to cement his legacy, handed the party baton to Mrs. Clinton, who made an unadvertised appearance, and to her harmonica-playing running mate, Senator Tim Kaine, who sought to lure disaffected Republicans.
For organizers, the choice to showcase Mr. Khan amounted to a pointed dare: Are these people not American enough for you, Mr. Trump?
The day, which focused in part on national security, came as Mr. Trump said he hoped Russian intelligence services had successfully hacked Mrs. Clinton’s email, and encouraged them to publish whatever they may have stolen.
Mr. Trump has presented himself as something of a one-man anti-crime plan, arguing that he is the lone force standing between the United States and semi-lawless dystopia. Republican leaders have accused Democrats of giving terrorism issues short shrift in Philadelphia.
Part of Mr. Obama’s aim in his speech was to continue to bring together the divided factions of the party, a division that though real, is far from historic.
But as Thursday’s slate made clear, Mrs. Clinton’s team believes that Mr. Trump, with his scattershot defense policies and often erratic statements, has supplied an opportunity. For much of the evening, matters of public safety took center stage, with testimony from a retired Marine general — to chants of “U.S.A.!” — a Texas sheriff and the relatives of fallen officers.
• Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York
It was consistent with a theme of the week: No presumed Republican motif — from an emphasis on national defense to conspicuous invocations of faith to warm quotations of Ronald Reagan — is safe from Democratic encroachment in the age of Trump.
• Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado
In her presidential runs, Mrs. Clinton has at times struggled with how, and how often, to highlight her gender. No more.
• Representative Xavier Becerra of California
First Chelsea Clinton paid tribute to her maternal compassion, saying that Mrs. Clinton’s own mother would be proud.
• Senator Sherrod Brown of Ohio
Then Mrs. Clinton, calling herself “my mother’s daughter and my daughter’s mother,” stopped to cheer her nomination as “a milestone in our nation’s march toward a more perfect union.”
• Chelsea Clinton
There is a risk in turning off male voters, with whom she has fared poorly in surveys. Mrs. Clinton argued explicitly that they, too, had a stake in her success, whether or not they recognized it. “When any barrier falls in America,” she said, “it clears the way for everyone.”
