Press. voanews.com
Hillary Clinton
accepted the Democratic Party's nomination for president Thursday night with a
message stressing the need to unite in order to confront the nation's
challenges. "It truly is up to
us.We have to decide whether we will all work together so we can all rise
together," Clinton said in an address on the final night of the Democratic
National Convention in Philadelphia.
The 68-year-old
Clinton is the first woman ever nominated for president by a major U.S.
political party.She won the nomination after defeating her principal rival,
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, in the state-by-state process of primary and
caucus votes.
Despite Sanders
giving his endorsement in his own speech at the convention this week, one of
her challenges ahead of the November election is to appeal to the group of his
supporters who say they will not support her.She praised Sanders for his
campaign on Thursday, highlighting its appeal to young people and efforts to
promote economic and social justice.
"I want you
to know I've heard you," Clinton said."Your cause is our cause."
She pledged to work to create more jobs with higher wages, saying the country
does well when the middle class thrives.Clinton also said she has no interest
in taking away people's guns, but wants to enact reforms to prevent people from
being shot by those who should not have access to them.
"We have to
heal the divides in our country, not just on guns, but on race, immigration and
more," she said." And that starts with listening, listening to each
other, trying as best we can to walk in each other’s shoes.”
Clinton's
principal challenger in the general election is Republican nominee Donald
Trump. Both candidates suffer from negative perceptions among voters, as
revealed by multiple polls during the past year. Those same polls show about 30
percent of voters view Clinton as trustworthy, even as one from Gallup showed
her as the country's most admired woman.
One source of
that distrust is her use of a private email system during her time as secretary
state, which was the subject of a congressional investigation and a probe by
the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The
FBI concluded Clinton's actions were "extremely careless," but did
not warrant criminal charges.
Kyle Kondik of
the University of Virginia Center for Politics said the issue is a lingering
question for voters and one she might have been wise to mention in her speech
Thursday.
"I did not
hear any kind of contrition or acknowledgment of the questions about her email
server," Kondik told VOA. "I
personally thought that it would have been a worthwhile thing to sort of make
at least an oblique acknowledgment of that issue. Obviously she and her advisors decided not to
do that."
Clinton said
Thursday that Trump wants Americans to fear the future and each other, and she
took aim at some of the proposals he has put forth during his campaign, including
building a wall at the U.S.-Mexico border and banning Muslims from entering the
country.
“We will not
build a wall.Instead, we will build an economy where everyone who wants a good
job can get one," she said."And we’ll build a path to citizenship for
millions of immigrants who are already contributing to our economy.We will not
ban a religion, we will work with all Americans and our allies to fight and
defeat terrorism.”
She further
criticized what she called "the bigotry and the bombast" of the Trump
campaign and cast his temperament has unfit for the presidency.
"A man you
can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons,"
Clinton said. Throughout the campaign, Trump has portrayed himself as the
candidate best able to deal with national security threats and who will put the
interests of Americans first when it comes to the economy and international
affairs.
After Clinton's
speech, Trump posted a flurry of Twitter messages, including saying she was
unfit to be president because of what he called her "refusal to mention
Radical Islam" as she advocates allowing more refugees into the United
States.
"No one has
worse judgement than Hillary Clinton - corruption and devastation follows her
wherever she goes," he said in another tweet. The convention in
Philadelphia brought together the biggest names in the Democratic Party to put
forth why they think Americans can trust Clinton and why they believe she is
the superior choice to lead the country when President Barack Obama's term ends
in January.
Obama said
Wednesday no man or woman has ever been more qualified for the position. Vice
President Joe Biden said of Trump that no major party nominee has been less
prepared to handle the country's national security. Clinton's running mate,
Virginia Senator Tim Kaine, called Trump a "self-promoting, one-man
wrecking crew."
Trump and his
campaign have described the Democratic convention speakers as painting too rosy
a picture of the state of the nation. "I've
been watching these speeches at night, and boy am I getting hit," Trump
said at an event Thursday in Iowa."I am getting hit and they don't mean it
and there's a lot of lies being told."
Voters will make
their choice on November 8, and the new president will take office on January
20. Kondik said the presidential
campaign could go into a lull in the month of August following the months of
primary votes and this month's conventions.
"The
conventions were early this year, you've got the Olympics coming in
August," Kondik said. "It's
just kind of a month where there's not a whole lot of news typically. So maybe we've got kind of a high point of
the campaign now and then it will taper off just a bit between now and Labor
Day and then get going again."
Kondik also said
the majority of voters have already made up their minds, and that the
conventions help solidify those choices. "That's not to say things can't
change between the end of the convention bounce and election day," he
said. "There aren't a whole lot of
persuadable people out there still. But
there are also a higher number of undecided voters than there usually are, so
we'll just have to see how it shakes out."
Elizabeth
Cherneff contributed to this story.
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