The Democratic Convention was filled with some exceptional speeches. And then there were the speeches by Chelsea and Hillary Clinton tonight to close out the convention. THUD!
The whole point of Chelsea introducing her mom was to sway some of the nonbelievers out there. Instead, it was boilerplate, read in almost emotionless, robotic fashion. I can’t imagine how this was some light bulb moment to anyone about Hillary’s humanity…maybe a reminder to the believers, at best.
Hillary wasn’t much better. She simply can’t give a speech when she doesn’t sound like a lecturing schoolmarm. This doesn’t disqualify her from being president; it just doesn’t help her to get there. For what it’s worth, Martha Thatcher wasn’t a spellbinding speaker and Angela Merkel isn’t one. That said, I’d fire whatever staff led Clinton down tonight’s path.
At one point tonight it seemed Hillary was going to provide us with shades of a 2008 New Hampshire moment, a moment when we actually saw the human being. Unfortunately, this tangent lasted about a nanosecond before she got back into business as usual.
It’s too bad. You hear so many stories about just how warm and endearing and funny Hillary is in small groups. (I mean, wouldn’t you love to be around Clinton and McCain having a few pops together?) Why in the world someone can’t get this across to her is beyond me. Maybe in past elections you had to be concerned about every last utterance. But this time? With Donald Trump!! Not a chance. There is a wide window for her to go after the undecided voter. She chose not to. That is unfortunate.
If it were up to me I know what I would have advised Hillary to do. After President Obama gave his exceptional speech extolling the virtues of Hillary as only he could, I would have had her come up on stage, hug Obama, like she did. Then I would have had a mic set up and had her say, “Yeah, what he said.” End of convention.