Hillary Clinton is a survivor: On the eve of her acceptance speech, take a moment ...

[DonViejo]

Hillary Clinton is a survivor: On the eve of her acceptance speech, take a moment to acknowledge all that she’s overcome

Like Ginger Rogers, Hillary Clinton has done everything her contemporaries have, only backwards and in heels

GARY LEGUM

Sometime Thursday night, Hillary Clinton will walk onto a stage in Philadelphia to formally accept the Democratic Party’s nomination for president. The crowd will go wild, as it always does at this moment in a political convention. People will cheer and wave signs. Maybe someone will bring a few vuvuzelas into the arena, in which case, God help anyone trapped in there with them.

It will be a historic moment: the first time a woman has topped the ticket for a major party’s presidential nomination. Considering our nation took nearly 150 years to even grant women the right to vote, there is no denying the symbolism of a woman knocking down one more artificial barrier that America has erected in front of half of its population. And whatever you think of her, there is no denying that Hillary Clinton will have climbed an Everest-sized mountain of shit to reach that summit.

Clinton will have been preceded by one night by President Obama, who will speak to the convention on Wednesday evening. Having accomplished a great deal in office while overseeing the Democratic Party’s moving further left, the president is said to see Clinton’s potential presidency as a vehicle to partly carry on his own legacy, to build on the foundation he has laid and perhaps find solutions that he couldn’t to other problems. This makes sense, of course. The differences between Clinton and Obama were always more about temperament than policy positions. Now Obama is coming to the end of his time in office with an approval rating above 50 percent, and historians will likely be very kind to his presidency.

Clinton will also have been preceded by Bernie Sanders, who spoke on Monday. Sanders’s was a masterful version of his usual stump speech, tying Clinton to the political platform he has pushed for over a year, and to which a large and vocal segment of the left has attached itself. If the left can keep up the enthusiasm that it has carried throughout the primaries, and if Clinton wins in November, she will be expected to address many of its concerns while in office.

So this is the irony that struck me as I watched Sanders speak on Monday night: that should she take the oath of office next January, Clinton will do so with the considerable shadows of these two men hovering over her, one of whom will lead a restive left pushing her on policy, while trying to carve out her own legacy, to govern on her own terms.

more
http://www.salon.com/2016/07/27/hillary_clinton_is_a_survivor_on_the_eve_of_her_acceptance_speech_take_a_moment_to_acknowledge_all_that_shes_overcome/