The Beautiful Message Hillary Clinton Has Been Waiting Decades to Proclaim
Tonight, former Secretary of State, former Senator from New York, and former First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton took the historic step of becoming the first woman to address a major political party convention as their presidential nominee. It's a moment that has been decades in the making for Clinton, culminating a career that started in legal aid and may now potentially end in the Oval Office. It was a night of victory for Clinton, even more so because she appears to be accomplishing one goal that has been decades in the making.
She finally managed to proclaim her message on "love and kindness."
The national conventions provided a sort of easy shorthand for the presidential candidates this year, presenting a sharp contrast between the visions of Clinton and her Republican opponent Donald Trump. While last week's Republican event in Cleveland was heavy on walls, deportations, and other harsh rhetoric used to divide the country into "good" Americans and an amorphous enemy that they must battle against, the Democrats in Philadelphia preached unity and joy.
It would be impossible to host a convention in the city of Brotherly Love without the actual theme of love threading itself throughout the spectacle. But what we witnessed at the Democratic National Convention is an ideal of what Clinton saw as her longstanding political vision, and that she would have made central to her campaign far earlier – if she hadn't had to fight her way through a surprising and bruising primary instead.
When her husband and former President Bill Clinton gave a speech that many called a "love letter" to his wife, he reintroduced her to the public as something other than the fierce former Secretary of State or the stoic political spouse supporting him through two terms in the White House. Instead he told the audience of the optimistic intellectual who captivated him in college, the idealist who fought for children and the poor as a lawyer working public defense, the tireless advocate in Congress while trying to get measures passed. Throughout the convention mothers spoke passionately about their children, those they have lost to violence and those they want desperately to protect. Signs reading "Stronger Together," "Do the Most Good" and "Love Trumps Hate" peppered the halls. Broadway artists even came to sing "What the World Needs Now Is Love."
What was so utterly bold about the convention wasn't that it was literally a point-by-point rejection of the Trump campaign pitch that to be strong, America needs a president who will strike fear into the hearts of its enemies, who requires no allies and will consider no negotiations or compromises. Instead it was a rebuttal to a society that has for hundreds of years rejected women as leaders because they were seen as too weak to govern or command, and signaled to them that the only way they could be respected and accepted was to act more like their male counterparts.
As Clinton set her sights on becoming the first female major party presidential nominee, the blueprint was already on the table for her to play up the foreign policy experience gathered as Secretary of State, her reputation as a "war hawk" and use the country's unsettled fear of potential terrorism as a catalyst for her own strength and fear-based campaign. It would have been the obvious path to take, and it well may have assuaged the nerves of those older voters still uncomfortable with the idea of a female commander in chief.
It was also role Clinton didn't seem so eager to play. "I am talking about love and kindness," Clinton told Buzzfeed reporter Ruby Cramer in January 2016 when Cramer asked her what motivated her to run for office. This was just before the long and grueling primary season began, and Clinton became mired in a battle for the endorsement that extended all the way to the convention itself. "What she wants to talk about hinges on a simple question of how we can, as humans, better treat one another," Cramer reported. "To Hillary Clinton, this is politics. She's talking, literally, about 'going back and actually living by the Golden Rule.'"
Because of the nature of the primary, she was never able to make that the focus of her message on the trail. After all, it was the campaign of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders that was making headlines for being the inspiring choice, the candidate who caused millennials to faint and birds to alight when he spoke from the podium. With the primary over, however, she can campaign the way she wants, and the DNC presents a strong indication that she's elevating that "love and kindness" vision she was never able to fully articulate both in the primary and in her long career preceding this race.
Negotiation, coalition building, empathy, compassion, love, unity. All of these have been considered strongly female gendered traits, and all of them were on display in Philadelphia. They were spotlighted in a roll call nomination process that allowed every single state to participate and for Vermont – Sanders' home state – to end the official count, while offering supporters of her primary rival the chance to praise his work on the campaign trail. And they showed in the diverse speakers from immigration groups, LGBT groups, abortion rights groups and Black Lives Matter.
First Lady Michelle Obama evoked that theme of love and kindness when she said, "And as my daughters prepare to set out into the world, I want a leader who is worthy of that truth, a leader who is worthy of my girls' promise and all our kids' promise, a leader who will be guided every day by the love and hope and impossibly big dreams that we all have for our children." Vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine touched on it in his own speech as well, telling the crowd, "My journey has convinced me that God has created a rich tapestry in this country - an incredible cultural diversity that succeeds when we embrace everyone in love and battle back against the dark forces of division. We're all neighbors and we must love our neighbors as ourselves." Rev. William Barber II shouted it from the rooftops when he proclaimed, "We must shock this nation with the power of love." And former First Daughter Chelsea Clinton reminded us of it yet again when she introduced her mother, saying, "That feeling of being valued and loved, that's what my mom wants for every child. It is the calling of her life."
Finally, Clinton herself brought love and unity to the table as she officially accepted the Democratic presidential nominee. "Stronger together is not just a lesson from history, a slogan from our campaign," she told the nation. "It's a guiding principle for the country we've always been."
Clinton isn't making the argument that she should be president because she is just as strong as a man. Instead, she is reminding Americans that she brings a unique worldview that male candidates traditionally don't offer that can make her even stronger.
Would this have been the same campaign message if someone else had won the Republican nomination, and fearmongering and xenophobia weren't such major parts of the nominee's platform? Maybe not. But Trump has provided the perfect opening for Clinton to finally see how her "love and kindness" platform will work in the real world. If Clinton is right, then love really will trump hate.
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