Former President Bill Clinton returned on August 21 to a place he knows well, the Democratic National Convention stage, to denounce Donald Trump as selfish and praise Kamala Harris as focused on the needs of Americans, firing up his party with his trademark off-the-cuff flourishes.
Clinton was meant to add heft to a third DNC night headlined by vice presidential nominee Tim Walz’s introduction to a national audience.
“We’ve got a pretty clear choice it seems to me. Kamala Harris, for the people. And the other guy who has proved, even more than the first go-around, that he’s about me, myself and I,” Clinton said.
Democrats are hoping to build on the momentum Harris has brought since taking over the top of the party’s presidential ticket last month. They want to harness the exuberance that has swept over their party since President Joe Biden stepped aside while also making clear to their supporters that they face a fierce battle with Trump.
The nation’s 42nd president and a veteran of his party’s political convention going back decades, Clinton was once declared the “secretary of explaining stuff” by Barack Obama, whose reelection bid in 2012 was bolstered by a Clinton stemwinder at that year’s DNC.
Now 78, Clinton’s delivery was sometimes halting, his movements slower and he mispronounced Harris’ first name twice. His left hand often shook when he wasn’t using it to grip the lectern.
Still, he delivered several homespun lines about the election during a 27-minute speech and urged Democrats to back Harris.
“What does her opponent do with his voice? He mostly talks about himself,” Clinton said. “So the next time you hear him, don’t count the lies, count the I’s.”
It was the kind of folksy touch that Walz, the Minnesota governor, has brought to the Democratic ticket. A Midwestern teacher, football coach and dad, Walz also been the target of Republican criticism over how he’s portrayed his National Guard service and his personal story.
Organizers dubbed the night “a fight for our freedoms,” with the programming focusing on abortion access and other rights that Democrats want to center in their campaign against Trump. Speaker after speaker argued that their party wants to defend freedoms — especially abortion access and voting rights — while Republicans want to take them away.
Colorado Governor Jared Polis used a prop that has become a staple at the convention, an oversized book meant to represent the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, a sweeping set of goals to shrink government and push it to the right, if Trump wins. Polis even ripped a page from the ceremonial volume and said he was going to keep it and show it to undecided voters.
Florida Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz told the story of a woman in her state, which enacted new abortion restrictions after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, who was forced to carry to term a child with a fatal illness, only to watch the newborn die just hours after birth.
Dana Nessel, Michigan’s attorney general and an openly gay woman, declared, “I got a message for the Republicans and the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court: You can pry this wedding band from my cold, dead, gay hand.”
In another contrast with the GOP, Democrats argued that they are offering “real leadership” on the U.S.-Mexico border, working toward policy solutions rather than simply demonizing immigrants and trying to use the issue as a political motivator for their base. That was part of a larger effort to defuse Trump’s effort to make cracking down on the border a centerpiece of his campaign.
Texas Representative Veronica Escobar, from the border city of El Paso, said, “Forget what you hear on the news, I’m from there” and added, “When it comes to the border, hear me when I say, you know nothing, Donald Trump.”
Representative Bennie Thompson, D-MS, spoke about the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. Thompson chaired a congressional committee that investigated the mob overrunning the Capitol, saying, “They wanted to stop the peaceful transfer of power for the first time in American history. Thank God they failed.”
Clinton implored delegates about the Harris-Walz ticket, “If you vote for this team, if you can get them elected and let them bring in this breath of fresh air, you will be proud of it for the rest of your life.”
“Your children will be proud of it,” he said. “Your grandchildren will be proud of it.”
