Hillary Clinton makes history with presidential nomination

The 42nd President delivered a speech to Democratic delegates in Philadelphia that was heavy on biography and the early years of their romance and relationship, pitching Hillary Clinton as someone who has consistently worked for the betterment of others.

The final ten to twelve minutes of the speech was devoted to Hillary’s own career in politics, first as a Senator and later as Secretary of State.

And at a time when intra-party tensions are high and she is seen as insufficiently revolutionary for numerous Democrats’ most progressive members, Bill Clinton pitched his wife as the “best darn change-maker I have ever known”. How many for Hillary Clinton.

“This is a really important point for you to take out of this convention: if you believe in making change from the bottom up, if you believe in measuring change by how many peoples’ lives are better…she’s been around a long time, she sure has, and she’s sure been worth every single year she’s put into making people’s lives better”, the former president added.

If Hillary Clinton lands the top job, putting Bill Clinton in an undefined advisory role, Democrats gathered for the convention did not seem anxious about potential turf battles.

Law-abiding if undocumented immigrants who want to become citizens should “choose immigration reform over somebody who wants to send you back”, Clinton said.

Clinton will get a shot of independent credibility from former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who will denounce Trump and make his case for Clinton. She is also dogged by low public trust that has most recently been fueled by her use of a private email server during her tenure as Secretary of State. While aides have said he will not get a Cabinet post or a seat in the Situation Room should his wife win, Clinton has made clear that her closest adviser will remain involved with her administration, saying he’d likely have a role in managing the nation’s economy.

Both men have already publicly spoken about Clinton and supported her campaign, and Obama held a joint campaign appearance with Clinton in North Carolina earlier this month. In fact, a sizable bloc of the Democratic delegation in Philadelphia walked out of the convention soon after she was announced as the party’s nominee.

He said she had been by his side through “good times and bad, joy and heartbreak”. After a seven-hour marathon session of the convention, the audience had been somewhat sleepy before Clinton’s speech. “In the spring of 1971, I met a girl”, he said.

Clinton now heads into the general election as the nominee of a splintered party that she will have to work to unify.

It wasn’t that Bill Clinton had to introduce Hillary Clinton, exactly.

Former presidents often vouch for their potential successors, but never before has that candidate also been a spouse. Clinton’s landmark achievement saturated the roll call with emotion and symbols of women’s long struggle to break through political barriers. “Just ask the people who fought in the civil rights movement, the women’s rights movement, the labor movement”.

Not all of Sanders supporters were as conciliatory.

Trump had not responded to the speech as of 11 p.m., but he wrote on Twitter beforehand: “No matter what Bill Clinton says and no matter how well he says it, the phony media will exclaim it to be incredible”. “She’s a change maker, that’s what she does”, Clinton said.

Hillary Clinton’s political ambitions were kept on ice until the end of Bill Clinton’s second term, when she announced she would run for an open Senate seat in NY.