Hillary Clinton still hard to define despite her many roles

In an unmistakable jab at Mr. Trump, Ms. Clinton says she prefers tearing down barriers to building walls.

More than a half-century later, and after much hard work, much determination, and most of all, many, many obstacles – some undeniably of her own making – Clinton is no closer to actual space travel.

While Clinton has spent much of her campaign highlighting her global experience, some polls show active duty troops backing Trump over Clinton by more than a 2-to-1 margin.

Bill Clinton – the former US president turned candidate spouse -will be the keynote speaker at tonight’s Democratic National Convention. She spoke in the second-person plural then and she is living in the second-person plural now.

Principals in the most significant American marriage since Eleanor and Franklin Roosevelt, perhaps since Abigail and John Adams, the Clintons have long shared a creed and a confetti-speckled destiny.

That gets a knowing laugh from Melanne Verveer, Clinton’s chief of staff from her first lady years.

But also: Feminist heroine. “And she won’t reinstate the Glass-Steagall Act, tax financial transactions or break up the biggest banks at this stage”.

After a long battle with U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders, Clinton has more than enough delegates needed to win the vote and be the standard bearer for the party against Republican nominee Donald Trump at the November 8 election.

There have been polarizing figures in politics before, but it’s hard to imagine any have been called as many wildly divergent things as Hillary Clinton.

The powerful, new, documentary-film version of Peter Schweizer’s bombshell, New York Times-bestselling book on the massive corruption, cronyism and hypocrisy of Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation, Clinton Cash: The Untold Story of How and Why Foreign Governments and Businesses Helped Make Bill and Hillary Rich, has premiered on YouTube for selectively timed viewings.

“Saturday Night Live” has been turning out Hillarys for some 25 years. But there’s been one constant: Ambition.

Schroeder thinks not. “I say to people, ‘What more do you want to know?'” the former congresswoman says. “But if a woman is ambitious, it’s not an attribute, it’s a negative, a pejorative”.

Hillary Rodham was already blazing a trail in 1969, the first student chosen to address a Wellesley commencement. She delighted many classmates when she delivered an on-the-spot rebuke to the previous speaker, a US senator whose comments the grads found condescending to women.

This campaign comes in an age when the Democrats have virtually abandoned the free trade Mr. Clinton espoused, when their constituent groups are rethinking his views on crime and welfare, when they are re-examining the Wall Street ties that in the 1990s were refreshing symbols of a new approach.

A key moment in Clinton’s journey came in 1995, with her famous Beijing declaration: “Human rights are women’s rights, and women’s rights are human rights”.

“I am not a natural politician, in case you haven’t noticed”, Clinton offered recently.

Nancy Herron, who didn’t really know Clinton at school, reconnected with her decades later at a reunion, where Herron performed a standup routine on what it’s like being in the shadows of such a famous classmate. “I have no doubt that she is the leader we need at this time to keep our country safe”. What’s more, Trump has reminded the public he isn’t just referring to Bill Clinton’s affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, but other allegations against the former president as well, including rape.

“You could call it denial”, says Sheehy, author of “Hillary’s Choice”.

REBECCA TRAISTER: She became a young adult in this era in which the great social movements of the 20th century were totally reshaping the nation, the civil rights movement, the women’s movement, the gay rights movement.

The issue has never been more important.

What the email mess shows, Bernstein says, is “this fierce desire for privacy and secrecy that seems to cast a larger and larger shadow over who she really is”.

Hoping to assuage some of those concerns, Clinton’s campaign has highlighted former military officials who’ve endorsed her in recent weeks. There’s that question again.

Herron feels that we don’t subject male candidates to the same scrutiny. “Let her be who she is”.