Editorial: Nomination in hand, Hillary Clinton makes a sharp case against Donald Trump

Hillary Clinton had the privilege Thursday night of doing something no other woman has ever done: accept a major party’s nomination for president. But her closing-night keynote at the Democratic National Convention was less a celebration of that milestone than a bid to unify her party and blunt the populist appeal of Republican nominee Donald Trump.

To do so, she needed to portray herself as the legitimate heir of the increasingly popular President Obama while signaling that she would also satisfy the appetite of many voters for change. She had to capitalize on the optimism about America that animated the convention, while reassuring voters who are anxious about a sluggish economic recovery and alarmed about crime and terrorism. She had to reach out to supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders, many of whom still aren’t reconciled to her nomination And, finally, she had to go beyond portraying Trump as unfit to explain why she should be trusted with the nation’s highest office.

The sprawling speech Clinton delivered Thursday evening achieved most of these objectives. She praised Obama for saving the nation from the “worst economic crisis of our lifetimes” and saluted “real progress” in job creation and the expansion of health insurance. But then she pivoted to an admission that “none of us can be satisfied with the status quo” and pledged to propose to Congress “the biggest investment in new, good-paying jobs since World War II” to be paid for by taxes on the “super-rich” (one of many nods to Sanders supporters). Addressing working-class voters attracted to Trump, she said: “Some of you are frustrated — even furious. And you know what? You’re right.”

She rejected Trump’s description of a nation coming apart at the seams — she called it “Midnight in America,” a sharp contrast to the more hopeful and optimistic vision Democrats had laid out at their agenda— but admitted that “powerful forces are threatening to pull us apart.” The solution, she argued, wasn’t rule by a would-be president who claims that “I alone can fix it” but concerted action and political compromise. “Our Founders,” Clinton said, “embraced the enduring truth that we are stronger together.”

Perhaps not surprisingly, the strongest passages in Clinton’s speech were often acid denunciations of her Republican opponent. Referring to Trump’s acceptance speech, she said: “He spoke for 70-odd minutes — and I do mean odd. And he offered zero solutions.” She was especially effective in skewering Trump on foreign policy and defense. Noting that Trump had said he knew more about Islamic State than the generals do, Clinton said: “No, Donald, you don’t.”

Clinton devoted much of the speech to a self-reintroduction. She acknowledged that, despite her decades in public life, “some people just don’t know what to make of me.” She explained that her career as a children’s advocate and public official reflected the philosophy that “to drive real progress, you have to change both hearts and laws; you need both understanding and action.” She boasted that “I sweat the details of policy — whether we’re talking about the exact level of lead in the drinking water in Flint, Michigan, the number of mental health facilities in Iowa, or the cost of your prescription drugs.” That’s a not-so-subtle dig at Trump, but also a nod to one of her real strengths as a candidate: a mastery of the intricacies, which is a useful skill when looking for common ground or new approaches to divisive issues.

The problem is that some of the voters who have doubts about Clinton don’t question her intelligence or industry; they have questions about her honesty and trustworthiness, some arising from her misjudgments (such as her use of a private email server as secretary of state) and some the figment of Republican propaganda.

Clinton approached that issue Thursday night indirectly, as other speakers throughout the week have done: by emphasizing her tenacity on behalf of Americans who needed help and the results she’s gotten for them, from disabled and minority children denied an equal education to first responders on 9/11 damaged by toxic fumes. Just as important, she raised doubts about Trump that should linger long in the minds of anyone who heard her words. As Clinton put it, “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”

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