Hillary Clinton on Thursday promised economic opportunity for all, national unity and tolerance, and rejected Donald Trump’s dark vision of America as she capped off a four-day convention in Philadelphia.
Pledging to be a president for “all Americans,” the former secretary of state received thunderous cheers from thousands of delegates in the Democratic National Convention where she called for unity in a nation at a “state of reckoning.”
Clinton repeated the convention’s theme of “stronger together,” declaring that her lifelong goal has been to ensure that Americans can use their talent and ambition to strengthen the nation.
“And so it is with humility, determination, and boundless confidence in America’s promise, that I accept your nomination for president of the United States,” she said, as her president husband Bill and their daughter Chelsea looked on.
While she soaked in the historic nature of her accomplishment, the 68-year-old Clinton spent much of the biggest speech of her career taking aim at her Republican opponent, slamming him as a fear-monger with no policy credibility.
In an hour-long address, she laid out an optimistic plan to improve the U.S. economy, stressing that “my primary mission as president will be to create more opportunity and more good jobs with rising wages.”
Her efforts will focus particularly on places “that for too long have been left out and left behind, from our inner cities to our small towns, Indian Country to Coal Country,” she said.
And in a bold admission for a candidate seeking to build on President Barak Obama’s policies, she said the economy “is not yet working the way it should.”
After a bruising primary campaign against Bernie Sanders, and as she savaged Trump, Clinton extended an olive branch of sorts to her skeptics and critics.
“I will carry all of your voices and stories with me to the White House,” she said.
“I will be a president for Democrats, Republicans, and independents,” she added. “For the struggling, the striving and the successful. For those who vote for me and those who don’t. For all Americans.”
Clinton also rejected much of the Trump rhetoric that has been a constant on the trail, while mocking him as a thin-skinned candidate who “loses his cool” at the slightest provocation.
“Imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis,” she said. “A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”
Clinton’s final day of the Democratic National Convention featured speeches from a former member of President Ronald Reagan’s administration and a U.S. Chamber of Commerce official who is heading a GOP group supporting Clinton, part of an expanded outreach to Republican voters and donors.
Throughout the convention, Democrats tried to convey the stakes of the election not only to Sanders backers but Republicans concerned about Trump’s bombastic tone and foreign policy positions.