Bill Clinton says Hillary is ‘the best darn changemaker’
His speech lasted an epic 42 minutes
Tiana Lowe
PHILADELPHIA — In a meandering 42 minutes, Former President Bill Clinton closed out the second day of the Democratic National Convention, surpassing his infamous 33 minute speech from the 1988 DNC, but not quite reaching the whopping 48 minute speech from his 2012 address.
“She’s a changemaker,” Bill told the audience, placated after the departure of the Bernie coalition. “That’s what she does.”
In an election riddled with laments of the former Secretary of State and present Democratic presidential nominee Hillary’s inauthenticity, Bill maximized his candid appeal to paint a picture of Hillary as an accidental politician, one capable of assuaging reluctant Republican and independents fears by advocating for “public service by private citizens”.
Bill’s rhetoric was littered with just enough “Oh Bill!” missteps, such as referring to Hillary’s father as a “crusty conservative,” to ring as candid without coming across with the senility as he did earlier this year when harshly railing against Black Lives Matter. Although the speech wandered at times too long and at times too aimlessly, Bill always circled back to a humanization of Hillary as a girl he met in the spring of 1971.
“Momentarily, whether you believe it not, I was speechless,” Bill told the audience, delivering the performative wink and a nod needed to re-establish his role as the bumbling but self-aware First Gentleman and second fiddle. Speechless he may claim, however, he spoke of decades beyond. Bill only recounted their marriage at 14 minutes in and Chelsea, tonight seated next to Senator Elizabeth Warren, attending college 27 minutes into his speech.
From First Lady of Arkansas to the US to Senator to Secretary, Bill recounted an objectively steep career while challenging its historiography.
“How does this square with the things you heard at the Republican Convention?” he asked. “One is real, the other is made up.”
“The real one has done more public change making before she was 30 than some politicians do in their entire lifetimes,” said Bill.