The Clintons don’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon. Now they’re getting in the way of their own candidate.
Because Hillary Clinton hit Kamala Harris with a 2024 curveball she never saw coming.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton took the stage at the Democratic National Convention on Monday, recycling her tired 2016 narrative and putting gender front and center as if it’s the only card she has left to play.
Despite the roughly 1.5-minute standing ovation—cheers that oddly seemed louder than those for Vice President Kamala Harris earlier in the evening—Clinton, 76, wasted no time in paying homage to President Biden, sparking chants of “Thank you, Joe.”
MASSIVE and lengthy standing ovation for Hilary Clinton tonight at #DNC night 1. pic.twitter.com/WaOE6YuHtp
— Tony Morrison (@THETonyMorrison) August 20, 2024
“Thank you, Joe Biden, for your lifetime of service and leadership. Now we are a new chapter,” Clinton began, as if trying to tie her political legacy to Biden’s fading star.
She then launched into a history lesson, referencing past women who ran for office, like Shirley Chisholm and Geraldine Ferraro, before bringing the conversation right back to herself.
“If we can do this, we can do anything,” Clinton said, before predictably diving into memories of her failed 2016 presidential campaign.
“And then there was 2016, when it was the honor of my life to accept our party’s nomination,” Clinton recalled, clinging to the past.
“Nearly 66 million Americans voted for a future where there are no ceilings on our dreams.”
Her speech took on a self-congratulatory tone as she reminisced about the women’s march and the political activism that followed Trump’s victory.
“I wish my mother and Kamala’s mother could see us,” Clinton added, trying to tug at the heartstrings. “They would say, keep going.”
Clinton went on to tout Harris as the candidate who would “restore abortion rights nationwide” and, in a laughable attempt to boost Harris’s image, praised her record as California’s attorney general.
“As a prosecutor, Kamala locked up murderers and drug traffickers,” Clinton noted, glossing over the controversies that have dogged Harris’s career.
But it wouldn’t be a Hillary Clinton speech without taking some swipes at Donald Trump.
“Donald Trump fell asleep at his own trial. And when he woke up, he made his own kind of history.
The first person to run for president with 34 felony convictions,” Clinton quipped, setting off a round of “Lock him up” chants from the crowd—a phrase that must have felt like déjà vu for her.
Clinton smiled and nodded, apparently enjoying the irony of the situation.
She then returned to her well-worn theme of breaking the glass ceiling, declaring, “We put a lot of cracks in the highest, hardest glass ceiling. And tonight, we are so close to breaking through once and for all.”
It was a speech that felt more like a rehash of old grievances than a vision for the future, showing that Clinton is still fixated on the past rather than offering anything new.
Stay tuned to the DC Daily Journal.
