DNC

If I wore a hat on this huge Hillary-loathing head of mine, here’s what I’d do.

I’d tip my hat to Hillary Rodham Clinton and say these words:

“Mrs. Clinton, you have True Grit.”

Of course she’s intelligent, supremely patient, calculating, nobody’s fool. But she doesn’t quit, and it’s the grit that got her here, and because of it, she is the first woman to be nominated for president by a major party.

Hillary Clinton has made history. So acknowledge it and take a moment to think of all the women who’ve dreamed that someday this would happen, all the women born in a time when “it’s a man’s world” was a given in America.

And because of her determination, a woman can stand in Philadelphia and accept the nomination for the most powerful office in the world.

No, hell hasn’t frozen over. I know who Hillary Clinton is and what she’s done, and what she is capable of doing if she gets her hands on the Supreme Court and the presidency.

But today is her day, and I’ll leave that other stuff for another time.

Don’t worry. I haven’t gone mad. Politicians create worlds in which their side is good and the other is pure evil, but I happen to know that politics is not some magical land of Narnia from those C.S. Lewis stories. So I won’t be sitting in Hillary’s lap to be fed Turkish delights.

Establishment Republicans are a different story. Many are eager to sit in her lap. She’s their war hawk now and she’s their protection against anti-establishment Republican Donald Trump.

Conservatives won’t curry her favor; neither will the committed Bernie Bros or those blue-collar workers who were marginalized by the Obama party and pitied by the president as bitter clingers holding fast to their guns and Christianity.

But open your eyes. All I’m suggesting is that if you adore her for her gender alone or loathe her for her history with the truth, step outside your own tribal politics and behold the woman.

She’s remarkable.

Given what she’s gone through over the years, what she’s endured, what she suffered, a tip of the hat isn’t only expected, it’s required, and today it is offered with admiration.

Hillary Clinton is no longer the young mom with the headband, laughing about the “buy one, get one free” presidency of her husband. She’s older now, much older, and the scars of her life with him show in that hard smile of hers.

She’s earned that smile, hasn’t she?

The Goldwater Girl from Park Ridge made choices and set goals.

Ambition compelled her, and she was strengthened by challenges and betrayal, by her own sins. And now she’s on the cusp of the presidency.

So why not acknowledge this amazing woman and look for what’s best in her?

At least see the courage there. See what inspires adoration in her fans and fear in her enemies.

It all starts with Hillary grit.

As a newlywed, she kept her own name, and then was forced to take Bill Clinton’s name to help him regain the governorship of Arkansas.

She made that deal with the slinky devil who once shared her bed, and it caused her humiliation, but that was the price for the chance to stand in Philadelphia years later.

Many women wouldn’t have made that deal with Bill Clinton. Many women would have called a divorce lawyer and kept their honor.

Some women would have thought about taking a bat or a ball peen hammer into the bedroom some night, to wait for the snoring to begin.

And not many would put together a Bimbo Eruption Squad to snuff out Bill’s many sexcapades and keep his path to power clear.

But Hillary did.

She didn’t walk away because she had a plan. And she was disciplined enough to stick to that plan. She wanted something big out of the political life. And she’s paid for it.

That grit showed again just when she was to accept her due in the 2008 presidential campaign and take the party’s nomination. She was once again humiliated.

There was that new kid, the pretty and callow backbencher from the Illinois legislature who became king of the world.

Barack Obama didn’t know much, he was woefully inexperienced, but he played the role written for him, that of political messiah, of a young knight drawing the sword from the stone. The media bought it.

And in the 2008 Democratic primaries, Team Obama played the race card and broke her down.

Imagine the anger in her and the shame that she didn’t foresee it and stop it. She’d played the gender card. He played the race card. Democratic Party politics are identity politics, and she lost.

But she wasn’t defeated, and then President Obama wisely decided to keep her close. He offered her the post of secretary of state.

It was as if he held out his hand for her to kiss. It must have been difficult to take that hand, but she took it and swore fealty, and why?

She knew what she wanted. That takes true grit. And she’s got it. And now she’s the Democratic nominee for president of the United States.

♦ Culled from the Chicago Tribune. Contact John Kass: jskass@chicagotribune.com (Twitter @John_Kass)

la-na-2016-democratic-national-convention-in-p-198 — Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton stands with her husband former President Bill Clinton on stage with Vice President nominee Tim Kaine and his wife Anne Holton at the end of the fourth day of the Democratic National Convention.

PHILADELPHIA — Hillary Clinton, the first woman to lead a major American political party’s presidential ticket, accepted the Democratic nomination Thursday night with an appeal for a more collaborative and unified nation in the face of domestic divisiveness and global uncertainty.

And she described her opponent, Republican nominee Donald Trump, as a self-absorbed and unstable leader antithetical to America’s need for cool-headed and compassionate leadership.

“We have to decide whether we’re going to work together so we can all rise together,” she said in perhaps the most closely-watched speech of her quarter-decade in the public eye.

Clinton’s call for cooperation represented a direct repudiation of Trump’s assertion in his acceptance speech last week that “I alone can fix it.”

“Americans don’t say: ‘I alone can fix it,'” Clinton said to cheers from the crowd at Wells Fargo Center. “We say: ‘We’ll fix it together.'”

Describing a country “at a moment of reckoning,” Clinton nodded to some of the same problems that peppered the remarks of speakers at last week’s Republican National Convention in Cleveland: the threat of terrorism, the stagnation of wages for many Americans, and the systemic violence that plagues many communities nationwide.

But Clinton, unlike her GOP foes, cited greater inclusion and tolerance as the antidotes to the nation’s ills.

Saying that Trump has taken his party “from ‘Morning in America’ to ‘Midnight in America,'” she said the Republican nominee “wants us to fear the future and fear each other.”

I will be a President for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. For the struggling, the striving and the successful. For those who vote for me and those who don't. For all Americans. — I will be a President for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents. For the struggling, the striving and the successful. For those who vote for me and those who don’t. For all Americans.

“In the end, it comes down to what Donald Trump doesn’t get: that America is great – because America is good,” she said.

At times echoing President Barack Obama’s optimistic vision of the future in his address Wednesday night, Clinton painted a hopeful picture of American resolve, tolerance and progress.

Referencing the convention’s theme, “Stronger Together,” Clinton urged recognition of the nation’s shared values in a message aimed not just at liberal Democrats still smarting from the defeat of Bernie Sanders, but at the nation as a whole.

Early in her remarks, Clinton directly addressed backers of the Vermont senator, telling his fans “I want you to know, I’ve heard you. Your cause is our cause.”

Clinton’s address was interrupted periodically by Sanders supporters in the arena who yelled “No more war!” Her fans tried to drown out the hecklers with chants of “Hillary!”

The former senator and first lady appeared to acknowledge the perception of many voters that she is too guarded or artificial in her public appearances.

Hillary and Chelsea Clinton aren't your typical mother-daughter duo. Clinton proved that she's her mom's biggest cheerleader when she introduced the presidential hopeful with a touching speech at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on Thursday evening. — Hillary and Chelsea Clinton aren’t your typical mother-daughter duo. Clinton proved that she’s her mom’s biggest cheerleader when she introduced the presidential hopeful with a touching speech at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on Thursday evening.

“The truth is, through all these years of public service, the “service” part has always come easier to me than the ‘public’ part,” she said. “I get it that some people just don’t know what to make of me.”

And she made a direct appeal to Republicans and independents wary of Trump’s fitness to serve as the commander in chief.

“He loses his cool at the slightest provocation,” she said of Trump. “Imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis. A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”

“America’s strength doesn’t come from lashing out. Strength relies on smarts, judgment, cool resolve, and the precise and strategic application of power,” she added. “That’s the kind of Commander-in-Chief I pledge to be.”

Speaking in Iowa before Clinton’s remarks, Trump blasted Democrats as describing a naive vision of a world that doesn’t exist.

Clinton’s journey to the presidential nomination began over nine years ago, when she announced her first White House run with the declaration “I’m in, and I’m in to win.” After her unsuccessful and bitter primary run against then-Sen. Barack Obama, she served as his secretary of state, enjoying for a time some of the highest approval ratings of her long career in the public spotlight.

But lingering questions over her use of a private email server during her time at the State Department — compiled with voters’ suspicions about the Clinton administration scandals of the 1990s — erased much of that warmth for the former first lady, leaving Clinton with historically poor favorability among voters.

At last week’s Republican National Convention in Cleveland, loathing for Clinton was raw, with delegates chanting “Lock her up!” and even one prominent speaker, Dr. Ben Carson, drawing a parallel between Clinton and Lucifer.

But in November she will face the one political candidate viewed even more negatively than she is by the American electorate: GOP nominee Donald Trump.

♦ Culled from NBC News | by Carrie Dann

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