Hillary Clinton didn’t spend a lot of time talking to die-hard Donald Trump supporters during her speech to close the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia on Thursday night. There’s little chance she can win them over between now and November, and she knows it. But she promised to be their president, too, should she be elected. She promised to work to improve their lives.
To paraphrase a Trumpism: Believe her.
In perhaps the most human moment of the entire speech, Clinton said: “The truth is, through all these years of public service, the ‘service’ part has always come easier to me than the ‘public’ part. I get it that some people just don’t know what to make of me.”
She then spent the rest of her time on stage explaining what drives her, and it’s not the kind of stuff that goes viral on social media or gets dissected on Sunday morning political roundtables.
Clinton wants to rebuild America’s infrastructure, and in the process “pass the biggest investment in new, good-paying jobs since World War II.”
She wants to work with Bernie Sanders “to make college tuition free for the middle class and debt-free for all.”
She wants to make it easier for those who dream of opening a small business to get credit, and to invest in job training so anyone who wants a good job can get one.
And on and on. Her speech was full of dreams and aspirations for the next phase of American life. But unlike her opponent, Clinton is grounded in reality.
If every voter had the chance to sit down one-on-one with Clinton and Trump to ask them how they would accomplish all they promise, they would hear Clinton speak with intelligence and authority. If Trump has that ability, he has kept it hidden. Not once during his campaign has he spoken about any issue with anything resembling deep understanding. Instead, he promises to surround himself with smart people. What he doesn’t get is that a president must possess the wisdom to know what advice is in the nation’s best interest and what advice could cost American lives and livelihoods.
Unlike most voters, we had an opportunity to sit down with Clinton to talk about policy, and her depth of knowledge on every single issue we covered was astounding.
We also sat down with Jeb Bush, and he’s the same way. He is much more comfortable rolling up his sleeves and diving into health care or tax policy than trying to convert complicated ideas into campaign-friendly soundbites and catch phrases. And Lindsey Graham, too. Our discussion with him focused almost exclusively on ISIS and the upheaval in the Middle East. When Trump says he knows more about ISIS than the generals, it’s laughable; if Graham said it, which he never would, it would be a difficult claim to disprove. And then there’s John Kasich. Ask him about Ohio’s economy, and his eyes light up. He doesn’t have much of an appetite for Republican red meat – he prefers to discuss job creation and balanced budgets.
All three can run policy circles around Trump, but they weren’t very good at insults, tweets and slogans short enough to fit on the front of a baseball hat, so they never made it to the convention stage. For whatever reason, Republican voters wanted a simple candidate this time around and that’s what they have.
We just can’t understand how a Republican who supported Bush, or Kasich, or Graham can vote for Trump when they have a kindred spirit in Clinton. We don’t understand how a Republican who supported George H.W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon or Dwight Eisenhower – or George W. Bush, for that matter – can vote for Trump.
Beyond party affiliation, Trump has little in common with any past president. All the nation’s great political leaders have been policy people – just like Clinton. And despite what Trump would have you believe, that’s worked out pretty well for America.