(I'm in Ireland, so blogger will be erratic but consistent. Yeah, you heard me.)
Here is what former president Bill Clinton did last night. Without even saying his name, he shrunk Donald Trump to a size where he could be drowned in a tub. By both humanizing and superhumanizing Hillary Clinton, he wanted the nation to ask, simply, "What the fuck has the other guy done? Financed a few buildings and hosted a game show and said stupid shit?"
You can pretty much bet that Trump couldn't find Dothan, Alabama on a map with a giant arrow pointing at it and some assistant saying, "Sir, that's it, right there, where the arrow is pointing." But Hillary Clinton went there in the early 1970s, to one of the most racist places in the country, and went undercover to discover if schools were still segregated. People got killed for that kind of shit. Bill could have started his speech by saying, "Donald Trump isn't fit to clean the toilet the Secret Service uses at the White House."
But he didn't. Instead, he showed us Hillary Clinton as an entire person, including an object of desire, of his desire. How amazing is that? That was a huge "fuck you" to everyone who questions their marriage, who says that Hillary is a lesbian or too ugly to fuck or whatever bullshit the sexist right vomits out about her. Rachel Maddow found that part "creepy," and others commented, smugly, that Bill didn't bring up cheating on Hillary. Well, Melania didn't discuss how she was Donald Trump's fuck toy while he was still married to Marla Maples.
More clearly than anyone else, Bill described a Hillary who embodies the experiences of women, in terms you don't normally see with politicians. When he said, "Hillary's water broke and off we went to the hospital," he brought Hillary down to earth, a mortal, a fully-rounded individual who has had the life of a woman.
Bodies were the theme of the evening. The damaged body, in the 9/11 responders speaking about the illnesses they or their loved ones suffered, and the murdered black body, as the Mothers of the Movement showed that the meaning of Black Lives Matter isn't an assertion of superiority but of equal worth, all these bodies harmed by an America whose continuing greatness is stymied by the ignorant and the hateful. And not once did they specifically place blame at the feet of those who have harmed them. They merely said that there needs to be healing. Who has a better chance of doing that?
You can bet that if a Democrat had been in office on 9/11, every Republican convention since them would have been filled with speakers blaming that Democrat for everything bad in the world.
Hillary Clinton, in Bill's telling, is also a goddamned superhero. She has done work all over the nation, from Alaska (when is the last time you heard of a candidate having worked in Alaska?) to the Deep South. And then she expanded her range to the rest of the world. You might not agree with everything she's done. I sure don't. But she has walked so many walks that you have to honor her for deciding to not walk away.
Meanwhile, the Bernie Sanders supporters decided that they were no longer Sanders supporters because, if they were, they would be listening to him and voting for Hillary Clinton instead of trying to blow shit up at the convention. The roll call is over. Clinton is the nominee. You can keep yelling that the nomination was stolen (something Sanders says it wasn't). You can yell that the DNC leak shows bias (no shit, but so?). But there is nothing more you can do but yell. You can't change this. You can either accept it, be thrilled at the historic moment that has occurred, and move on. Or you can wallow in your anger and throw your vote away.
It's a free country. For now.
