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MICHELLE OBAMA DREW cheers from the crowds of the Democratic Convention in Philadelphia last night.
In a 15 minute speech, the first lady proved herself to be the political force she has long been known for, giving an impassioned endorsement for Hillary Clinton that brought the crowd to its feet.
With a determined look and a big smile, the current first lady lauded the former first lady, making the link between the woman who would be America’s first female president and her hopes for her two teenage daughters, Sasha and Malia.
“The hateful language they hear from public figures on TV does not represent the true spirit of this country,” Obama said, in a thinly veiled swipe at Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, who will battle Clinton at the polls on 8 November.
“We know that our words and actions matter not just to our girls, but to children across this country,” said the 52-year-old Obama, a Harvard-educated lawyer.
“This election, and every election, is about who will have the power to shape our children for the next four or eight years of their lives,” she said.
“There is only one person who I trust with that responsibility, only one person who I believe is truly qualified to be president of the United States, and that is our friend, Hillary Clinton,” she said, before outlining the qualities of her husband’s 2008 primary rival.
“Hillary Clinton has never quit on anything in her life.”
Preserving a legacy
Armed with popularity ratings above 60 percent, Michelle Obama knows how to captivate an audience.
“I have seen firsthand that being president doesn’t change who you are –- it reveals who you are,” she said.
In stumping for Clinton, Michelle has set aside any gripes left over from the tense 2008 campaign that saw her husband and this year’s Democratic nominee exchange barbs.
“Because of Hillary Clinton, my daughters — and all our sons and daughters — now take for granted that a woman can be president of the United States,” she said last night to the packed arena in Philadelphia.
Obama said the contest between Trump and Hillary Clinton was “not Democrat or Republican, not left or right”, but “about who will have the power to shape our children for the next four to eight years of their lives”.
Speakers
Bernie Sanders endorsed Clinton in his speech last night, which drew boos from many in the crowd.
There were other well-known celebrity speakers at last night’s convention who are well known for having a keen interest in the politics of their country.
Comedian Sarah Silverman articulated the sense of betrayal that many Democratic Bernie Sanders supporters feel.
“As some of you may know, I support Bernie Sanders and the movement behind him,” Silverman told the cheering audience.
“Not only did Bernie wake us up, he made us understand what is possible and what we deserve. You know, my shrink says we don’t get what we want, we get what we think we deserve, and Bernie showed us that all Americans deserve quality healthcare.
“All it takes to accomplish this, it’s everyone, it’s all of us. Or as a pretty kickass woman once said – it takes a village,” Silverman said.
Another long-time supporter of Sanders, actress Susan Sarandon, also came under the media spotlight last night for looking notably unimpressed with the convention.
Actress Eva Longoria also took to the stage, hitting out at Trump’s rhetoric towards immigrants.
“I’m from a small town in South Texas, and if you know your history, Texas used to be part of Mexico. I’m ninth generation American. My family never crossed a border; the border crossed us.”
She made a clear reference to Trump’s June 2015 statement about Mexican immigrants in which he said they were “bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.”
The Hollywood actress said Trump was insulting American families with his language.
“When Donald Trump calls us criminals and rapists, he’s insulting American families. My father is not a criminal or a rapist, in fact, he’s a United States veteran.”
The convention is not over yet. Tonight, Hillary Clinton will see her husband and former US President Bill Clinton take to the floor to support his wife.
This will be the first major input into his wife’s campaign.
With the convention under a cloud following allegations of the primary campaign being “rigged” by party headquarters, Clinton’s presence will aim to unify the party ahead of a general election campaign.
The former US President has thus far been a peripheral figure in his wife’s election campaign, but is expected to feature heavily in the coming months.
Popular
Clinton left office in 2001 with comparatively stellar approval ratings and is still popular with the American public.
He left the White House with 66% of the American public approving of the job he had done in eight years in charge.
Today, his wife’s favourable/unfavourable numbers are 51%/45%. His wife’s are a 38%-56% split with Americans. Trump’s are 34%-59%.
Shielded
With that in mind, it is surprising that Clinton has been a bit-player in the campaign so far.
However, there are legitimate concerns over him overshadowing Hillary and his profile being used as a attack point for Trump.
Balancing act
Much of the Clinton campaigns reluctance to use Bill stems from his outsize role in her 2008 bid for the Presidency, which left him a slightly diminished figure.
However, his stumping for Barack Obama, as well as his marquee speech at the 2012 DNC re-elevated him in the minds of the party faithful and moderates.
His ongoing contribution, however, will be a fine balancing act for the 2016 version of Hillary’s campaign.
With additional reporting by Christina Finn and AFP
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So some people mocked something they opposed. And this is news how exactly?
@Norvik_1602:
Irish feminists like reading this sort of stuff. Don’t ask me why…but they do.
@Norvik_1602: you 100% would have loved those drawings if you’d been around back then
@Norvik_1602: it’s part of the Irish female history and how we got the vote. It’s gas that all the usual mocking that goes around women who just want equal rights were around then as they are now. Had they been in existence now they would have been called feminazies, etc to make them sound like Nazis therefore demean their plight. Who knew some men were so fragile even back then? Very interesting.
@Conor Paddington: They fought for middle class women only.
They had contempt for the lower orders.
The precise criticism levelled today.
“Markievicz died at the age of 59 on 15 July 1927, of complications related to appendicitis. She had given away the last of her wealth, and died in a public ward “among the poor where she wanted to be”.
Well, I’ll be. An article about men being upset over women getting votes and a couple of dudes, 100 years later, all over it telling us why it was a bad idea and that such feminism is harmful.
The irony is delicious.
@James Doyle: *ironing
They appear to have fought for basic rights (that many of the opposit sex took for granted) to be given to them by the state.
For that they were lampooned and ridiculed by people who had vested interests in things staying the way they were and who were ably abetted by partisan agenda driven publications that saw their request for institutional equality as a distraction from their own main agenda and so portrayed it as something that right thinking women in general didn’t even want.
Fair dues to them for persisting and winning out against the stacked odds.
It’s probably an inspiration to those who currently find themselves in a similar position in Ireland today. Well worth seeing.
@Nydon: They fought exclusively for middle class women’s rights.
They had contempt for the lower orders.
A sentiment echoed today.
@Battaz: You know this how? Did you ever speak to someone with the lived experience? My grandmother lived with me until her death in 1982. She was hugely involved in all the political arenas from 1912 until my father was born in 1923. She campaigned for voting rights for all women and was disgusted that it was only given to married women or women who had property and were over the age of 30. This meant that she was unable to vote until the 1924 elections and she never missed voting in an election after that.
Why is the word “suffragette” misspelled in the headline and most of the article?
@Ricardo Shillyshally: they’re two somewhat distinct groups, though obviously closely related. The Suffragists were the first wave of activists and were typically more peaceful. The Suffragettes came later and were and were more aggressive/militant in their methods. Both words are correct.
You could also do a piece on how female Irish Unionists who supported votes for women have been written out of our nationalists only please history books.
Suffragettes actually put back and damaged the cause of votes for women. It came about despite them, not because of them.
@Norvik_1602: well there’s a rewriting of history
@Norvik_1602: so wait! This wasn’t good enough to be news according to you yet you’ve commented twice and tried to change the narrative? Typical!
@Norvik_1602: your correct. First world war need for industrial workers was the game changer. Woman proved themselves as equals
@Deborah Behan: Tsk, Tsk, trying to silence male voices has gotta run contrary to your usual ‘diversity’ agenda.
Stop being so closed off from the world.
Censorship is disturbing.
@Battaz: how is replying trying to silence someone or even censor them?
Seriously? I don’t think that’s how it happened. Throughout history, most women have always worked. I had the impression that the Industrial revolution and various plagues and famines caused people to gravitate towards paid work instead. Later, the propaganda in English-speaking countries ran something like this: “The conscripted men are back in town, time to step down and give up your jobs to all the unemployed ex-soldiers.” Naturally no one wanted to resign and live on air. Then it became the law that married women at least had to resign and become dependants. Such a law was not made with the consent of working women, was it? No wonder they wanted a vote.
What the feminists love to leave out of the conversation is that most working class men didn’t have the vote either. Usually only property owners or higher professionals could vote. The process of universal suffrage was a gradual one (and it had to be gradual to match the slow educating of the wider population, remember most people couldn’t read or write), and it wasn’t some conspiracy against women.
@Fred Jonsen: Well it was probably a conspiracy against women in the higher classes to be fair Fred.
@Daniel Donovan:
Absolutely my heart bleeds for those upper class women but the point is the correct dimension to analyse voting history is class and education, not gender.
@Fred Jonsen: Correct. The thousands of men who were killed and maimed fighting for their country’s freedom in the First World war did not have a vote as they did not own property. Many of them lived in army barracks. Women at that time may not have had the vote but they did not have the obligation to go to the trenches to sacrifice life and limb. Men, most of whom did not have the vote either, did that for them and indeed the suffragettes were at the forefront of the White Feather movement who publicly shamed pacifist men who refused to go to war. Equal rights without equal obligations – a core value of the feminist movement even to this day.
Anyone else sick of hearing about this rubbish. The World Cup is on it’s all anyone cares about.
@6ljJQRRU: Yes, we are sick of hearing about the World Cup…
@6ljJQRRU: F off and watch the World Cup then. No one has a gun to your head! Oh you’d prefer to moan on an article about women? As you were.
Are you suggesting that women don’t, or shouldn’t have an interest in football?
What a sexist perspective you hold.
@JamesMcCarthy did nobody tell you that Ireland didn’t make it to the World Cup James
@Teresa Scanlon: don’t you know the World Cup is an elaborate feminist plot to get the guys looking at the bouncy ball instead of up skirting.
I’m sure many did and many didn’t. Identity politics is a layered matrix with horizontal socio-economic layers existing within every vertical identity. I suspect that just like today the lower layers were expected to remain in the background only to be called on if sheer numbers were required to bolster the aims of the vertical.
My point is more to do with the determination of any group to remove an institutionalized inequality where laws bestow advantage on one group above another. Institutionalized inequality is still prevelent in Irish society today.
The thousands of men who were killed and maimed fighting for their country’s freedom in the First World war did not have a vote as they did not own property. Many of them lived in army barracks. Women at that time may not have had the vote but they did not have the obligation to go to the trenches to sacrifice life and limb. Men, most of whom did not have the vote either, did that for them and indeed the suffragettes were at the forefront of the White Feather movement who publicly shamed pacifist men who refused to go to war. Equal rights without equal obligations – a core value of the feminist movement even to this day.
The subjugation of Women…..still happening today, all over the World.
Suffragists were decent legitimate campaigners for equality. Suffragettes were sexist, frustrated, terrorist trolls who who did a lot of damage to more than only the Suffragist’s campaign.
have your say