}

Wednesday, July 27, 2016

Hillary Clinton’s video appearance at the Democratic Convention


The video above is a recording of live coverage of the Democratic National Convention today. At the time, I was struck by the visual imagery of the presidents, man after man, until glass “breaks” and Hillary Clinton appeared. It was striking imagery and very well done.

I’ve studied political messaging, formally and informally, for decades. While much can be horrible, there’s some that’s outstanding, and this one of them. The historic nature of Hillary’s nomination was palpable, and the visual of the glass breaking, pieces “falling” to the screens below, and revealing a beaming Hillary Clinton was precisely on-message, and very well done.

I felt very good watching all this live (I was streaming C-SPAN’s coverage today so I didn’t have to deal with the insipid and annoying pundits on CNN), and throught the clear joy in supporters’ faces was pretty contagious.

Then, this evening, I checked Facebook, and saw a friend post a status celebrating the history. He’s a white gay man, and noted that the opposition he’d seen on Facebook was from white heterosexual men, who, arguably, have nothing personal to lose if Donald wins. However, he also said several women he knew were frightened to express their happiness because of the shit they’d get from others—again, mostly white men.

We must do better. I get that some people, for whatever reason, will never support Hillary Clinton. But aggressively telling someone how “wrong” they are for supporting her will NOT change anyone’s mind! If only we could have civil political discussions based entirely on verifiable facts and the opinions we form arising from those facts. That could happen someday, maybe, but certainly not this year.

Despite all that, and despite the fact that some people do hate Hillary Clinton, we now have “the biggest crack in that glass ceiling yet”. Hillary accomplished that, and that will benefit us all.

4 comments:

Jason Peaco said...

I didn't see it live.



It was truly amazing. And the video was first rate.



I agree about trying to bring the die hard Bernie supporters along will be tough. But I grow weary of their same tired line of there's no difference between Hilary and the Donald. That's where I think there is an opening to win their support to Clinton to show them just how untrue that statement is.

rogerogreen said...

http://www.theonion.com/article/female-presidential-candidate-who-was-united-state-52367

Arthur Schenck (AmeriNZ) said...

As they say, it's funny because it's true. Sadly.

Arthur Schenck (AmeriNZ) said...

I should say that while I have definitely seen some die-hard Bernie supporters harassing supporters of Hillary because they support Hillary (including, of course, mainstream supporters of Bernie who agree Donald must be stopped), the overwhelming number of aggressive attacks I've personally seen have come from conservatives, including, but by no means limited to, supporters of Donald.

What saddens me is the extent to which some one leftward side of Left (not all of whom ever supported Bernie, it should be noted) are so willing to quickly and uncritically accept every lie and smear from the rigthtwing because they desperately want such things to be true because it reinforces their anti-Hillary (and anti-Democratic Party) ideology.

But you're right, for the rational leftists, the task is to demonstrate how Hillary is lightcenturies better than Donald in every respect, and that Donald is an existential threat to the USA. The good news is that the people leading that charge have been Bernie's supporters.