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.