Eight years to the day after she suspended her first run for the White House, Hillary Clinton took the stage Tuesday night for a hard-earned victory lap as the first woman to clinch a major party’s presidential nomination.
“Tonight’s victory is not about one person, it belongs to generations of women and men who struggled and sacrificed and made this moment possible,” Clinton said as she began her victory speech.
Clinton took the stage having won New Jersey and with results still coming in from the California primary, the last big states on the primary calendar. On Monday, the Associated Press had reported that Clinton had successfully defeated Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and clinched the nomination with 1,812 pledged delegates and 572 so-called super delegates.
Clinton’s message Tuesday night was a call for unity–not just within the Democratic Party–but to stave off a Trump presidency.
“This election is different. It really is about who we are as a nation. It’s about millions of Americans coming together to say, we are better than this. We won’t let this happen in America,” Clinton said.
After thanking her supporters, Clinton fell comfortably into her attacks against her general election opponent businessman Donald Trump– a bomb-throwing outsider who surprised his own party with his victory and has already dredged up some of the highest profile controversies of the 1990s to attack Clinton.
Clinton sought to define Trump Tuesday as as slimy, dangerous and uniquely disqualified for the office.
“It’s clear that Donald Trump doesn’t believe we are stronger together,” Clinton said. “He has abused his primary opponents and their families, attacked the press for asking tough questions, denigrated Muslims and immigrants. He wants to win by stoking fear and rubbing salt in wounds. And reminding us daily just how great he is.”
Clinton has doggedly attacked Trump’s for-profit Trump University and suggested Trump isn’t disciplined enough to manage America’s nuclear codes.
“Donald Trump is temperamentally unfit to be president and commander In chief,” Clinton said. “He’s not just trying to build a wall between America and Mexico, he’s trying to wall off Americans from each other. When he says let’s make America great again, that is code for, let’s take America backwards.”
Trump has tried to make the case Clinton cannot be trusted citing her use of a private email server when she was at the State Department and continuously attacking her for her response to the 2012 terrorist attack in Benghazi, Libya. But Clinton used her speech to even reach out to some Republicans who may be on the fence about Trump.
“To be great, we can’t be small,” Clinton said. “We have to be as big as the values that define America. And we are a big-hearted, fair-minded country. We teach our children that this is one nation, under god, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
Clinton’s victory in the primary came after a surprisingly strong challenge from Sanders, a primary opponent who pushed Clinton to the left on everything from immigration to income inequality and earned broad grassroots support with his message deriding “millionaires and billionaires.” On Tuesday, Clinton seemed to have embraced some of Sanders’ progressive tone as her own. Sanders had consistently bested Clinton with young voters, a core constituency she’ll now need to make up with has she heads toward the November election. On Tuesday, Clinton congratulated Sanders on his campaign as she sought to win back his supporters.
“Let there be no mistake,” Clinton said. “Senator Sanders, his campaign, and the vigorous debate that we’ve had about how to raise income, reduce inequality, increase upward mobility, have been very good for the Democratic party and for America.”