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The VICE Guide to the 2016 Election

The Only Way Hillary Clinton Will Win the Election Is with a Lot of Help from Her Friends

An anticlimactic end to the Democratic Party's show in Philadelphia.
All photos by Jason Bergman. Lead image by Chip Somodevilla / Staff via Getty

On Thursday night, Hillary Clinton showed up in Philadelphia to formally accept the Democratic Party's nomination for president, giving a speech that told her life story and framed her as the candidate of public service, responsibility, and cool resolve. She preached the values of ordinary Americans—"builders" is what she called her family. She ran through a wish list of Democratic positions on a laundry list of progressive issues ranging from systemic racism and gun control to climate change, healthcare and reproductive rights, and campaign finance reform. And she painted Donald Trump as a dangerous loose cannon who couldn't be trusted with nuclear codes.

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It was the first time the nominee had addressed the convention this week, but It felt like a rerun. It wasn't a bad speech, exactly, but it also didn't do much to expand on the themes that have been expounded on again and again by Clinton's squad of surrogates throughout the convention. The candidate herself takes a workhorse approach to oratory, driving in her talking points like she's hammering nails through drywall, and on Thursday, she hit her marks again, helped along by the enthusiastic crowd.

But she suffered from the comparison to Barack Obama, whose convention speech the night before touched on many of the same notes that Clinton's did, but with rhetoric that soared rather than walked. The former secretary of state even quoted Obama when the crowd booed at the mention of Trump's name, telling them "Don't' boo—vote." But it sounded a bit flatter, and a bit less cutting, coming from her.

Throughout the speech, Clinton struck an expansively inclusive tone, welcoming supporters of Bernie Sanders—many of whom have been protesting her nomination since the start of the convention—under the Democratic Party's tent. "I want you to know, I've heard you," she told these voters. "Your cause is our cause. Our country needs your ideas, energy, and passion." She also promised to "be a president for Democrats, Republicans, and independents. For the struggling, the striving and the successful. For those who vote for me and those who don't."

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This too was another iteration of the Democratic National Convention's central theme, countering Trump's naked and xenophobic appeals to older white voters with a wave of diversity and an emphasis on identity politics. Over the past four days, speakers in Philadelphia have included disabled people, a trans woman, mothers of the victims of gun violence, a little person, teens, cops and their families, veterans, a 73-year-old school board member and mother of a dead soldier, and a recently naturalized US citizen who had come to the country as an undocumented immigrant.

Since the convention kicked off on Monday, Democrats have been trying to make the party's tent as big as possible—large enough to accommodate former New York City mayor and noted oligarchist Michael Bloomberg and the liberals who despise his administration's aggressive policing policies, or former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta and the peace activists who tried to drown out his speech with chants of "No more war!" All of these people, the liberal argument goes, can agree that Trump is garbage, and will therefore line up behind Clinton this fall, even if some of them aren't totally happy about it.

But even as Obama, Biden, and Bill Clinton brought down the house this week, the primary question lingering over the convention was basically, "Her?" Sure, nearly anyone can get behind some good old-fashioned Trump bashing, but the Democratic convention was a reminder that Clinton herself is also eminently bashable. On Wednesday, Obama dismissed attacks against her by saying that she has been "under a microscope for 40 years," and "during those those 40 years she's made mistakes." But opposition to Clinton was on display even inside the convention hall, where groups of Sanders delegates wore glow-in-the-dark neon shirts and mostly refused to applaud with everyone else.

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Gary West, a Sanders delegate from Texas, told me he stayed silent throughout Clinton's speech. "We didn't want to disrespect her" by heckling, he explained. "But we didn't have anything to say." When asked if he'd vote for Clinton in November, he said, "We'll see."

Other anti-Clinton Democrats weren't as circumspect. As the nominee began her acceptance speech, some audience members in the upper deck of the arena heckled her with wordless yelling, until they were either silenced or kicked out. Other pockets of Clinton critics occasionally burst into chants over the course of the night, although they were drowned out pretty quickly by the nominee's own fans.

Though much of the anger directed at Clinton seems inarticulate or without a clear endgame, it's also true that, so far, she has proved a flawed messenger for the Democratic Party's liberal agenda. As evidenced in Philadelphia this week, her rhetorical abilities pale in comparison to politicians like Obama and Biden. After the vice president gave one of the convention's most devastating denouncements of Trump on Wednesday, there was open speculation among convention-goers that had Biden decided to run, he could have beaten out Clinton for the 2016 nomination, and would be crushing Trump in a general election fight by now.

Still, convention speakers spent the final night running down the long list of Clinton's qualifications, and celebrating the milestone of becoming the first major American political party to ever elect a woman as its presidential candidate and Clinton's long list of qualifications. But resumes are not particularly inspirational on their own. "Hers is the poetry of doing," Ted Danson said of Clinton earlier Thursday. But typically voters want some actual poetry from their candidates, and in that regard Clinton fell a bit short.

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In her speech, Clinton herself admitted as much. "My job titles only tell you what I've done—they don't tell you why," she told the crowd. "The truth is, through all these years of public service, the 'service' part has always come easier to me than the 'public' part."

In theory, Clinton's lack of rhetorical gifts could present some major issues for her as she heads into what is bound to be a tough general election campaign against Trump. His campaign message is clearly resonating with a sizable bloc of angry white guys, and the candidate himself has a remarkable gift for spinning the media around his own narrative. But the Democratic National Convention showed that Clinton won't have to take on Trump alone. The party has a lot of ammunition to go after Trump with—and an army of people ready to take aim at him, even when Clinton herself cannot.

in her speech, Clinton referenced her now 20-year-old book, It Takes a Village. The book was about society's role and impact on children—but it could also refer to the collective effort involved in her presidential campaign. While her own performance was anticlimactic, the Democratic convention showed that Clinton has a figurative village of passionate and high-profile campaigners who can sell her candidacy for her. And it looks like she might need all of them.

Follow Harry Cheadle on Twitter.