Did Bill Clinton Convince Democrats That His Wife Is a Human?

Leaning on his best throwback Arkansas drawl, former president Bill Clinton pulled off what might have been the most significant moment of his post-presidential existence at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia Tuesday, delivering his first keynote speech as the official spouse of the party's presidential nominee.

That the former president was speaking just hours after the mothers of black people slain by cops appeared together onstage and elicited chants of "Black Lives Matter" elevated the stakes. After all, that chant wasn't exactly a staple of American life the last time Clinton—whose record on issues like welfare and criminal justice has come under intense scrutiny during his wife's current White House campaign—appeared at a party like this one.

Even amid the furor over high-profile police killings that have thrust racial justice into the national conversation once again, Clinton ducked and weaved around the issue, also managing to steer clear of economic problems like Wall Street regulation and political corruption that have driven the left wing of the Democratic Party since Clinton left office. Instead, the former president struck a much more personal chord, going on—at great length—about his romantic pursuit of the first woman to win a major party's presidential nomination.

"I got close enough to touch her back, but I couldn't do it," Clinton said of one of his initial encounters with his future wife, when the couple were still students at Yale Law School. "Somehow, I knew this might not be another tap on the shoulder. And I might be starting something I couldn't stop."

But after lingering for perhaps a bit too long on the mechanics of their early intimacy, the former president seemed to hit his formidable stride, touting his wife as a champion for kids, immigrants, women, and poor people, and revealing himself to be a surprisingly effective surrogate for the new Democratic nominee.

"Hillary is uniquely qualified to seize the opportunity and reduce the risk we face," he told the party that still adores him personally even if it has mixed feelings about his legacy. "And she is still the best darn change-maker I have ever known."

By the end of the night, the most potent dynasty in American politics was officially the only game in town, and the only political recourse left for liberal voters fearful of a future President Donald Trump. With his quintessentially Clinton speech, Bill had forced a new reality on the Democratic Party, and particularly on supporters of Bernie Sanders, just hours after they attempted one final, dramatic stand for their failed primary candidate.

"I wouldn't say the speech was helpful—I still think there's a big difference between Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton," Heidi Wegleitner, a Sanders delegate from Madison, Wisconsin, told me on the floor after the former president spoke. "But Clinton was nominated, and I'm very concerned about the possibility of a President Trump."

Of course, nothing Clinton said Tuesday night dispelled the deep divisions that continue to fracture the party's identity—a rupture evidenced in the Obama era by movements like Occupy and Black Lives Matter.

"Oligarchy is nothing any of us want," Keon Gerow, a Philadelphia-based pastor and Clinton delegate, told me Tuesday night. "So the reality now is, once she's elected, we have to hold her feet to the fire—hold her accountable for her actions to the lowest of people."

If nothing else, Tuesday's speech proved that Bill Clinton can still bring it. And the fact that no one even close to his stature has emerged on the Republican side to get behind Donald Trump underscored the formidability of the Democrats' campaign squad.

"Tell me you wouldn't cut off an arm to have somebody like that in our party," GOP strategist Rick Wilson said of his fellow Republicans after the speech. "To come out and deliver a message like that and just hammer the ball out of the park like that."

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