Commentary | To anyone who tuned in last night to catch Bill Clinton as the former prez brought down the house on night two of the DNC, what a show! And if you didn’t, drop whatever it is you’re doing right now and watch him slay the opposition in his one-two knockout punch answer to the RNC’s showing last week.
Bill. Freaking. Clinton. Love him or hate him, the Clinton years have become something of legend in the US today even among conservative-leaning Americans. The America in which we lived under President Bill Clinton was a far different world than the one we live in today: a pre-9/11, surplus-having, economy-booming, and middle-class thriving time where endless wars and crippling deficits were part of a dystopian future we had no idea loomed ahead.
But, if you’d forgotten Bill Clinton and his amazing statesmanship in the trainwreck of the Bush years, he was back in force last night — also an interesting contrast since there was little if anything of former Republican presidents rallying at the RNC last week.
And Clinton did what Clinton does best: He fired up the crowd with a “let me break it down for you” plain-spoken, lay it on the line missive. Bill hit all the hot topics that the Democrats had been excoriated for in speeches like that of Paul Ryan such as welfare reform, Obamacare, student loans… it was a fantastically bullet-pointed thing of beauty that drove the crowd wild and dominated social media with lines such as this in regards to Ryan’s critique of Obama for allegedly going after Medicare:
“It takes some brass to attack a guy for doing what you did.”
Ice was immediately dispatched to VP hopeful Paul Ryan for that burn . And, while Ryan and the Romney camp have not put much stock in fact-checkers this election, according to those who vet such speeches, Clinton’s claims did for the most part check out.
Bill Clinton’s speech was a lead up to that of President Obama’s tonight, but Hopey had better have a hell of a lot of tricks up his sleeve to top that.