Why Aren't Barack Obama And Bill Clinton Speaking Out?

Why aren't Obama and Clinton speaking out on the mess Democrats have gotten themselves into? Jen Psaki tells us:

While former President Barack Obama did post on X in the days following the first presidential debate and former President Bill Clinton did as well, both Democratic leaders have largely remained out of the spotlight.

So where have they been?

Exactly where they should be right now: behind the scenes, acting as sounding boards with other party leaders like former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, donors and members of Congress.

Because while both Obama and Clinton are widely respected elder statesmen, there are several reasons why they can’t just put an end to the re-election drama surrounding President Joe Biden and tell the party who should be the nominee in August.

For one thing, the Democratic Party — including party insiders — do not like being told what to do (most of the time). Hillary Clinton didn’t win the nomination in 2008 even though she had the strong endorsement of her husband. And the progressive wing of the party didn’t love it when Obama came close to endorsing Clinton during the primary process in 2016.

A clear and unified statement could certainly tamp down some of the speculation about whether the party should take a different route for the nominee — and that uncertainty is one of the biggest challenges right now. But while both men are generational talents as politicians, even Obama has been out of the electoral game for 12 years. County, district and state maps as well as voter outreach strategies have changed a lot since then.

Obama and Clinton swooping in to tell everyone what to do could backfire in other ways as well. As imperfect (to put it mildly) as this moment is in the Democratic Party, it’s important that any debate within the party is conducted fairly and legitimately.

I don’t know what is going to happen, and with every day that passes it feels more likely Biden will hold on. But once a final decision ismade, Democrats will need all the party unity they can muster. And that means Obama and Clinton are smart to wait until the question is settled to weigh in. That’s the moment when they can maximize their collective impact. This may happen next week, or the week after, or maybe at the convention. But once it does happen, the focus can return back to Donald Trump and the true threat America is still facing.

Clinton and Obama remain two of the most popular politicians in the Democratic Party, and their voices will be needed on the campaign trail.

Why Peace In Northern Ireland Has Endured

 The following is part of an op-ed by former President Bill Clinton:

Why has peace in Northern Ireland endured, when other efforts around the world remain stubbornly far from a resolution? I believe the answer lies in the way the peace was made.

First, the process was driven by the people. They’d grown weary of the killing and the arbitrary tragedies of nonlethal political violence, and weary of the economic deprivation born of the divisions.

It was clear in the faces of the people I met on my visits there, of all backgrounds, that they were determined that the conflict must end. As Hillary has emphasized, the people, especially the women, were out in front of the politicians because they wanted their children and grandchildren to grow up outside the shadow of violence and hatred.

The Good Friday Agreement negotiations were driven and maintained through the rough spots by the demand for peace. It has produced an entire generation in Northern Ireland that has grown up largely free from the horrors of sectarian violence, free to focus on solving problems and seizing opportunities.

Second, the political leaders on all sides showed real courage in making sacrifices and compromises with their adversaries and committing to inclusivity, knowing perfectly well that they were putting their own political futures at risk. Trust was built slowly but surely through years of confidence-building measures, such as prisoner releases and cease-fires.

Real credit belongs to the leaders including Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair; before them John Major, Albert Reynolds and John Bruton; and to John Hume, David Trimble, Gerry Adams and many others. Soon, even unionist leader Ian Paisley, who didn’t take part in the peace talks, joined in a functioning government with Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness. In so many other conflict areas, leaders have ultimately failed to take that final leap of faith.

Third, the peace process was successful because the United States was deeply involved in a way that both sides came to see as positive. I believed America could and should play a role in the Northern Ireland peace process — not in spite of, but because of our “special relationship” with the United Kingdom, and because of the large Irish American community that cared deeply about their ancestral homeland.

At the urging of the New York Irish community, when I ran for president in 1992, I said that if I were elected, I would take an active role in ending the conflict, beginning by appointing a special envoy. Some advisers warned that it would be a difficult commitment to keep — and at first it was, with deep divisions in Congress and my own administration. Beginning with a two-day visa for Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams that allowed him to give a speech to an Irish American group but not to fundraise, the United States carefully established itself as an honest broker that enabled the deeply distrustful sides to communicate.

Finally, the peace has held because the framework of the Good Friday Agreement has proved to be fair to all sides and better than any other deal that’s out there. The details, hammered out under the brilliant, patient but determined watch of special envoy George Mitchell, reflected the complex views of both communities, enabling them to trust the agreement to protect their myriad interests.

The agreement committed the parties to majority rule with minority rights, respect for individual rights, civil rights and the rule of law, the prohibition of violence, and disarmament and demobilization of paramilitary groups. It also created a system of shared decision-making, shared economic benefits and special ties to the Republic of Ireland and the United Kingdom.

Though power-sharing has at times yielded frustration and even gridlock, it has given each side the opportunity to make its concerns heard and work toward consensus. Even now, with Stormont, the legislature, sitting unused, the question is “when” not “if” the government will get back up and running. Even the most imperfect democracy is better than a return to violence.

In 1995, when I made my first visit to Northern Ireland, I stood before a crowd of thousands in Derry and recited the lines of one of its favorite sons, Seamus Heaney:

“History says, Don’t hope / On this side of the grave. / But then, once in a lifetime / The longed-for tidal wave / Of justice can rise up, / And hope and history rhyme.”

The events that led to peace in Northern Ireland were a happy occasion of hope and history rhyming, but such achievements are still too rare. All around the world in areas of conflict and deep political and social divisions, people are yearning for better, safer, more inclusive days ahead. The challenge will be finding the leaders with the courage to meet the moment and make the hard choices necessary for peace within frameworks that give everyone a voice.

On this anniversary, the people of Northern Ireland and all their friends around the world have much to celebrate. I hope this moment of shared memory will allow them to continue the work of peace and inspire others to believe, as Heaney wrote, in “miracles / And cures and healing wells” and find their own way forward.

Stock Market Did Better Under Obama & Clinton Than Trump

Donald Trump loves to brag about how well he's done with the economy (even though the economy was doing well when he became president and just continued that course). He especially likes to brag about the stock market. He would like you to believe that the stock market did better under his presidency than under any other president.

But that is simply not true. Axios.com looked at stock market performance during the first terms of the last 8 presidents. There were three presidents who did better than Trump. George H.W. Bush did slightly better, while Bill Clinton and  Barack Obama did much better. As a percentage, the market rose 1.3 points better under Bush I than under Trump. It rose 17.5 points better under Clinton and 21.5 points better under Obama.

Trump's bragging about the stock market (and the economy) are just more of his lies.

Support For Trump's Impeachment Higher Than For Nixon/Clinton As Official Proceedings Start

The chart above and post below are from Axios.com. It's not good news for Donald Trump.

Public support for President Trump's impeachment is higher than it was for Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton when the House launched impeachment inquiries against them.

• Why it matters: Support for impeachment of Trump is still less than half the country — 44% in the Monmouth University poll shown here; 47% in a CNN poll. And the polling reflects a 50-50 country. But the Ukraine scandal is pushing the numbers up.
• Per CNN: "The change since May has largely come among independents and Republicans. ... [S]upport for impeachment and removal has risen 11 points to 46% among independents and 8 points to 14% among Republicans."

Keep in mind: A majority of the public didn't support impeaching Nixon until a few weeks before he resigned.

Trump Is The Most Unpopular President (And Candidate)

These charts reflect the results of the recent NBC News / Wall Street Journal Poll -- done between September 13th and 16th of a national sample of 900 registered voters, with a 3.27 point margin of error.

The top chart shows the public's negative opinion of the last four presidents. Trump has the largest negative opinion by far (51%).

The second chart shows the percentage of registered voters who say they would be "very uncomfortable" with the leading presidential candidates for the 2020 election. Again, Trump leads the pack with 49% -- 8 points higher than Bernie Sanders, and 16 points higher than Elizabeth Warren or Joe Biden.

These are not good numbers for a president seeking re-election.

Public Says Trump Is Dishonest - Doesn't Share Their Values

These charts show the results of a Gallup Poll -- done between June 3rd and 16th of a national sample of 1,015 adults, with a 4 point margin of error. It shows that only34% of Americans believe Donald Trump is honest and trustworthy, and only 38% believe he shares their values. Those numbers are significantly lower than any of the last three presidents (Clinton, Bush, Obama).

Trump Holds Record For Being The Most Joked About

The Center for Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University counted up all the jokes told about politicians each year on late night talk shows. In 2017, the number of jokes told about politicians was 6,337. About half of those were about Donald Trump.

About 3,128 jokes were made about Trump in 2017. That beats the old record of 1,816 -- also held by Trump (in 2016). Until Trump came along, the record had been held by Bill Clinton (1,717 jokes in 1998).

Trump Has The Least Ethical Presidential Administration

Donald Trump likes to brag about himself and the people he's hired to run his administration. He claims they are the "best" people. The American public disagrees. They see his administration as being the least ethical of the last six administrations.

Only 37% of the public views the Trump administration as being ethical, while a substantial 59% says his administration is not ethical. Only one other president, Bill Clinton, has experienced a time when his administration was viewed as ethical by less than 50%. His number in January of 1994 was 43% (still 6 points higher than Trump), and he rebounded to 57% in March of that year.

The sad fact (for Trump) is that the public doesn't like him, doesn't approve of his job performance, thinks he is dishonest, and thinks his administration is generally unethical.

This chart was made using information contained in a new Gallup Poll -- done between May 1st and 10th of a national sample of 1,024 adults, with a 4 point margin of error.

Trump's SOTU Audience Was Smaller Than Last 3 Presidents

Trump is once again showing his complete lack of regard for the truth. He is claiming that the audience for his first State of the Union speech was the "highest in history". That is just more of his alternate facts, and not representative of the real facts.

The chart above shows the Nielsen ratings for the first State of the Union speech by Clinton, Bush, Obama, and Trump. Note that he had the smallest audience of any of these four presidents -- 200,000 less than Clinton, 6,200,000 less than Bush, and 2,400,000 less than Obama.

Even in his last year's speech to Congress (which was not really a State of the Union since he had just taken office) he finished third to Clinton and Obama -- beating only the first speech of Bush.

This is reminiscent of his claims about having the largest inauguration crowd in history, when government photos  show that was not even close to the truth. He also claimed to have the largest electoral college win, but history shows us that several presidents have had larger victories.

Trump is a narcissist, and his narcissism demands that he be first (or best) in everything. Unfortunately for him, the facts have never come up to his ludicrous claims and wishes.

Trump Has Done Worse On Race Relations Than Others

Donald Trump is still saying he's a uniter -- someone able to bring all the races together in harmony. But the public doesn't believe him. In fact, they think he has done the worst job of trying to fix race relations than any of the last four president (Trump, Obama, Bush, and Clinton) -- significantly worse. In fact, he's the only president that has a majority of the population (59%) saying race relations have gotten worse under his "leadership".

This chart reflects results from a recent Politico / Morning Consult Poll -- done between August 17th and 19th of a random national sample of 1,987 registered voters, with a 2 point margin of error.

Trump Is Still Polling Worse Than Other Presidents

As Trump approaches his first 100 days in office, he still is polling far worse than other presidents. He started his term polling worse than Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, or Obama -- and that is still true. At this point in their presidencies, all of those previous presidents polled much better than Trump. He does about as well as previous Republican presidents among the Republican base, but does much worse than them among Independents and Democrats.

Those Independents are especially important. In 2018 and 2020, we can expect for Republicans to vote for Republicans and for Democrats to vote for Democrats, but many electoral contests will be decided by who the Independents vote for -- and right now they aren't too enamored of this president.

These charts are from a new Pew Research Center Poll -- done between April 5th and 11th of a random national sample of 1,501 adults, with a 2.9 point margin of error.

Most Expect Trump To Be The Worst President Since Nixon

The chart above was made from information in a new Public Policy Polling survey -- done on January 23rd and 24th of a random national sample of 1,043 registered voters, with a margin of error of 3 points.

It shows that the general public has some very low expectations of the Trump presidency. In fact, they think he will be a worse president than any president between Obama and Ford. The only president they view Trump as possibly being better than is Nixon (who was impeached and had to resign).

Personally, I wouldn't give Trump that much credit. I think he will be worse than Richard Nixon.

Trump Is Still The Most Unpopular Pre-Inauguration Prez

Just more evidence that Donald Trump has no mandate. A new Gallup Poll shows that he is, by far, the most unpopular president elected just before the inauguration. Barack Obama, George W. Bush, and Bill Clinton were all viewed favorably by a significant majority of Americans preceding their inaugurations. Donald Trump is viewed unfavorably by a significant majority of the population. This gives him less authority to advance his policies than any of the last three presidents.

These charts are from the Gallup Poll -- done between January 4th and 8th of a random national sample of 1,032 adults, and has a margin of error of 4 points.

Public Has Less Faith In Trump Than In Past Presidents

Democrats weren't happy with the idea that Bush would soon be president in 2001, and Republicans weren't happy with the idea that idea that Obama would soon be president in 2009 -- but the general public gave both men the benefit of the doubt, believing they were competent and would do a good job. Donald Trump doesn't have that. The general public simply doesn't have faith in Trump to be a good president.

That charts above are from a recent Gallup Poll -- done between December 7th and 11th of a random national sample of 1,028 adults, with a 4 point margin of error. The poll shows what the public thought about each president just before they took office. Note that Trump rates significantly less than any of our past three presidents (Obama, Bush, Clinton) in every single category.

Trump wants to believe that he has the overwhelming support and faith of the American people as he starts his term. That is not even remotely true.

More Evidence That Trump Does NOT Have A Mandate

Donald Trump is still trying to claim that the American people have given him a mandate to institute his policies. That is not even close to true. About 2.68 million people more voted for Clinton than voted for Trump -- and if that's not enough evidence that there was no mandate given, then look at the charts above.

As the top chart shows, Trump is the only recent president to have less than 50% approval of how he's handling the transition period (41%). And he's also the only recent president to have less than 58% of his cabinet choices (40%).

In addition, he's the only recent president to have less than a 60% favorable rating (with his being only 37%). And then there's the bottom chart, showing the public still doesn't think much of Trump. Although he gets decent marks for patriotism (60%) and being a strong leader (52%), he falls short in several other categories -- honesty (41%), inspiring (41%), qualified (37%), moral (31%), and good role model (26%).  He is also viewed as being hard to like (68%), reckless (65%), and having poor judgement (62%).

Far from having any kind of mandate, Trump still has quite a way to go before even getting half of the population to support him.

These charts were made from a recent survey by the Pew Research Center -- done between November 30th and December 5th of a random national sample of 1,502 adults, with a 2.9 point margin of error..

Trump Is Lying To Us - NAFTA Was Done By Republicans

The silly meme at the left is something Donald Trump is campaigning on. He is trying to get white working class votes by claiming that Bill Clinton is responsible for the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and that Hillary Clinton supported Bill doing that.

There only one thing wrong with that -- it's an outrageous LIE! NAFTA was originally a Republican idea, and it was started, passed, and singed into law by Republicans -- and it was done before Bill Clinton ever took office.

The idea of NAFTA had its roots in the Reagan administration. In fact, Ronald Reagan actually campaigned on the idea of a "North American common market" (i.e., free trade agreement).

Then in 1984, the Republican Congress passed the Trade and Tariff Act. This law allowed the president to begin negotiations with Canada and Mexico on a free trade agreement.

The negotiations actually became a reality in 1990, under President George H.W. Bush. The negotiations resulted in the agreement we call NAFTA in 1992 -- and the agreement was signed by President Bush in December of 1992 -- at least a month before President Clinton was sworn in for his first term. Both houses of Congress than ratified it in 1993.

Trump is lying when he blames Bill Clinton for NAFTA. If any presidents are to blame, it is Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush -- both Republicans. We can debate whether NAFTA was a good idea or not, but it is simply not the fault of Bill Clinton either way.

Bill Is The Most Popular Presidential Candidate Spouse

I doubt that this survey means anything, but I thought it was interesting. It is the recent Gallup Poll regarding the popularity of the spouses of the presidential candidates. It was done between August 3rd and 7th of a random national sample of 1,032 adults, with a margin of error of 4 points.

It seems that Bill Clinton is 11 points more popular than Melania Trump. But what I found more interesting is the difference shown among the age groups. Those 18-29 give Bill a 34 margin and the 30-49 group gives Bill a 29 point margin. But older Americans like Melania slightly better -- with the 50-64 group giving her a 6 point edge and those 64 and over giving her a 7 point edge.

Also interesting is that Republicans don't like Melania as well as Democrats like Bill. She gets 69% among Republicans, while he gets 84% among Democrats -- a 15 point difference.

Hillary Clinton's Story (As Told By Her Husband Bill)

(Photos of Hillary Clinton, above and below, are from abcnews.go.com.)

On Tuesday night, Bill Clinton gave a great speech to the Democratic National Convention. The subject of his speech was his wife (and 2016 nominee for president by the Democratic Party -- Hillary Clinton. Here is what he had to say:

In the spring of 1971 I met a girl.

The first time I saw her we were, appropriately enough, in a class on political and civil rights. She had thick blond hair, big glasses, wore no makeup, and she had a sense of strength and self- possession that I found magnetic. After the class I followed her out, intending to introduce myself. I got close enough to touch her back, but I couldn’t do it. Somehow I knew this would not be just another tap on the shoulder, that I might be starting something I couldn’t stop.

And I saw her several more times in the next few days, but I still didn’t speak to her. Then one night I was in the law library talking to a classmate who wanted me to join the Yale Law Journal. He said it would guarantee me a job in a big firm or a clerkship with a federal judge. I really wasn’t interested, I just wanted to go home to Arkansas.

Then I saw the girl again, standing at the opposite end of that long room. Finally she was staring back at me, so I watched her. She closed her book, put it down and started walking toward me. She walked the whole length of the library, came up to me and said, look, if you’re going to keep staring at me…

…and now I’m staring back, we at least ought to know each other’s name. I’m Hillary Rodham, who are you?

I was so impressed and surprised that, whether you believe it or not, momentarily I was speechless.

Finally, I sort of blurted out my name and we exchanged a few words and then she went away.

Well, I didn’t join the Law Review, but I did leave that library with a whole new goal in mind.

A couple of days later, I saw her again. I remember, she was wearing a long, white, flowery skirt. And I went up to her and she said she was going to register for classes for the next term. And I said I’d go, too. And we stood in line and talked — you had to do that to register back then — and I thought I was doing pretty well until we got to the front of the line and the registrar looked up and said, Bill, what are you doing here, you registered morning?

I turned red and she laughed that big laugh of hers. And I thought, well, heck, since my cover’s been blown I just went ahead and asked her to take a walk down to the art museum.

We’ve been walking and talking and laughing together ever since.

And we’ve done it in good times and bad, through joy and heartbreak. We cried together this morning on the news that our good friend and a lot of your good friend, Mark Weiner, passed away early this morning.

We’ve built up a lifetime of memories. After the first month and that first walk, I actually drove her home to Park Ridge, Illinois…

…to meet her family and see the town where she grew up, a perfect example of post World War II middle-class America, street after street of nice houses, great schools, good parks, a big public swimming pool, and almost all white.

I really liked her family. Her crusty, conservative father, her rambunctious brothers, all extolling the virtues of rooting for the Bears and the Cuba.

And for the people from Illinois here, they even told me what “waiting for next year” meant.

It could be next year, guys.

Now, her mother was different. She was more liberal than the boys. And she had a childhood that made mine look like a piece of cake. She was easy to underestimate with her soft manner and she reminded me all over again of the truth of that old saying you should never judge a book by its covers. Knowing her was one of the greatest gifts Hillary ever gave me.

I learned that Hillary got her introduction to social justice through her Methodist youth minister, Don Jones. He took her downtown to Chicago to hear Dr. Martin Luther King speak and he remained her friend for the rest of his life. This will be the only campaign of hers he ever missed.

When she got to college, her support for civil rights, her opposition to the Vietnam War compelled her to change party, to become a Democrat.

And then between college and law school on a total lark she went alone to Alaska and spent some time sliming fish.

More to the point, by the time I met her she had already been involved in the law school’s legal services project and she had been influenced by Marian Wright Edelman.

She took a summer internship interviewing workers in migrant camps for Senator Walter Mondale’s subcommittee.

She had also begun working in the Yale New Haven Hospital to develop procedures to handle suspected child abuse cases. She got so involved in children’s issues that she actually took an extra year in law school working at the child studies center to learn what more could be done to improve the lives and the futures of poor children.

So she was already determined to figure out how to make things better.

Hillary opened my eyes to a whole new world of public service by private citizens. In the summer of 1972, she went to Dothan, Alabama to visit one of those segregated academies that then enrolled over half-a-million white kids in the South. The only way the economics worked is if they claimed federal tax exemptions to which they were not legally entitled. She got sent to prove they weren’t.

So she sauntered into one of these academies all by herself, pretending to be a housewife that had just moved to town and needed to find a school for her son. And they exchanged pleasantries and finally she said, look, let’s just get to the bottom line here, if I enroll my son in this school will he be in a segregated school, yes or know? And the guy said absolutely. She had him!

I’ve seen it a thousand times since. And she went back and her encounter was part of a report that gave Marian Marian Wright Edelman the ammunition she needed to keep working to force the Nixon administration to take those tax exemptions away and give our kids access to an equal education.

Then she went down to south Texas where she met…

…she met one of the nicest fellows I ever met, the wonderful union leader Franklin Garcia, and he helped her register Mexican- American voters. I think some of them are still around to vote for her in 2016.

Then in our last year in law school, Hillary kept up this work. She went to South Carolina to see why so many young…

…she went to South Carolina to see why so many young African- American boys, I mean, young teenagers, were being jailed for years with adults in men’s prisons. And she filed a report on that, which led to some changes, too. Always making things better.

Now, meanwhile, let’s get back to business. I was trying to convince her to marry me.

I first proposed to her on a trip to Great Britain, the first time she had been overseas. And we were on the shoreline of this wonderful little lake, Lake Ennerdale. I asked her to marry me and she said I can’t do it.

So in 1974 I went home to teach in the law school and Hillary moved to Massachusetts…

…to keep working on children’s issues. This time trying to figure out why so many kids counted in the Census weren’t enrolled in school. She found one of them sitting alone on her porch in a wheelchair. Once more, she filed a report about these kids, and that helped influence ultimately the Congress to adopt the proposition that children with disabilities, physical or otherwise, should have equal access to public education.

You saw the results of that last night when Anastasia Somoza talked.

She never made fun of people with disabilities; she tried to empower them based on their abilities.

Meanwhile, I was still trying to get her to marry me.

So the second time I tried a different tack. I said I really want you to marry me, but you shouldn’t do it.

And she smiled and looked at me, like, what is this boy up to? She said that is not a very good sales pitch. I said I know, but it’s true. And I meant it, it was true.

I said I know most of the young Democrats our age who want to go into politics, they mean well and they speak well, but none of them is as good as you are at actually doing things to make positive changes in people’s lives. 

So I suggested she go home to Illinois or move to New York and look for a chance to run for office. She just laughed and said, are you out of you mind, nobody would ever vote for me.

So I finally got her to visit me in Arkansas.

And when she did, the people at the law school were so impressed they offered a teaching position. And she decided to take a huge chance. She moved to a strange place, more rural, more culturally conservative than anyplace she had ever been, where she knew good and well people would wonder what in the world she was like and whether they could or should accept her.

Didn’t take them long to find out what she was like. She loved her teaching and she got frustrated when one of her students said, well, what do you expect, I’m just from Arkansas. She said, don’t tell me that, you’re as smart as anybody, you’ve just got to believe in yourself and work hard and set high goals. She believed that anybody could make it.

She also started the first legal aid clinic in northwest Arkansas, providing legal aid services to poor people who couldn’t pay for them. And one day I was driving her to the airport to fly back to Chicago when we passed this little brick house that had a for sale sign on it. And she said, boy, that’s a pretty house. It had 1,100 square feet, an attic, fan and no air conditioner in hot Arkansas, and a screened-in porch.

Hillary commented on what a uniquely designed and beautiful house it was. So I took a big chance. I bought the house. My mortgage was $175 a month.

When she came back, I picked up her up and I said, you remember that house you liked? She said yeah. I said, while you were gone I bought it, you have to marry me now.

The third time was the charm.

We were married in that little house on October the 11th, 1975. I married my best friend. I was still in awe after more than four years of being around her at how smart and strong and loving and caring she was. And I really hoped that her choosing me and rejecting my advice to pursue her own career was a decision she would never regret.

A little over a year later we moved to Little Rock when I became attorney general and she joined the oldest law firm west of the Mississippi. Soon after, she started a group called the Arkansas Advocates for Families and Children.

It’s a group, as you can hear, is still active today.

In 1979, just after I became governor, I asked Hillary to chair a rural health committee to help expand health care to isolated farm and mountain areas. They recommended to do that partly by deploying trained nurse practitioners in places with no doctors to provide primary care they were trained to provide. It was a big deal then, highly controversial and very important.

And I got the feeling that what she did for the rest of her life she was doing there. She just went out and figured out what needed to be done and what made the most sense and what would help the most people. And then if it was controversial she’d just try to persuade people it was the right thing to do.

It wasn’t the only big thing that happened that spring my first year as governor. We found out we were going to be parents.

And time passed. On February 27th, 1980, 15 minutes after I got home from the National Governors Conference in Washington, Hillary’s water broke and off we went to the hospital. Chelsea was born just before midnight.

And it was the greatest moment of my life. The miracle of a new beginning. The hole it filled for me because my own father died before I was born, and the absolute conviction that my daughter had the best mother in the whole world.

For the next 17 years, through nursing school, Montessori, kindergarten, through T-ball, softball, soccer, volleyball and her passion for ballet, through sleepovers, summer camps, family vacations and Chelsea’s own very ambitious excursions, from Halloween parties in the neighborhood, to a Viennese waltz gala in the White House, Hillary first and foremost was a mother.

She became, as she often said, our family’s designated worrier, born with an extra responsibility gene. The truth is we rarely disagreed on parenting, although she did believe that I had gone a little over the top when I took a couple of days off with Chelsea to watch all six “Police Academy” movies back-to-back.

When Chelsea was 9 months old, I was defeated for reelection in the Reagan landslide. And I became overnight, I think, the youngest former governor in the history of the country. We only had two-year terms back then.

Hillary was great. Immediately she said, OK, what are we going to do? Here’s what we’re going to do, we’re going to get a house, you’re going to get a job, we’re going to enjoy being Chelsea’s parents. And if you really want to run again, you’ve got to go out and talk to people and figure out why you lost, tell people you got the message and show them you’ve still got good ideas.

I followed her advice. Within two days we had a house, I soon had a job. We had two fabulous years with Chelsea. And in 1982, I became the first governor in the history of our state to be elected, defeated and elected again.

I think my experience is it’s a pretty good thing to follow her advice. The rest of the decade sort of flew by as our lives settled into a rhythm of family and work and friends.

In 1983, Hillary chaired a committee to recommend new education standards for us as a part of and in response to a court order to equalize school funding and a report by a national expert that said our woefully underfunded schools were the worst in America.

Typical Hillary, she held listening tours in all 75 counties with our committee. She came up with really ambitious recommendations. For example, that we be the first state in America to require elementary counselors in every school because so many kids were having trouble at home and they needed it.

So I called the legislature into session hoping to pass the standards, pass a pay raise for teachers and raise the sales tax to pay for it all. I knew it would be hard to pass, but it got easier after Hillary testified before the education committee and the chairman, a plainspoken farmer, said looks to me like we elected the wrong Clinton.

Well, by the time I ran for president nine years later, the same expert who said that we had the worst schools in America said that our state was one of the two most improved states in America. And that’s because of those standards that Hillary developed.

 Now, two years later, Hillary told me about a preschool program developed in Israel called HIPPY, Home Instruction Program for Preschool Youngsters. The idea was to teach low-income parents, even those that couldn’t read, to be their children’s first teachers.

She said she thought it would work in Arkansas. I said that’s great, what are we going to do about it? She said, oh, I already did it. I called the woman who started the program in Israel, she’ll be here in about 10 days and help us get started.

Next thing you know I’m being dragged around to all these little preschool graduations. Now, keep in mind, this was before any state even had universal kindergarten and I’m being dragged to preschool graduations watching these poor parents with tears in their eyes because they never thought they’d be able to help their kids learn.

Now, 20 years of research has shown how well this program works to improve readiness for school and academic achievement. There are a lot of young adults in America who have no idea Hillary had anything to do with it who are enjoying better lives because they were in that program.

She did all this while being a full-time worker, a mother and enjoying our life. Why? Well, she’s insatiably curious, she’s a natural leader, she’s a good organizer, and she’s the best darn change-maker I ever met in my entire life.

Look, this is a really important point. This is a really important point for you to take out of this convention. If you believe in making change from the bottom up, if you believe the measure of change is how many people’s lives are better, you know it’s hard and some people think it’s boring. Speeches like this are fun.

Actually doing the work is hard. So people say, well, we need to change. She’s been around a long time, she sure has, and she’s sure been worth every single year she’s put into making people’s lives better.

I can tell you this. If you were sitting where I’m sitting and you heard what I have heard at every dinner conversation, every lunch conversation, on every lone walk, you would say this woman has never been satisfied with the status quo in anything. She always wants to move the ball forward. That is just who she is.

When I became president with a commitment to reform health care, Hillary was a natural to head the health care task force. You all know we failed because we couldn’t break a Senate filibuster. Hillary immediately went to work on solving the problems the bill sought to address one by one. The most important goal was to get more children with health insurance.

In 1997, Congress passed the Children’s Health Insurance Program, still an important part of President Obama’s Affordable Care Act. It insures more than 8 million kids. There are a lot of other things in that bill that she got done piece by piece, pushing that rock up the hill.

In 1997, she also teamed with the House Minority Leader Tom DeLay, who maybe disliked me more than any of Newt Gingrich’s crowd. They worked on a bill together to increase adoptions of children under foster care. She wanted to do it because she knew that Tom DeLay, for all of our differences, was an adoptive parent and she honored him for doing that.

Now, the bill they worked on, which passed with an overwhelming bipartisan majority, led to a big increase in the adoption of children out of foster care, including non-infant kids and special-needs kids. It made life better because she’s a change-maker, that’s what she does.

Now, when you’re doing all this, real life doesn’t stop. 1997 was the year Chelsea finished high school and went to college. We were happy for her, but sad for us to see her go. I’ll never forget moving her into her dorm room at Stanford. It would have been a great little reality flick. There I was in a trance just staring out the window trying not to cry, and there was Hillary on her hands and knees desperately looking for one more drawer to put that liner paper in.

Finally, Chelsea took charge and told us ever so gently that it was time for us to go. So we closed a big chapter in the most important work of our lives. As you’ll see Thursday night when Chelsea speaks, Hillary’s done a pretty fine job of being a mother.

And as you saw last night, beyond a shadow of a doubt so has Michelle Obama.

Now, fast forward. In 1999, Congressman Charlie Rangel and other New York Democrats urged Hillary…

…urged Hillary to run for the seat of retiring Senator Pat Moynihan. We had always intended to go to New York after I left office and commute to Arkansas, but this had never occurred to either one of us. Hillary had never run for office before, but she decided to give it a try.

She began her campaign the way she always does new things, by listening and and learning. And after a tough battle, New York elected her to the seat once held by another outsider, Robert Kennedy.

And she didn’t let him down. Her early years were dominated by 9/11, by working to fund the recovery, then monitoring the health and providing compensation to victims and first and second responders. She and Senator Schumer were tireless and so were our House members.

And she didn’t let him down. Her early years were dominated by 9/11, by working to fund the recovery, then monitoring the health and providing compensation to victims and first and second responders. She and Senator Schumer were tireless and so were our House members.

So she tried to make sure people on the battlefield had proper equipment. She tried to expand and did expand health care coverage to Reservists and members of the National Guard. She got longer family leave, working with Senator Dodd, for people caring for wounded service members.

And she worked for more extensive care for people with traumatic brain injury. She also served on a special Pentagon commission to propose changes necessary to meet our new security challenges. Newt Gingrich was on that commission, he told me what a good job she had done.

I say that because nobody who has seriously dealt with the men and women in today’s military believes they are a disaster. They are a national treasure of all races, all religions, all walks of life.

Now, meanwhile, she compiled a really solid record, totally progressive on economic and social issues. She voted for and against some proposed trade deals. She became the de facto economic development officer for the area of New York outside the ambit of New York City.

She worked for farmers, for winemakers, for small businesses and manufacturers, for upstate cities in rural areas who needed more ideas and more new investment to create good jobs, something we have to do again in small-town and rural America, in neighborhoods that have been left behind in our cities and Indian country and, yes, in coal country.

When she lost a hard-fought contest to President Obama in 2008, she worked for his election hard. But she hesitated to say yes when he asked her to join his Cabinet because she so loved being a senator from New York.

So like me, in a different context, he had to keep asking.

But as we all saw and heard from Madeleine Albright, it was worth the effort and worth the wait.

As secretary of state, she worked hard to get strong sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program. And in what The Wall Street Journal no less called a half-court shot at the buzzer, she got Russia and China to support them. Her team negotiated the New START Treaty with Russia to reduce nuclear weapons and reestablish inspections. And she got enough Republican support to get two-thirds of the Senate, the vote necessary to ratify the treaty.

She flew all night long from Cambodia to the Middle East to get a cease-fire that would avoid a full-out shooting war between Hamas and Israel in Gaza to protect the peace of the region.

She backed President Obama’s decision to go after Osama bin Laden.

She launched a team, this is really important today, she launched a team to fight back against terrorists online and built a new global counterterrorism effort.

We’ve got to win this battle in the mind field.

She put climate change at the center of our foreign policy.

She negotiated the first agreement ever — ever — where China and India officially committed to reduce their emissions. And as she had been doing since she went to Beijing in 1995 and said women’s rights are human rights and human rights are women’s rights…

…she worked to empower women and girls around the world and to make the same exact declaration on behalf of the LGBT community in America and around the world.

And nobody ever talks about this much, nobody ever talks about this much, but it’s important to me. She tripled the number of people with AIDS in poor countries whose lives are being saved with your tax dollars, most of them in Africa, going from 1.7 million lives to 5.1 million lives and it didn’t cost you any more money. She just bought available FDA-approved generic drugs, something we need to do for the American people more.

Now, you don’t know any of these people. You don’t know any of those 3.4 million people, but I’ll guarantee you they know you. They know you because they see you as thinking their lives matter. They know you and that’s one reason the approval of the United States was 20 points higher when she left the secretary of state’s office than when she took it.

Now, how does this square? How did this square with the things that you heard at the Republican convention? What’s the difference in what I told you and what they said? How do you square it? You can’t. One is real, the other is made up.

You just have to decide. You just have to decide which is which, my fellow Americans.

The real one had done more positive change-making before she was 30 than many public officials do in a lifetime in office.

The real one, if you saw her friend Betsy Ebeling vote for Illinois today…

…has friends from childhood through Arkansas, where she has not lived in more than 20 years, who have gone all across America at their own expense to fight for the person they know.

The real one has earned the loyalty, the respect and the fervent support of people who have worked with her in every stage of her life, including leaders around the world who know her to be able, straightforward and completely trustworthy.

The real one calls you when you’re sick, when your kid’s in trouble or when there’s a death in the family.

The real one repeatedly drew praise from prominent Republicans when she was a senator and secretary of state.

So what’s up with it? Well, if you win elections on the theory that government is always bad and will mess up a two-car parade…

…a real change-maker represents a real threat.

So your only option is to create a cartoon, a cartoon alternative, then run against the cartoon. Cartoons are two- dimensional, they’re easy to absorb. Life in the real world is complicated and real change is hard. And a lot of people even think it’s boring.

Good for you, because earlier today you nominated the real one.

When I was president, I worked hard to give you more peace and shared prosperity, to give you an America where nobody is invisible or counted out.

But for this time, Hillary is uniquely qualified to seize the opportunities and reduce the risks we face. And she is still the best darn change-maker I have ever known.

You could drop her into any trouble spot, pick one, come back in a month and somehow, some way she will have made it better. That is just who she is.

There are clear, achievable, affordable responses to our challenges. But we won’t get to them if America makes the wrong choice in this election. That’s why you should elect her. And you should elect her because she’ll never quit when the going gets tough. She’ll never quit on you.

She sent me in this primary to West Virginia where she knew we were going to lose, to look those coal miners in the eye and say I’m down here because Hillary sent me to tell you that if you really think you can get the economy back you had 50 years ago, have at it, vote for whoever you want to. But if she wins, she is coming back for you to take you along on the ride to America’s future.

And so I say to you, if you love this country, you’re working hard, you’re paying taxes and you’re obeying the law and you’d like to become a citizen, you should choose immigration reform over somebody that wants to send you back.

If you’re a Muslim and you love America and freedom and you hate terror, stay here and help us win and make a future together. We want you.

If you’re a young African American disillusioned and afraid, we saw in Dallas how great our police officers can be, help us build a future where nobody is afraid to walk outside, including the people that wear blue to protect our future.

Hillary will make us stronger together. You know it because she’s spent a lifetime doing it. I hope you will do it. I hope you will elect her. Those of us who have more yesterdays than tomorrows tend to care more about our children and grandchildren. The reason you should elect her is that in the greatest country on earth we have always been about tomorrow. You children and grandchildren will bless you forever if you do.

God bless you. Thank you.