With a superbly written, adequately delivered acceptance speech Thursday night, Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton closed out a nearly flawless party convention in Philadelphia by pitilessly attacking her Republican rival and laying out a liberal agenda for her administration.
The political rock around Clinton's neck is that dauntingly high percentages of the voting public neither like nor trust her. The trust deficit is impossible to make up in a single speech and may never close during the campaign, but with her emphasis on her longtime commitment to children's issues and her pleasant if ritualistic invocation of her role as a wife, mother and now grandmother, she came off as likable enough, as they say.
The political helium balloon lifting Clinton up is that she's running against a vulgar, splenetic megalomaniac in Republican business tycoon Donald Trump. And the best, most memorable passages of her speech were those that laid out what is sure to be her major theme this fall — that, whatever you may think of her, her opponent is unthinkably worse.
"Does Donald Trump have the temperament to be commander-in-chief?" she asked. "Donald Trump can't even handle the rough-and-tumble of a presidential campaign. He loses his cool at the slightest provocation. … Imagine — if you dare — imagine him in the Oval Office facing a real crisis. A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons."
She went on to add a dollop of emasculation: "I can't put it any better than Jackie Kennedy did after the Cuban missile crisis. She said that what worried President (John) Kennedy during that very dangerous time was that a war might be started — not by big men with self-control and restraint, but by little men — the ones moved by fear and pride."
In several passages Clinton went right at Trump's appeal to white working-class voters — that despite his vast wealth he relates to their anxiety and anger and he has the business acumen to transform the U.S. economy to their advantage.
"Let's take a closer look," she said. "In Atlantic City, 60 miles from here, you'll find contractors and small businesses who lost everything because Donald Trump refused to pay his bills. … People who did the work and needed the money, and didn't get it — not because he couldn't pay them, but because he wouldn't pay them. He just stiffed them.
"That sales pitch he's making to be your president? Put your faith in him — and you'll win big? That's the same sales pitch he made to all those small businesses. Then Trump walked away, and left working people holding the bag.
"He also talks a big game about putting America First. Please explain what part of 'America First' leads him to make Trump ties in China, not Colorado. Trump suits in Mexico, not Michigan. Trump furniture in Turkey, not Ohio. Trump picture frames in India, not Wisconsin."
This litany led to the mic-drop line of the night: "Donald Trump says he wants to make America great again. Well, he could start by actually making things in America again."
She delivered it well, but Clinton has always been more of a policy wonk than a speechmaker. She lacks the vocal palette and histrionic range of the great spellbinders, so she's never going to vibrate the rafters of a big arena.
She was, however, able to strike sunny, optimistic, patriotic notes to contrast with Trump's gloomy acceptance speech at his convention one week earlier.
Hers was a continuation of the uplift so masterfully delivered Wednesday night by President Barack Obama in a speech that prompted conservative National Review editor Rich Lowry to complain on Twitter: "American exceptionalism and greatness, shining city on hill, founding documents, etc. They're trying to take all our stuff."
Chicago Magazine associate editor Whet Moser tweeted back: "Sorry, it looked like you were done with it."
Did Clinton convert any of the tens of millions of Hillary haters out there with her speech? Of course not. They blistered her on social media throughout and, no doubt, into the wee hours. But they're not going to decide this election.
Those who will decide this election are those in the middle who've come to worry that there might be something to the Republican caricature of her as a mendacious, power-hungry ogre, and to suspect that Trump's unapologetically reckless bluster is what's needed to bring positive change to Washington.
Did she move them?
I can't channel such voters — my many reservations about Clinton are comparatively mild and my faith in Trump utterly nonexistent — but my guess is yes, a bit.
She defined herself and her opponent as best she could, and by laying out a series of fairly specific policy proposals defined the terms of the debate in the coming months.
You could ask more of a great orator, but you could not have asked for more from Hillary Clinton. She got the job done.
Twitter @EricZorn