HILLARY CLINTON called her race against Donald Trump the highest-stakes US presidential race in her lifetime, as she rallied with her running mate, Sen. Tim Kaine, for the first time as the Democratic nominees for president and vice president.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that every election in our democracy is important in its own way,” Clinton told a crowd at Temple University in Philadelphia the morning after accepting her party’s nomination. “But I can’t think of an election that is more important, certainly in my lifetime. It’s not so much that I’m on the ticket. It’s because of the stark choice that is posed to America in this election.”
Clinton and Kaine were kicking off a three-day bus tour in Pennsylvania and Ohio infused with a message about the economy and jobs.
Giddy and sleep-deprived, Clinton, 68, said she’d been up late celebrating because “it was just hard to go to sleep! It was so exciting. But it was also kind of overwhelming. I take deeply and with great humility the responsibility this campaign imposes on us.”
“As of tomorrow, we have 100 days to make our case to America,” she said, sharing the stage with her husband, former President Bill Clinton, Kaine and his wife, Anne Holton, former Virginia secretary of education.
Kaine told the crowd, “I’m so glad to be on this ticket. It’s a history-making ticket.”
Difficult terrain
The bus tour runs through two of the biggest battleground states, and through Rust Belt cities that may prove some of the most difficult terrain for Clinton in her race against Republican Donald Trump.
Before Clinton took the stage, organizers blasted Sheryl Crow’s “Woman in the White House” in recognition of her achievement as the first woman to win a major US party’s presidential nomination.
The tour will focus on an economic message, including Clinton’s pledge to make the largest job-creating investment since World War II within her first 100 days in office, and highlighting Trump’s record of outsourcing manufacturing for ties, clothing and furniture that carries his name.
The message is aimed at voters in western Pennsylvania and eastern and central Ohio, where Trump is seeking to sway blue-collar Democrats.
“He doesn’t make a thing in America except bankruptcies,” Clinton said.
Lingering resentments
Clinton’s bus tour included a factory stop at toy manufacturer K’NEX in Hatfield, Pennsylvania, whose product line includes engineering sets targeted at girls.
As a general-election candidate, Clinton is still confronting lingering resentments within the Democratic Party among supporters of her primary rival Bernie Sanders.
In Harrisburg Clinton touted a new study by economist Mark Zandi, a former adviser to Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, that found Clinton’s economic proposals, if fully implemented, could lead to 10.4 million new jobs through 2020, 3.2 million more than if no changes were made.
Clinton said that contrasts with an earlier finding by Zandi suggesting the economy could face a “lengthy recession” under Trump’s economic proposals, reducing jobs by as many as 3.5 million over a four-year term.
“He has cost people jobs all over our country,” Clinton said of Trump. “He talks about ‘Make America Great Again’ but he doesn’t make a single thing in America.”
Clinton didn’t mention that Zandi’s report, meanwhile, said it is “unrealistic” to think Congress would pass all of her proposals.
Voters in both parties say they are mistrustful of Clinton over controversies in her public life, including the investigation into her use of a private e-mail system while she served as President Barack Obama’s secretary
of state.