DNC 2024 | Day 3 Speeches | Bill Clinton

 Auto-transcribed on Thursday, August 22, 2024.media and text playback available on this page: https://aliceapp.ai/recordings/ekhfXOLNKsd_UIbvaJp3WB4lS67MjYZ0

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Duration: 	00:27:29 	
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Speakers:

 Bill Clinton - 100.0%

Notes:

- A presidential election is the best job interview for the greatest job in the world. Will this president bring us together or tear us apart? We, the people, we have to make a decision about these kind of questions. In 2024, we got a pretty clear choice, it seems to me, Kamala Harris for the people.- Kamala Harris has already made her first presidential decision. Do you want to build a strong economy from the bottom up, in the middle out? Or do you spend the next four years talking about crowd size?- I'll be doing my part. You do yours. I'll see you when we're making a real joyful nose noise. When the votes are counted. God bless you, and God bless America.

[00:00:00]  Bill Clinton 
Thank you.

[00:00:05]   
Thank you.

[00:00:09]   
Whoa.

[00:00:17]   
Let me ask you first.

[00:00:21]   
Mhm. After the last two days, aren't you proud to be a Democrat?

[00:00:33]   
And I am very grateful to the Republicans and independents that have joined us who have been up here on the stage. And I hope they feel better about it now because I've seen all these things that even I have to be reminded of from time to time when I get my spirits down. I love seeing the Obamas here. I love seeing President Biden. And I thought Hillary gave a great speech, too.

[00:01:07]   
And I love.

[00:01:15]   
But I love seeing all these young leaders. A bunch of them are coming up after me. They look better, they sound better, and they'll be exciting.

[00:01:30]   
I do want to say one word about President Biden. Remember, he had an improbable turn that made him president.

[00:01:48]   
And we were in the middle of a pandemic and an economic crash.

[00:01:55]   
He healed our sick and put the rest of us back to work, and he strengthened our alliances for peace and security. He stood up for Ukraine, trying desperately to get a ceasefire in the middle east.

[00:02:20]   
And then he did something that's really hard for a politician to do. He voluntarily gave up political, uh, power, and George Washington knew that, and he did it. And he set the standard for us, serving two terms before it was mandatory. It helped his legacy, and it will enhance Joe Biden's legacy.

[00:02:58]   
And it's a stark contrast to what goes on in the other party. So I want to thank him for his courage, compassion, his class, his service, his sacrifice.

[00:03:18]   
Joe Biden, thank you.

[00:03:33]   
He kept the faith, and he's infected a lot of the rest of us. Now, let's cut to this chase. I am too old to gild the lily.

[00:03:46]   
Two days ago, I turned 78, the oldest man in my family of four generations.

[00:03:55]   
And the only personal vanity I want to assert, ah. Is I'm still younger than Donald Trump.

[00:04:08]   
Last night.

[00:04:13]   
Last night, in what I thought was a very moving series of episodes, we nominated Kamala Harris, uh, and Tim Waltz.

[00:04:29]   
Just think about that. Two leaders with all american but still improbable life stories.

[00:04:39]   
It could only happen here. Their careers, after all, started in community courtrooms and classrooms. Two leaders who spent a lifetime getting the good job done.

[00:04:55]   
One of the things that I've noticed over my increasingly long life that, uh, is that a presidential election is unique in several ways. First of all, it's the greatest job interview for the greatest job in the world.

[00:05:15]   
Secondly, the constitution says we, the people, get to do the hiring.

[00:05:25]   
And the third thing is that every four years, we get to change the requirements for the job.

[00:05:38]   
So here's what I'm thinking, because I try to apply this in every election. Will this president take us backward or forward?

[00:05:52]   
Will this president give our kids a brighter future?

[00:05:59]   
Depends. Will this president bring us together or tear us apart? Will the president increase the peace, security, and stability, freedom that we enjoy and extend it to others as we can? We, the people, we have to make a decision about these kind of questions. And every four years, it's a little different because, uh, the people come at the candidates, come at the candidates, and they say, as they're saying now, here are our problems.

[00:06:43]   
Solve them. Here are our opportunities. Seize them. Um, here are our fears. Ease them.

[00:06:54]   
Um, here are our dreams. Help them come true.

[00:07:10]   
A president can answer that call by saying, I'll do my part, uh, but you have to help me. We have to work together. Or you can dodge what needs to be done by dividing, distracting and diverting us. So, in 2024, we got a pretty clear choice, it seems to me, Kamala Harris for the people and the other guy who's proved even more than the first go around, that, uh, he's about me, myself, and I.

[00:08:05]   
I know which one I like better for our country.

[00:08:13]   
Kamala Harris will work to solve our problems, seize our opportunities, ease our fears, and make sure every single american, however they vote, has a chance to chase their dreams. You know, when she was young, she worked at McDonalds, and she greeted every person with that thousand watt smile and said, how can I help you? Now shes at the pinnacle of power, and shes still asking, how can I help you?

[00:09:00]   
I will be. I'll be so happy when she actually enters the White House as president, because she will break my record as the president, uh, who spent the most time at McDonald's now, but we got an election to win. And remember, we've got a guy that's pretty good at what he does. Donald Trump has been a paragon of consistency. He's still dividing, he's still blaming, he's still belittling other people.

[00:09:49]   
He creates chaos, and then he sort of curates it as if it were precious art.

[00:10:00]   
Let me say, not a single day goes by, even though I've been gone for well over 23 years from the White House. Not a day goes by that I don't thank the Lord for the chance I had to serve, uh, and what it meant.

[00:10:23]   
And one of the reasons.

[00:10:29]   
Thank you.

[00:10:39]   
One of the reasons, one of the reasons I love the job so much is that in the toughest times, even on the darkest days, if you tried hard enough, there was always something good you, uh, could do for somebody else. Now, some days, that's not easy to do. You've got to deal with all these emergencies, or there's something going on here, there yonder. But Kamala Harris is the only candidate in this race who has the vision, the experience, the temperament, the will, and, yes, the sheer joy to get something done.

[00:11:38]   
What does her opponent do with his voice? He mostly talks about himself. Right. So the next time you hear him, don't count the lies. Count the eyes.

[00:12:01]   
Count the eye.

[00:12:05]   
His vendettas, his vengeance, his complaints, his conspiracies.

[00:12:15]   
He's like one of those tenors opening up before he walks out on stage, like I did, trying to get his lungs open by singing me m me, m me mehden. M m m when Kamala, uh, Harris is president every day, we'll begin with you, you, you, you.

[00:12:51]   
So we gotta ask ourselves the questions if we're gonna hire a president. Do you want to build a strong economy from the bottom up, in the middle out? Or do you want to spend the next four years talking about, um, crowd size?

[00:13:16]   
You're going to have a hard time believing this, but so help me, I triple checked it. Since the end of the cold war in 1989, America has created about 50, uh, 1 million new jobs.

[00:13:38]   
I swear, I take this three times. Even I couldn't believe it. What's the score? Democrats 50 Republicans. Wondez.

[00:14:01]   
Well, uh, I'm glad that we've got a championship winning coach on our team, but even the most, uh, limited of us in what we know about football or any other sport knows that if you're not 50 and the other side's got one, you're ahead.

[00:14:47]   
What about affordable housing? It's a terrible problem in America now. We need more and affordable health care. That's why the Democrats put a limit on monthly payments for insulin and a $2,000 a year out of pocket limit and are trying to cover more drugs by bargaining for prices.

[00:15:16]   
We need more financing for small businesses.

[00:15:21]   
We need still to strengthen our alliances.

[00:15:28]   
I almost croaked in the first debate of this election season when President Trump said, uh, nobody respected America anymore like they did when he was president. Wait, wait. And with a straight face.

[00:15:54]   
Look, you gotta give him, he's a good actor. With a straight face he cited as evidence of the respect that existed for us when he was there. The presidents of North Korea and Russia.

[00:16:18]   
I'd rather have the people who respect us now. And one of the things, one of the things is when you send a signal to the other countries, you want them to know whether they agree with you or not, at least that you're on the level. Here's where you are and what you believe. What are they supposed to make to these endless tributes to the late, great Hannibal Lecter?

[00:17:02]   
I mean, President Obama once gave me the greatest, great honor of saying I was the explainer in chief. Folks. I thought and thought about it, and, uh, I don't know what to say.

[00:17:26]   
Like Hakeem Jeffreys, I, too, want an America that's more joyful, more inclusive, more future focused. Just think what a burden it's been on us, uh, to get up day after day after day after day, buried in meaningless, hot rhetoric when there's so many opportunities out there, so many problems that need to be solved. I want that. And that's the America. Kamala Harris, she's already made her first presidential decision, and she knocked it out of the park when she asked, uh, Governor Tim Waltz to be nominee for vice president.

[00:18:27]   
As they used to say, uh, when I was a young man growing up in Arkansas, you do not have to be all broke out with brilliance. You just look at Tim Walsh, listen to him follow his record as a teacher, as a coach in the National Guard, as a congressman, where he was the only Democrat, save one, elected in that district in more than 100 years. And he stayed a long time. And then he became a great governor.

[00:19:15]   
By all accounts, he was a crack shot who had the courage among his rural constituents to say, we do not need these assault weapons available to people who can kill our kids in school.

[00:19:48]   
So, armed with her first decision, Kamala Harris confronts an interesting dilemma. We're going to walk out of here feeling pretty good. I think.

[00:20:06]   
We've got energy. We are happy. We feel like a load's off our shoulders, and we know we're just being asked to fight the same fight that the forces of progress have had to fight for 250 years in the face of stiff and often violent opposition.

[00:20:34]   
We have to find a way to go forward together, where we, the people, make our union more perfect.

[00:20:46]   
So that's a good thing. How could we possibly lose? Kamala Harris has fought for kids her whole life that were left out and left behind. She's taken on gangs, trafficking across the border. She's fought to protect the rights of homeowners.

[00:21:09]   
She's been our leader in the fight for reproductive freedoms. And we know a majority of the american people are, uh, with us on that.

[00:21:22]   
And she's gained an invaluable amount of experience as vice president, advancing our values and interests around the world.

[00:21:33]   
She's already said she's going to work really hard to make sure that no american working full time lives in poverty or has to worry about their children living in poverty.

[00:21:51]   
He says that we got to make home ownership an achievable dream for everyone, not just a privilege.

[00:22:01]   
She said that it, and this meant a lot to me, that she would protect everybody's right to vote, whether or not they voted for her. They were citizens, and they deserved the right to vote.

[00:22:23]   
The other day, her opponent implied that it's his peedy vote. If people voted one more time, they'd be able to rig it from now on and they wouldn't have to vote again.

[00:22:35]   
You think they're kidding? But I know a lot of these folks, and most of them are really good people, but some of them think that they are bound to dominate America politically, economically, and socially, and they have to use politics to do it, and they should rig the system. I don't believe that. And so, uh, here's what I want to tell you. We've seen more than one election slip away from us when we thought it couldn't happen, when people got distracted by phony issues or overconfident.

[00:23:27]   
This is a brutal, tough business. I want you to be happy. One of the reasons that president to be Harris doing so well, as it were, all so happy.

[00:23:52]   
But you should never underestimate your adversary. And these people are really good at distracting us, at triggering doubt, at triggering buyers remorse, as, uh, the Obamas said so eloquently last night. They are human. You know, they are bound to make a mistake now and then.

[00:24:19]   
We got to be tough. And so, as somebody who spends a lot of time in small towns, in rural areas, in New York and Arkansas and other places, I want, I urge you to talk to all your neighbors. I urge you to meet people where they are. I urge you not to demean them, but not to pretend you don't disagree with them. If you do, treat them with respect, just the way you'd like them to treat you.

[00:25:04]   
Ask for their help, and then follow our leader, Kamala, and ask them, how can I, uh, help you?

[00:25:15]   
We Democrats right now have a lot of hay in the barn. We've got massive achievements, massive advances, but there's still a lot of slips between today and election day that we have to navigate. And so I want to say this from the bottom of my heart. I have no idea how many or more of these I'll be able to come to. I started in 76, and I've been to everyone since.

[00:25:55]   
But no.

[00:25:59]   
72. Lord, I'm getting old. But here's what I want you to know.

[00:26:11]   
If you vote for this team, if you can get them elected and let them bring in his breath of fresh air, you will be proud of it for the rest of your life. Your children will be proud of it. Your grandchildren will be proud of it.

[00:26:50]   
From, um, a man who once had the honor to be called in this convention, the man from hope. We need. We need Kamala Harris, the president of joy, to lead us.

[00:27:15]   
I'll be doing my part. You do yours. I'll see you when we're making a real joyful nose noise. When the votes are counted. God bless you, and God bless America.