42nd President of the United States working toward wife becoming 45th
Former President Bill Clinton stopped in Washington at the newly opened Pennsylvania Democratic Party office on 14 South Main St. in Washington Friday. Clinton encouraged supporters to campaign for Hillary Clinton for the 2016 Presidential Election.
Former President Bill Clinton addresses a crowd of supporters in Washington Friday. Clinton made various stops in Pennsylvania campaigning for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Presidential Election.
Former President Bill Clinton stops to greet Representative Brandon Neuman and his wife and daughter after giving a campaign speech Friday.
The 42nd president was back in Washington Friday, opening a campaign headquarters to help his wife’s effort to move back to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., Washington, D.C.
Bill Clinton stumped for wife Hillary on the Washington & Jefferson College campus in 2008, when she won the Pennsylvania primary but ultimately lost the Democratic nomination that year to Barack Obama.
Many analysts attributed Obama’s eventual victories then and in 2012 to organization at the ground level and get-out-the-vote efforts, and the opening of a Washington County Hillary Clinton campaign headquarters at 14 South Main St. in the Washington Trust Building packed the long, narrow room on short notice, some saying they found out only at 4 p.m. that Bill Clinton was due in Washington within the half hour.
The former president expounded on the theme, “Stronger together,” saying, “This is way more than a slogan.”
While never mentioning closed coal mines, the former president said, “Particularly in this part of the state, you’re going to run into a lot of people who don’t think they should vote for her. And I don’t want you to get mad at them. They’re our neighbors and our friends, and they’re being driven by two things: economic road rage and all these uncomfortable changes.
“People get older and they say, ‘I’ve had about all the change I can take.’ I’m thinking if you have more yesterdays than tomorrows, you ought to take better care of tomorrow. Don’t give up on anything … Can we have the kind of shared prosperity we had in the ’90s again? I believe we can.
“We can do this, but we’ve got to do it together. Tell that to people.”
Clinton said of Obama’s proposals, which has been stymied by Republicans in Congress, “I think the president has done a better job with this economy than he’s gotten credit for.
“Eight years after the crash, 80 percent of the people, after inflation, haven’t gotten a pay raise. Almost all the gains have gone to the top 1 percent. You can’t run a country that way. Hillary’s running a campaign on answers, not anger; of empowerment, not rage.
“You know what’s happening. Too many of our fellow citizens get up every day and they look in the mirror and think tomorrow is going to be just like yesterday. They feel helpless and they don’t think they can provide for their children and their grandchildren, and it makes them sick. But we all were taught at our parents’ knees that you don’t make good decisions when you’re mad. You make good decisions when you think and feel your way to the future.
“Even this crowd here is more diverse than if we had this meeting 30 years ago. We’re diverse in age, in race, in gender, and for, all I know, in religious practices.
“That campaign, ‘Make America great again’ means I’ll move you back up on the social totem pole and I’ll move somebody else down. That’s an old strategy – give somebody else the blame. What we need to do is to tear the totem pole down altogether. Let’s rise together.”
That line was met with applause, whistles and cheers. Bill Clinton ran for the nation’s top office in 1992 as the man from Hope, Ark., and two Washington & Jefferson College freshmen have been inspired to take to the streets to register voters.
Alec Ballard, 17, of Raleigh, N.C., and Emma Oroxom, 18, of Kutztown, Berks County, are political science majors. Oroxom didn’t turn 18 until this past summer, and Ballard, though he’s too young to vote, plans to volunteer with Kevin Bergen, 18, of Stroudsburg, Monroe County, for registration drives.
Bergen, who’s majoring in psychology and minoring in mathematics, said, “I’m also here because I’m interested in the psychological aspects of the conventions. Everyone here seems to be in high spirits, so I think that’s a good start.”
Seven-year-old Christina Stroop of Washington wasn’t the youngest spectator in the Trust Building storefront, but she was old enough to know there has never been a woman elected president of the United States. Does Christina think she might witness history being made Nov. 8?
“Hopefully,” she answered before she handed her drawing to the former president on which she wrote, “I love Bill” and “I love Hillary.”
George Ash of Washington, who, despite the humidity and heat created by a tightly-packed crowd, was wearing a traditional woolen Scottish bonnet and liked the shout-out Clinton gave to their common Scots-Irish ancestry.
“Most of the people in this area were Scots-Irish,” said Ash, who traces his American roots back to 1706.
Clinton noted the Dallas Morning News endorsed a Democrat for president for the first time since 1940 and referred to a report in which Mark Zandi, economic advisor to Republican 2008 presidential nominee Sen. John McCain, compared the economic plans of both major-party candidates and said her’s would create more than 10 million jobs while GOP nominee Donald Trump’s would put more than 3 million Americans out of work.
“We’ve got to live together,” Bill Clinton said before departing in a rainfall. “We’ve got to practice inclusive cooperation.”