PHILADELPHIA ― Hillary Clinton has a reputation for being hardworking, over-disciplined and a bit stiff. But her daughter, Chelsea, painted a different picture of the Democratic presidential nominee on Thursday ― that of the “kind, thoughtful, hilarious” soccer mom.
The younger Clinton emphasized in her primetime speech at the Democratic National Convention that Hillary never sacrificed her role as a mother to be a politician. She was “always, always there,” and the two were very close.
“Every soccer and softball game. Every piano and dance recital. Countless Saturdays spent finding shapes in the clouds, and Sundays at our Methodist church and local library,” Clinton said. “We’d make up stories about what we’d do if we ever met a triceratops ― in my opinion, the friendliest dinosaur, though my mom would remind me that, friendly or not, it’s still a dinosaur.”
As Ivanka Trump did in her speech at the Republican National Convention, Clinton laid out a defense of a progressive agenda: Ivanka touted equal pay and workplace fairness, while Chelsea touched on issues like child care and LGBT rights. But unlike the former, who was forced to outline a reality that seemed at odds with her father’s policy, the latter was able to make the pitch for these policies through the arc of her mother’s story.
Clinton painted a picture of Hillary dropping everything to blow kisses and read Chugga-Chugga Choo-Choo with her granddaughter, and leaving notes for a younger Chelsea to open each day her mother was traveling for work, which “thankfully didn’t happen very often.” She said she and Hillary loved to watch “Pride and Prejudice” during family movie nights.
“That’s who my mom is,” Clinton said. “A listener and a doer, a woman driven by compassion, by faith, by kindness, a fierce sense of justice and a heart full of love.”
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