Hillary Clinton vows to be President for ‘all America’

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on Thursday night that the challenges facing Americans demand steady leadership and a collective spirit, contrasting her character with what she described as a dangerous and volatile Donald Trump.

In the biggest speech of her more than 25-year-old career inthe public eye, Ms Clinton accepted the Democratic presidentia nomination for the November 8 election with a promise to make the United States a country that worked for everyone.

“We are clear-eyed about what our country is up against. But we are not afraid,” she said.

She presented a sharply more upbeat view of the country than her rival Mr Trump did when he was formally nominated at last week’s Republican convention. “He wantsto divide us — from the rest of the world, and from each other.”

She portrayed Trump as volatile, saying “a man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.”

While her speech lacked the electrifying qualities of President Barack Obama and a parade of other prominent Democratic speakers, Ms Clinton spoke authoritatively and with self-assurance in her pitch to the American public.

Ms Clinton said it would be her “primary mission” to create more opportunities and more good jobs with rising wages, and to confront stark choices in battling determined enemies and “threats and turbulence” around the world and at home.

“America is once again at a moment of reckoning. Powerful forces are threatening to pull us apart,” said Ms Clinton, the formersecretary of state. “No wonder people are anxious and looking for reassurance — looking for steady leadership.”

Ms Clinton, who is vying to be the first woman elected US President, called her nomination “a milestone.”

“When any barrier falls in America, for anyone, it clears the way for everyone. That’s why when there are no ceilings, the sky’s the limit,” the 68-year-old Ms Clinton said in her speech that capped the four-day nominating convention.

Becoming the first woman to win the nomination of a major political party, Ms Clinton promised to be a President for “all Americans”, whether they voted for her or not.

Making a bold play for the political centre ground in an election year that has seen the hard-right and the hard-left become louder and more shrill, Ms Clinton vowed to “be a President for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.”

“For the struggling, the striving and the successful. For those who vote for me and those who don’t. For all Americans.”

“Some people just don’t know what to make of me,” she said with a frankness that is unusual in American politics. “"The truth is, through all of these years of public service, the service part has always come easier to me than the public part.”

But addressing her image of putting policy above politics, Ms Clinton was unrepentant. “It’s true,” she said. “I sweat the details,” be it the amount of lead permissible in drinking water or the cost of prescription drugs.

"It's not just a detail if it's your kid, if it's your family," she said.