NORTH CAROLINA–(ENEWSPF)–July 26, 2016. In Charlotte on Monday, Hillary Clinton highlighted a new nationwide drive to register and commit to vote more than 3 million voters to be a part of this campaign and reiterated her plans to build an economy that works for everyone—not just those at the top. She featured an online voter registration tool in both English and Spanish, encouraged supporters to volunteer for a voter registration shift, and noted that Hillary for America hosted more than 500 registration events across the country last week. Pointing to Trump’s dark and divisive comments at the GOP convention last week, Clinton said, “I am very excited about contrasting our vision and values with what we saw from Donald Trump and the Republicans, because this election poses such a stark choice, doesn’t it? […] Donald Trump wants to take his dark, divisive, dangerous campaign to a new level. He offered a lot of fear, bigotry and smear during his convention, but I listened really hard to hear any specific plans about anything that would help any American get ahead and stay ahead in our economy.”
Clinton’s remarks, as transcribed, are below:
“Thank you all so much. It is so exciting – it is so exciting to be here again. I don’t – were any of you with President Obama and I when we were here before? Well, I’m excited about being here a few hours before our convention opens. I want to thank Kelly McKinnon for those really wonderful words of introduction, for being a public school teacher right here in Mecklenburg County. I want to thank your wonderful mayor, Mayor Jennifer Roberts. I want to thank members of your city council who are here from Charlotte, members of the North Carolina house and senate, and I want to give a shout-out to your young chair of the county Democrats, Matt Newton. And I also just want to mention my friend and your congresswoman, Representative Alma Adams, who will be – who will be on the ticket with me in November, and we need to keep electing Democrats to the U.S. House and Senate.
Well, my friends, I’ll tell you, we’re going to have a very different kind of convention than they had last week. Watching the divisiveness, the finger-pointing, the fear-mongering, woo, I’ll tell you, it is a sight to behold – talking about building walls, a very different vision about bringing Americans together. Well, I’ll tell you what, you’re going to hear from some great Americans at our convention this week – who represent not only the diversity of the Democratic Party, but the diversity of the United States of America.
I am very excited about contrasting our vision and values with what we saw from Donald Trump and the Republicans, because this election poses such a stark choice, doesn’t it? I mean, we always believe our elections are important, and that’s at the heart of our democracy; it’s how we make decisions, and people have fought and died for the right to vote and to express themselves. But I think it is fair to say this election, boy, it puts everything into such a stark difference. Donald Trump wants to take his dark, divisive, dangerous campaign to a new level. He offered a lot of fear, bigotry and smear during his convention, but I listened really hard to hear any specific plans about anything that would help any American get ahead and stay ahead in our economy.
I listened really hard about how we’re going to bring people together in our nation. I listened really hard to hear anything that I thought would make a difference in the future we’re trying to build together. Instead, what we heard from Donald Trump after his litany of everything that he said is wrong with America – which, personally, I took offense at. I don’t know how you run for president of the United States if you spend all your time trash-talking about the United States. But then I was particularly struck, after this long list of everything that was wrong with our country, some of which just offended me – calling our military a disaster? Raising doubts about whether or not we’re still the strongest country, the best economy in the world? Do we have challenges? Of course we do, but we’re not going to solve them by talking us down. We’re going to solve them by rolling our sleeves up and getting to work together.
But that is not Donald Trump. Since he believes America is in decline, he sort of sets it up as the reality personality on TV that he has been and he says, ‘I alone can fix it.’ I really – I couldn’t believe he said that. I don’t know any member of our military who says, ‘I alone can win this battle.’ I don’t know any individual police officer or firefighter who says, ‘I alone – I alone can prevent crime or put out that fire.’ I don’t know any teacher who says, ‘I alone, with no help from anybody else, can help my students learn more, achieve more.’ I don’t know any doctor or nurse who says, ‘You know what? I can fix it all alone – we don’t need any other people to help. We don’t need anyone. I alone can fix it.’
Well, that’s just not what I believe. Now, if you believe that we need to elect someone who actually says that, that is your absolute right. But my reading of American history suggests we actually fought a revolution so that we wouldn’t have one person making all the decisions for us. We actually created economic opportunities by people working hard, starting and building businesses from small to medium to large, employing people, coming up with new ideas, not waiting around for one person to tell us what we could do.
So I found his whole approach to be contrary to who we are as Americans, because if you really analyze it, when someone says, ‘I alone can fix it,’ that’s treating us, the American people, like we’re somehow helpless, like we don’t know what’s good for us, that we’re somehow dependent upon a big guy to show up and tell us what to do. Well, that raises even more questions because I don’t particularly think we want to follow his business example. Bankrupt six times. Refusing to pay workers and small business for the work and services they performed. I don’t think that’s much of an example for the rest of us. I think, instead, we are stronger together and we’re going to work to build our future together.”
AUDIENCE: “Hillary! Hillary! Hillary!”
HILLARY CLINTON: “And you know, the other thing that struck me about his speech was when he said, ‘I am your voice.’ Now, look, I will admit, maybe he does speak for some people, but I think it’s kind of hard to imagine him speaking for immigrants, for people with disabilities, for African Americans, for Latinos, for women, or even for working people who he has a history of stiffing, not supporting. So there may be some folks who buy into his dark, negative vision, and think he maybe could be their voice, but I don’t think that represents the vast majority of Americans. So we’re going to have a convention this week that highlights success stories, people who have overcome terrible odds, people who have really contributed to helping everybody get ahead, not just themselves. People who stand for America’s values, who are fighting for an economy that works for everybody, not just those at the top. People who are fighting for affordable college, and a way to pay down your college debts.
People who want to make sure that healthcare is affordable for everybody in America. People who want to get down the cost of prescription drugs, do more on mental health and addiction, to help more folks. People who want criminal justice reform, and know that we’ve got to work together to get it – who want to end the era of mass incarceration, provide more diversion and second chance programs. People who believe that our economy will actually prosper if we have comprehensive immigration reform with a path to citizenship. And people who believe that we must have common sense gun safety measures to save lives.
We also have people who have served our country in uniform who know we should not be trashing our alliances. They are one of our biggest assets. America has alliances that bring us more friends than adversaries. And we should stick together. We’ll hear from people who recognize that strongmen, dictators, authoritarians don’t always care about America. In fact, they often have agendas contrary to our views. And we will hear from people who ran toward danger, who helped save lives, dealing with the tragedies and the horrible events that our country has faced, because they, too, believe that they want to be part of something bigger than themselves.
Now, I will tell you this. I have a very different – a very different vision of what we can do together, and I have pledged to spend every single day in this campaign laying out that vision, fighting for that vision, and then going into the White House and realizing that vision with real results that improve people’s lives. But I’ll tell you – here’s what I know. I can’t fix it by myself. I need your help in the campaign, and then I’m going to continue to need your help to produce the kind of change that America needs.
Now, last week, our campaign launched a drive to get 3 million more Americans registered to vote and committed to vote in November. We hosted more than 500 events across the country. We created an online one-stop shopping voter registration site. We put it in both English and Spanish. Because if you’re a citizen of America, we want you to vote in this election. Now, this is especially important for North Carolina. Because you have seen some of the most aggressive efforts to constrict voting anywhere in our country. Efforts to undermine young people’s right to vote, especially college students. To suppress the votes of people of color, of the elderly, of people with disabilities.
Now, we can complain, or we can stand up against it, and get people to vote with your help. I want to commend Reverend Barber and the Moral Mondays Movement. Because this is not only about the presidential election. This is about voting for people who want everybody to vote, up and down the ticket here, in North Carolina. So I hope each and every one will join in this campaign. You’ll contribute what you can, volunteer however many hours you possibly can offer. And I want to tell you, we are hiring full-time organizers in North Carolina. So if that is something you’d be interested in, please go to HillaryClinton.com to find out more about how you might become one of our organizers.
And most importantly, sign up before you leave today to register voters. We are going to fight for every single vote in every place in America. We are running a 50-state campaign. Now, clearly, there are some states that will get more attention than others, and you know what, North Carolina is one of them. President Obama had a great victory here in 2008. I think it’s time that we turned North Carolina blue again. So, my friends, come join us, be part of this campaign. Let’s make our future what it should be. God bless you.”
Source: http://www.hillaryclinton.com
