Day 4 of the Democratic National Convention: History, the Main Case

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania — The final day of the Democratic National Convention was predictable three days ago, or even eight years ago: Hillary Clinton’s case to be President of the United States rests largely on the fact that she is a woman.

There was one other argument put forth in a convincing matter, and it was made by the bereaved parents of Captain Humayun Khan, a soldier in the U.S. Army who was killed while saving his fellow soldiers in Iraq in 2004. They were a living rebuke to Trump’s proposal to bar Muslim immigration until the government can better screen out potential terrorists.

In a way, they were an answer to Patricia Smith, the mother of one of the Americans killed at Benghazi, who spoke against Clinton at the Republican National Convention last week. Regardless, the Khans offered the most poignant moment of the entire four-day event, and an argument that Trump could not lead the kind of nation for which their son had sacrificed his life. (The impact of their speech was somewhat diluted a few minutes later when anti-war delegates heckled Gen. John Allen and other veterans.)

But much of the rest of the evening was anticlimactic. Clinton herself gave a rather pedestrian, mediocre speech, whose most humanizing line was the admission: “I get it that some people just don’t know what to make of me.” She was also heckled by die-hard Bernie Sanders fans, and some delegates in the California section unfurled a giant “#WIKILEAKS” banner, referring to the e-mail releases that showed the Democratic National Committee colluded with the Clinton campaign in the primary. A dozen or so members of the Oregon delegation also walked out in protest against Clinton’s insufficiently left-wing policies.

Clinton lacks, somehow, the ability to inspire. Yet anyone with a daughter could not fail to be moved — even for a moment, despite the deep deficiencies of the candidate — at the spectacle of thousands cheering for a woman to be the next president.

That is, ultimately what this election was destined to be about: whether Clinton’s flaws outweigh this next chance at history.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. His new book, See No Evil: 19 Hard Truths the Left Can’t Handle, is available from Regnery through Amazon. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.