Democrats meeting to nominate Clinton today

US Democrats converge on the City of Brotherly Love to elevate Hillary Clinton this coming week as the party’s nominee who will battle Republican Donald Trump in 2016’s presidential election.

The Democratic National Convention gavels in on Monday in Philadelphia with the party more unified than the Republicans, whose fissures were laid bare this week as they confirmed brash billionaire Trump as their flagbearer.
But frustrations are nevertheless swirling as delegates bicker over the Democratic nominating process and new hiccups over Clinton camp e-mails.
Clinton is perhaps the most predictable person to launch a campaign in decades, so she will need to cast herself as the race’s energetic optimist who can push the country forward.
“Next week in Philadelphia we will offer a very different vision for our country,” she pledged. “One that is about building bridges, not walls, embracing the diversity that makes our country great.”
Her quest received a boost Saturday when she introduced Tim Kaine of Virginia as her running mate, a savvy Spanish-speaking US senator with a bright smile but “a backbone of steel,” according to Clinton.
Kaine “is everything Donald Trump and (Republican running mate) Mike Pence are not,” she said.
The 58-year-old Kaine, from a crucial battleground state, delivered a rousing speech in Miami, Florida, laying out sharp contrasts between Clinton and the Republican nominee.
“She doesn’t insult people, she listens to them,” he told the Miami crowd. “She doesn’t trash our allies, she respects them. And she’ll always have our backs.”
The convention gavels in at 4:00 p.m. (2000 GMT) Monday in Philadelphia’s Wells Fargo Center, with First Lady Michelle Obama and Clinton’s former rival in the primaries, Senator Bernie Sanders, scheduled as the headliners.
Former President Bill Clinton is the star on Tuesday, while President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden take the stage on Wednesday.
There is considerably more firepower than at the Republican confab in Cleveland, where the former Bush presidents steered clear, as did former Republican presidential nominees John McCain (2008) and Mitt Romney (2012).
Even as the party basked in the seeming lovefest at the first Clinton-Kaine rally, a whiff of scandal likely to rattle party unity emerged.

Source: Arab News