During a visit to McKeesport on Tuesday, former President Bill Clinton confessed, “I’m not very good at giving speeches anymore. I just try to explain things.”
And while Clinton has long been renowned for his ability to try to break down complicated topics into a folksy explanation, he admitted that Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump has his own approach to simplifying issues.
“He's making an argument that goes something like this: Sun rose this morning — I did it,” Clinton said. “It rained yesterday — it never would have happened if I was president. It's Biden's fault.”
“If you want a horn-tooter you have gotta have Trump,” Clinton said of Trump’s self-aggrandizement. “He's the best horn-tooter I've ever seen. And I've known him a long time.”
Clinton said Trump takes credit for positive economic performance during his four years in office, without taking responsibility for the problems he created during the COVID pandemic. He said Trump is blaming Biden for inflation that was caused by factors that include pandemic supply disruptions — while not giving Biden credit for bringing inflation back down, particularly on energy prices.
“It's the first time since the ’50s when we produce more energy of all kinds than we consume,” he said. “And finally the price of oil is coming down.”
Clinton walked the crowd through a list of Harris’ policy proposals on housing, taxes and health care and explained with short quips and anecdotes why he believes they are better than Trump’s. “The Democratic plan costs less than half of Trump’s plan,” he said.
Harris is in a better position to fight inflation, he said, because she had taken on corporations through a California price-gouging law when she was the state’s attorney general. “That’s the only practical solution anyone has made,” he said.
By contrast, Clinton said, Trump blames his opponents for his own mistakes, the kind of habit that may help Trump as a candidate but hurts him as a president.
“It is not a performance art being president,” Clinton said, then slamming his fist down. “It is a job.”
Clinton’s husky voice barely projected to the whole audience even with the help of speakers — a reminder that at age 78 he is not the indefatigable campaigner he once was. One of Clinton’s first stories was about an old man who once told him, “Bill, it doesn’t take long to live a life.”
Clinton and several other speakers referenced visits by Clinton and his wife Hilary during previous presidential election cycles. The two once drew crowds of thousands that dwarfed the roughly 250 people who heard Clinton Tuesday.
Lt. Gov Austin Davis, the McKeesport native who introduced Clinton, underlined one of the Democratic party’s core messages on abortion.
“About a year ago, I became a dad for the first time to a baby girl named Harper,” Davis said. “And I want my daughter to have the same rights and freedoms that her mothers enjoyed and that her grandmother fought for to make sure she has the right to make her own.”
Clinton said it was important, in the final days of the election, to approach undecided voters with an “open hand not a clenched fist.” Earlier in the day, Clinton said, a person in the crowd in Greensburg shouted that the country doesn’t need Communists in government. And Clinton said he responded to the man, “I agree.”
“Ask people if they will talk to you” to discuss why Democratic plans for health care, education, taxes and the economy are better, Clinton advised. “And the most important thing is we're for inclusive tribalism, not divisive tribalism.”
