Former President Bill Clinton takes on Trump, protesters at Richmond rally

By Kellen Browning
GSS Correspondent

RICHMOND, California — Former President Bill Clinton stumped for wife and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton Monday, finishing his pitch just minutes before the Associated Press announced that Mrs. Clinton has become the first woman ever to clinch the Democratic presidential nomination in the U.S.

Hillary Clinton becomes the Democratic Party’s presumptive presidential nominee. https://t.co/40Jz20OX1q pic.twitter.com/nY2loMiOZq

— AP Politics (@AP_Politics) June 7, 2016

Bill Clinton addressed a vocal crowd of about 300 at the Richmond Art Center for about 40 minutes on the fourth of his five Bay Area campaign stops. The 42nd president was well-received by the crowd — for the most part.

Supporters of Vermont Senator and Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders turned out along with Clinton fans, picketing outside the art center entrance with signs displaying slogans such as “Clinton works for billionaires not you!” and chanting “Hey ho, Bernie is the way to go.”

After introductions by local politicians, including Richmond Mayor Tom Butt — who proudly noted that “this is the first time that a president or former president of the United States has ever been in Richmond” — Clinton addressed the audience.

Twice, protesters’ yells from the crowd caused Clinton to pause and address the hecklers directly. The first instance dealt with the controversial Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which Clinton signed and which critics claim led to an era of unfair targeting of young African Americans and mass incarcerations.

Clinton admitted the law “overdid” incarcerations, but pointed to low crime and murder rates as achievements of the legislation.

“I never claimed that it was perfect,” Clinton said, also noting that Sanders voted for the bill. “I just claimed that when you make laws, you have to decide if you’re gonna make the perfect the enemy of the good — and there’s a lot of people walking around alive today because we had the lowest gun death rate in 47 years, and I’m proud of that.”

The second protester was more persistent in his interruptions and queries about the Clintons’ Wall Street connections and other examples of legislation passed during Bill Clinton’s two terms from 1993 to 2001, at one point prompting Clinton to exclaim, “I’m giving you three answers … now afterwards let me finish my speech.”

Still, the former president deftly defended his record.

“I enjoyed (Clinton’s response), because that shut ‘em down,” Carolyn Spencer, 64, said after the rally. ” ‘Cause they couldn’t keep going as long as he answered the question, so I think he did a good job on that.”

Bill Clinton spent the day before Tuesday’s California primary in the San Francisco Bay Area, where Bernie Sanders also campaigned, while Hillary Clinton spent the day in southern California, including Compton and Long Beach.

Also on Monday, CNN reported that Bill Clinton’s half-brother Roger was arrested Sunday night in Redondo Beach, California, for driving under the influence of alcohol:

Roger Clinton, younger half-brother of former president, arrested on charge of drunken driving.https://t.co/TbGl4THmiE

— The Associated Press (@AP) June 6, 2016

Expectation is growing that tomorrow’s New Jersey primary will put Hillary Clinton over the magic number of 2,383 required for the Democratic nomination. In addition to California, five states will hold presidential primaries tomorrow, including Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota (Democratic primary only) and South Dakota. Hillary Clinton won the Puerto Rico primary last Sunday, coming within 26 delegates of being declared the presumptive nominee for her party.

The Associated Press announcement that Clinton has secured enough delegates to clinch the nomination includes superdelegates, who are unbound and do not vote until the Democratic National Convention in July, but have verbally committed to Clinton in overwhelming numbers. And that prompted pushback from some other journalistic quarters.

“Since (Clinton’s) 548 superdelegates won’t actually cast their votes until the convention in July, it’s premature for journalists to act as if they have, in fact, already voted,” wrote Bill Mitchell, a former faculty member at the Poynter Institute, a nonprofit journalism school based in St. Petersburg, Florida.

In Richmond, Bill Clinton’s legendary charisma, humor and good-naturedness were on display, impressing Sanders supporters — if not enough to change their votes.

“I think he’s a great orator,” said Guadalupe Morales, a recent Brown University grad. “He’s been famous for years for knowing how to speak so eloquently,”

Though she jumped at the opportunity to hear the former president speak, Morales will be voting for Sanders tomorrow.

“I feel like he’s someone who … can relate with younger folks,” the 22-year-old said. “I’m a millennial, so I feel like for a lot of us he speaks more to what we want.”

Though Clinton spent time talking about lowering college tuition and mentioned young people in the crowd, there were few to be seen, underscoring the difficulty that Hillary Clinton’s campaign has had in connecting with younger voters.

One that the campaign has attracted, however, is Solano Community College sophomore Kellen Sillanpaa, who has already mailed in his vote for Clinton and explained his reasoning behind bucking the youth voter trend.

“I don’t think that a lot of (Sanders’) policies are gonna gain much traction in a Senate and a House that are controlled by Republicans,” said Sillanpaa, an incoming University of Pennsylvania transfer student.

As for specific policy differences, Sillanpaa thinks Clinton’s stance on free public college is more pragmatic than Sanders’.

“I think that a lot of people do already qualify for free college that need it, and I think a lot of people don’t need it,” he said. “We need more help, but I don’t think everybody needs (college) to be free.”

When not responding to protesters and wooing youth, Clinton went after presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, saying that Trump’s famous slogan, “Make America Great Again,” is code for rolling back the country’s economy and race relations to where they were 50 years ago.

“Making America great again says that we stopped being great,” he said. “I don’t agree with that.”

Clinton also positioned the campaign as a battle between two competing philosophies: building walls and building bridges.

“(Hillary) has spent a lifetime as a bridge builder,” he said.

—Featured photo: Former President Bill Clinton addresses a protester asking about presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s connections to Wall Street at a campaign rally in the courtyard of the Richmond Art Center in Richmond, Calif., on Monday, June 6. Photo by Nina Shields for Global Student Square. Correspondent Kellen Browning of Davis Senior High School was named national high school journalist of the year in April and will attend Pomona College in Claremont, California, this fall. Email Browning at kellenbrowning@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter @kellen_browning.