CHICAGO — Former President Bill Clinton spoke with a raspy voice and said he may be unable to attend future Democratic conventions in a Wednesday night speech to delegates — as stunned viewers noted his hands trembling during his remarks.
Clinton, 78, served as a warm-up act for vice presidential nominee Tim Walz — along with former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro — while repeatedly reflecting upon his own mortality.
“I want to say this from the bottom of my heart, I have no idea how many more of these I’ll be able to come to. I started in ’76 and I’ve been everyone since — no, ’72. Lord, I’m getting old,” he said in an at-times extemporaneous 27-minute speech.
“Let’s cut to the chase, I am too old to gild the lily. Two days ago, I turned 78, the oldest man in my family for four generations,” he said.
In a well-received applause line, he added, “and the only personal vanity I want to assert is I’m still younger than Donald Trump,” who turned 78 in June.
Voters watching the Democratic National Convention expressed shock online at Clinton’s grizzled appearance and muted energy.
“Clinton looks way beyond his years. He is speaking slowly, raspy shaky voice… he has aged in every way,” one commentator noted on X.
“Clinton has shaky hands as he speaks. He should join Joe and go to the nursing home,” another added.
A third viewer chimed in, “Bill Clinton has lost his fastball and is sucking the energy out of the United Center.”
The 42nd commander in chief praised retiring President Biden, who is vacationing at a donor’s $37 million California ranch, saying “he voluntarily gave up political power” — without mentioning that the choice was forced by a Democratic mutiny over his perceived cognitive decline.
“I want to thank him for his courage, compassion, his class, his service, his sacrifice,” the ex-president said. “He kept the faith and he’s infected a lot of the rest of us.”
At another point, he implicitly acknowledged Democrats were relieved to be free of Biden and his lagging poll numbers against Trump, describing party members as “happy” because “we feel like a load is off our shoulders.”
Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, whose first name Clinton repeatedly mispronounced, and Minnesota Gov. Walz are “two leaders with all American but still improbable life stories, it can only happen here. Their careers, after all, started in community, courtrooms and classrooms,” he said.
The notorious fast food fiend mentioned Harris’ former job at McDonald’s — which convention speakers have repeatedly invoked this week. Her husband Doug Emhoff revealed Tuesday that he too once worked under the Golden Arches.
“I’ll be so happy when she actually enters the White House as president because she will break my record as the president who spent the most time at McDonald’s,” Clinton joked about the vice president.
Harris and Walz are “two leaders with all-American but still improbable life stories — it can only happen here. Their careers after all started in community, courtrooms and classrooms.”
Clinton also ripped Trump, whom he described as vain and “a good actor,” while warning that the Republican nominee could win if Democrats make missteps, alluding to his wife Hillary Clinton’s defeat in 2016.
“He’s like one of those tenors opening up before he walks out on stage like I did, trying to get his lungs open by singing, ‘me, me, me, me’,” Clinton said of Trump.
“We’ve seen more than one election slip away from us when we thought it couldn’t happen — when people got distracted by phony issues or overconfident.”
Shapiro, meanwhile, referred to Trump as “a man with no guardrails” in his speech and urged viewers to “defend our democracy” by electing Harris.
Pelosi, who is widely credited with helping force Biden to relinquish the nomination, gave a relatively terse 4-minute speech in which she mentioned the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot while giving a brief reference to Biden, praising him for “one of the most successful presidencies of modern times” and adding, “Thank you, Joe.”