The Angle

The Angle: First of Her Kind Edition

Slate’s daily newsletter on Hillary Clinton’s nomination, the Democratic National Convention’s approach to criminal justice, and Trump’s Russia “joke.”

An attendee holds a phone with a Hillary Clinton–themed case on the third day of the Democratic National Convention at the Wells Fargo Center, Wednesday in Philadelphia.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

On the night Hillary Clinton became the first female presidential nominee of a major party, Bill Clinton delivered a “slow-burn love letter” of a speech about his wife, Dahlia Lithwick writes. “As long and detailed and rambling as the speech was, it’s what every woman who has ever had a job wishes her husband would say about her,” Lithwick argues. “She did this, and got no credit. She did that and got no credit. She worked and worked and worked—usually for men with important names. She got no credit, but I am crediting her now.” (Will this work to humanize Hillary? Jamelle Bouie has some doubts.)

On Tuesday night, the Clinton campaign articulated a new Democratic stance on criminal justice reform, with speeches from Eric Holder, Pittsburgh’s police Chief Cameron McLay, and seven mothers who have lost children to police shootings and gun violence. “One speaker after another demonstrated just how expertly the Clinton operation has honed its messaging on both guns and police brutality—and they did so without sacrificing potency or conviction,” Leon Neyfakh writes.

Over the past few days, through its inclusion of disabled speakers and many references to the rights of disabled people, the Democratic National Convention has advanced a subtle but powerful critique of Donald Trump’s mocking attitude toward physical disability, Ruth Graham writes. “Among the convention’s many grand themes so far—criminal justice, the economy, the folksy charisma of Bill Clinton—these occasional grace notes will hardly stand out,” Graham observes. “In any other year but this one, they would hardly be worth remarking on. But this is not just any year.”

With Trump at its head, the GOP is not the party of national security, Isaac Chotiner writes. It can’t be. “Imagine for a moment that the Democratic Party’s nominee announced that health care is not an issue that should concern the government and that people should be on their own—regardless of their needs—to pay their health bills,” Chotiner writes, in the wake of Trump’s Wednesday invitation for Russia to hack Hillary Clinton’s State Department emails. “It’s the nearest equivalent I can think of to what Trump has just done by spitting on an idea so foundationally important to the Republican Party.”

Jill Stein, Green Party candidate for president, is the choice of some Bernie voters who refuse to vote Hillary. But she’s the worst, Jordan Weissmann writes. “She’s an absolutely awful torchbearer for the far left,” Weissmann argues. “She’s a Harvard-trained physician who panders to pseudoscience. She mangles pet policy issues. And her cynical retelling of the past eight years has nothing to do with the reality of recorded history.”

For fun: Gilmore Girls revival trailer!

Perfect Thanksgiving treat,

Rebecca