ed morrissey is senior editor at hotair.com, a columnist for the week and the fiscal times, and author of "going red: the two million voters who will elect the next president -- and how conservatives can win them." the views expressed are his own.









traditionally, the spouses of major-party nominees get a speaking slot at the national convention to humanize the candidate. former presidents speak to remind the faithful of their history. bill clinton falls into both categories, but he had a far more difficult task in closing out the second night of the democratic convention in philadelphia on tuesday night; he needed to find a way to knit the party back together again.









that's a tall order, and not just because the evening started with a walkout involving hundreds of bernie sanders delegates, according to one estimate . a generation has passed since the former president ascended to lead the democratic party as the first baby boomer major-party nominee, and then defeated the last of the world war ii presidents.









back then, bill used his enormous natural political talent to fuse the new left with working class democrats, while "triangulating" on the republican agenda to carve a centrist path in governance.









twenty-four years later, it's not bill clinton's democratic party. it might not be hillary clinton's democratic party. if it hadn't been for the establishment-protecting superdelegates and the democratic national convention's efforts to tip the primary scales in her favor, it would likely have been bernie sanders' democratic party -- and on tuesday in philadelphia, with hundreds of empty seats staring back at the stage, it certainly looked as though it was.









twenty-four years later, bill clinton isn't the same, youthful physical force, either. at times he seemed frail and at one point a bit distracted. however, clinton proved that his political instincts haven't dimmed much at all. rather than take on the task of unifying through direct debate, clinton delivered a masterful soft-sell by walking through a personal history of his wife that tried to answer the divides in the party.
will bill clinton's best effort be enough?
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