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AFP
Philadelphia
Hillary Clinton faces the test of a lifetime on Thursday as she accepts the Democratic White House nomination in a defining speech aimed at prizing voters away from Donald Trump - and convincing America to entrust her with the world's biggest job.
It is the centre-stage opportunity she came so close to seizing eight years ago during her first White House campaign, only to be defeated in her party's primary race by Barack Obama.
Clinton made history this week as the first female presidential nominee of a major US party. Now, she needs to deliver a home run in Philadelphia, a day after Obama upped the ante with a stirring address hailing Clinton as his political heir.
For days, the most powerful voices on the American left have lined up to convince voters that the former secretary of state and one-time first lady is uniquely qualified for the Oval Office.
But Clinton faces a major trust deficit among a US public that has followed every Clintonian turn of the past quarter century. Rocked by an email scandal that refuses to die, she is now about as unpopular with voters as Trump.
And while Trump casts himself as an outsider, a political neophyte committed to upending the Washington establishment, Clinton faces the difficult task of appearing as the steady hand at the tiller even while promising to be a catalyst for change in America.
Clinton, 68, enjoyed a stream of unrestrained praise Wednesday at the Democratic National Convention, from her running mate Tim Kaine to Vice President Joe Biden to the independent former mayor of New York Michael Bloomberg.
Her chief rival in a bruising primary battle, Senator Bernie Sanders, has urged his supporters to draw a line under protests by 'Bernie or bust' Democrats still angry over her victory.
But the most rousing Clinton sales pitch came from President Obama himself.
"I can say with confidence there has never been a man or a woman - not me, not Bill (Clinton), nobody - more qualified than Hillary Clinton to serve as president of the United States of America," Obama thundered before a cheering crowd.
Even Trump did his part, albeit inadvertently, with his urging of Russia to hack Clinton's emails landing like an unexpected gift in her lap.
The mogul sought to douse the outcry on Friday, by saying he was 'being sarcastic,' but the call for cyber espionage against the United States made even Republicans cringe.
"I think this issue has turned beyond politics and rhetoric," Clinton's campaign manager Robby Mook told CBS This Morning."This is now an issue of national security."
Clinton's backers unleashed a litany of criticism of Trump Wednesday, with Kaine blasting him as a 'slick-talking, empty-promising, self-promoting, one-man wrecking crew' and Obama calling him a demagogue.
