U.S. presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said on Thursday
Americans faced challenges at home and abroad that demand steady leadership and
a collective spirit, and attacked Republican Donald Trump for sowing fear and
divisiveness.

In the biggest speech of her more than 25-year-old career in the
public eye, Clinton accepted the Democratic presidential nomination for the
Nov. 8 election with a promise to make the United States a country that worked
for everyone.

“We are clear-eyed about what our country is up against.
But we are not afraid,” she said.

She presented a sharply more upbeat view of the country than the
dark vision Trump offered at last week’s Republican convention, and even turned
one of Republican hero Ronald Reagan’s signature phrases against the real
estate developer.

“He’s taken the Republican Party a long way, from ‘Morning
in America’ to ‘Midnight in America,'” Clinton said. “He wants to
divide us – from the rest of the world, and from each other. He’s betting that
the perils of today’s world will blind us to its unlimited promise.”

Clinton also addressed her disapproval rating.

“I get it that some people just don’t know what to make of
me. So let me tell you. The family I’m from, well no one had their name on big
buildings,” Clinton said in a reference to Trump. She said her family were
builders of a better life and a better future for their children, using
whatever tools they had and “whatever God gave them.”

Clinton said it would be her “primary mission” to
create more opportunities and more good jobs with rising wages, and to confront
stark choices in battling determined enemies and “threats and
turbulence” around the world and at home.

“America is once again at a moment of reckoning. Powerful
forces are threatening to pull us apart. Bonds of trust and respect are
fraying,” said Clinton, a former secretary of state. “No wonder
people are anxious and looking for reassurance – looking for steady leadership.”

Clinton, who is vying to be the first woman elected U.S.
president, called her nomination “a milestone” and said she was happy
for grandmothers and little girls and “everyone in between.”

“When any barrier falls in America, it clears the way for
everyone,” the 68-year-old Clinton said in a speech that capped the
four-day nominating convention.

Trump is running just ahead of Clinton in a RealClearPolitics
average of recent national opinion polls. They both garner high
“unpopularity” ratings.

At a rally in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Trump said he was being
criticized at the Democratic convention by people who had been friendly to him
before.

“I think we’ll stay here all night because I don’t really
want to go home and watch that crap,” he said.

Inside the arena, it sounded at times more like a traditional
Republican convention than a Democratic one. During retired General John
Allen’s remarks, chants of “USA!” filled the hall and large flags were brought
in to be waved. Speakers, some of whom included military and police officers,
made frequent mentions of religion and patriotism.

“I certainly know that with her as our commander-in-chief,
our foreign relations will not be reduced to a business transaction, I also
know that our armed forces will not become an instrument of torture,” said
Allen.

Trump has portrayed the country as being under siege from
illegal immigrants, crime and terrorism and as losing influence in the world.
He has proposed a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country and a wall
along the border with Mexico to keep illegal immigrants out.

Khizr Kahn, a Muslim whose son was one of 14 Muslims killed
while serving in the military since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, drew cheers
when he pulled out a pocket copy of the U.S. Constitution and said he wanted to
show it to Trump.

“Hillary Clinton was right when she called my son the best
of America. If it was up to Donald Trump he never would have been in America.
Donald Trump consistently smears the character of Muslims,” he said.