CINCINNATI: Hillary Clinton sought to wrest the spotlight from the Republican National Convention on Monday, by taking her own campaign to Ohio and telling civil rights activists that Donald Trump cannot become president.
Speaking at the NAACP convention in Cincinnati as the Republican jamboree opened a five-hour drive up the road, Clinton announced a nationwide drive to register millions of new voters to stop Trump.
The former secretary of state, who swept to victory in the Democratic primaries thanks to support from African Americans, painted her billionaire opponent as a threat to democracy, who lacks a policy platform and whose company refused to rent to blacks in the 1970s.
"Donald Trump plays coy with white supremacists. Donald Trump insults Mexican immigrants... Donald Trump demeans women. Donald Trump wants to ban an entire religion from entering our country and Donald Trump loves to talk to the press," she said.
Trump is to be anointed as Republican presidential nominee at the four-day convention in Cleveland by the party once led by Abraham Lincoln, the president who abolished slavery in the 19th century.
Clinton told the conference of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, which Trump declined to address, that the Republicans were becoming the party of Trump.
"It is a threat to our democracy and it all adds up to an undeniable conclusion... Donald Trump cannot become president," she said to huge applause and delegates leaping to their feet.
"That's why we've got to work together to get the vote out this fall," she said, announcing a nationwide drive to get three million people registered to vote in the November 8 general election.
It is customary for presidential candidates to address the NAACP convention but the presumptive Republican nominee snubbed an invitation to speak at the Cincinnati event.
The Trump campaign gave no reason, as the candidate's wife Melania prepared to take the stage at the Republican convention later Monday, just 250 miles (400 kilometers) away in the same state.
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