Philadelphia: The United States found itself at a crossroads on Thursday night – a woman dressed in a white pantsuit and a man who might as well wear a black shirt have offered us irreconcilable images of, and prescriptions for, the country in their pitch for the Oval Office.

Hillary Clinton, the daughter of a woman who was born into poverty, neglect and abandonment on the same day that the US Congress gave women the right to vote, accepted the Democratic nomination by which she might be elected the first female president of the nation.

Victory in November would make her the first mother and grandmother to be commander-in-chief; and as the 45th president, she would tick another box for history buffs as the first spouse of a former president to become president.

"Standing here as my mother's daughter, and my daughter's mother, I'm so happy this day has come, because when any barrier falls in America, for anyone, it clears the way for everyone," she proclaimed.

Amidst the flags, balloons and tear-soaked faces of a hyper-energised convention crowd, the woman who says her mother taught her to stare down every bully got down to business from the get-go, dishing it out to her Republican rival, New York reality TV star Donald Trump, of whom she said: "A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons."

Putting aside Trump's problems and this candidate's much-acclaimed shattering of what has been a stubborn glass ceiling, Clinton faces a daunting challenge in the coming 100 days – after 25 years in public life, about 70 per cent of Americans don't trust her, and as many reckon their country is on the wrong track after eight years under the stewardship of the party nominating her for the White House.

The nearest she went to offering reasons for voter distrust – her vote for the Iraq war, the email controversy, multimillion-dollar fees for speeches to Wall Street that she won't release – fell short.

"The truth is, through all these years of public service, the 'service' part has always come easier to me than the 'public' part," Clinton said. "I get it that some people just don't know what to make of me."

But what followed was a segue to what makes Clinton different to Trump: "The family I'm from, well, no one had their name on big buildings. My family were builders of a different kind.

"I sweat the details of policy because it's not just a detail if it's your kid - if it's your family. It's a big deal. And it should be a big deal to your president."

To an extent the speech was Clinton's opening bid – in crafting it, she seems to have accepted that if the trust issue is to be resolved, it will be a whole-of-campaign negotiation; maybe a compromise in which what was perceived as a fundamental flaw might be reconfigured as a forgivable mistake or mistakes.

For now, she wanted to lay out her credentials and to set out what separates her from Trump – judgment, experience, temperament and priorities; a thick skin [not really true]; and proof of performance under pressure [she was in the Situation Room for the takedown of Osama Bin Laden].

In a gridlocked capital and a confused and, at times, frightened polity, she had to sell herself as an agent of change - for a system with which she has been connected as an intimate insider for decades.

And contrary to Trump's jagged black-and-white outlook, she was offering nuance and curved shades of grey, even levelling with working-class Democrats who might go with Trump: "We haven't done a good enough job showing that we get what you're going through, and that we're going to do something about it.

"We are clear-eyed about what our country is up against, but we are not afraid – we will rise to the challenge, just as we always have."

The philosophical, faith-based nugget in the speech derived from Clinton's Methodist background: "Do all the good you can, for all the people you can, in all the ways you can, as long as ever you can."

In the midst of a tumultuous campaign, in which the parties have filched much of each other's traditional policy turf and have become locked in one of the wildest and most unruly contests in US history, it's not possible to gauge how Clinton's performance will alter a dynamic which, at best, would be described as fraught – Trump is even more unpopular than Clinton, but in the week since the GOP conclave he's closed the gap in opinion polls to be ahead of Clinton by a hair's breadth.

Moving between feisty and calm, Clinton commanded the stage in a cavernous sports arena, beaming and laughing both at Trump and at some of her own lines and, at the same time, displaying a touch of humility that was absent from Trump's acceptance speech in Cleveland last week. She even prefaced one of her comments with: "If you give me a chance to be president."

Much of what Clinton said, and how she said it, resonated with a youthful Hillary Rodham, when 47 years earlier she landed on the cover of Life magazine – selected to give the commencement address at Wellesley College, she got into the civil unrest of the time, declaring: "Fear is always with us, but we just don't have time for it – not now."

There was a touch too of her controversial, mid-1990s declaration to a conference in Beijing that "women's rights are human rights, and human rights are women's rights". Declaring "a moment of reckoning" as opposed to Trump's moment of crisis, the 68-year-old Clinton urged voters to reject his divisive policies and volatile temperament, offering herself instead, as a steady, patriotic American who would protect and unite all to face down terrorism, economic difficulty and the pain and suffering of gun violence.

"Powerful forces are threatening to pull us apart, bonds of trust and respect are fraying," Clinton said. "And just as with our founders, there are no guarantees. It truly is up to us. We have to decide whether we all will work together so we all can rise together."

She laughed – and the audience laughed with her – when she ran through a catalogue of Trump's proposals, adding: "He spoke for 70-odd minutes - and I do mean odd.

"He's betting that the perils of today's world will blind us to its unlimited promise," she said. "He wants us to fear the future and fear each other. Well, a great Democratic president, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, came up with the perfect rebuke to Trump more than 80 years ago, during a much more perilous time: 'The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."'

At the end of a convention that consisted of skilfully produced, back-to-back testimonials on her courage and compassion, she asked for recognition that she was a doer and a survivor: "To drive real progress, you have to change both hearts and laws; you need both understanding and action."

Alluding without mention to marital betrayal and political failure, she added: "More than a few times, I've had to pick myself up and get back in the game."

The political professionals can see where this is going. As articulated by longtime Republican strategist Stuart Stevens, Clinton is wagering that voters are capable of holding contradictory thoughts and still being able to sleep at night.

He explains: "With her, you can have real doubts about her, but you can still trust her to be a president."

And sitting with their daughter in the stadium was the living proof – the 42nd president of the United States, Bill Clinton.