Obama Gets on Topic with Women

Tag : Split Ginger

At a fundraising Women's Breakfast at the Hilton Hotel Thursdaymorning in New York City, the main plot concerned how theDemocratic Party was going to address issues that traditionallymatter to women and how much cash voters would pony up in return tohelp elect Barack Obama. The subplot was how Hillary Clinton andBarack Obama, who appeared together, were getting along.
"Barack and I were talking about the rigors of the campaign trail,"Clinton said a few minutes into her remarks. It painted a nicepicture: the former rivals chatting backstage, bonding over theirshared experience. Politicians are just like us! They make smalltalk. They try to be friends.
Obama told Clinton she looked somewhat rested. Clinton said shewas, somewhat, and she was even trying to exercise every day sinceliberated from the grueling primary schedule. "As I'm sure you'veread," she told the audience, "Barack Obama would get up everymorning and go faithfully to the gym. I would get up every morningand get my hair done."
The crowd in the Hilton ballroom, a majority of whom were women,laughed.
"It's one of those Ginger Rogers, Fred Astaire things," Clintonsaid. Zing. Apparently, being friends does not mean that you can'talso be just a little bit bitter.
Throughout her speech, Clinton re-iterated the message that womenare working harder for less. Issues like wages, health care, andeducation are important for all Americans, but for women, she said,the stakes are higher: women remain discriminated against at work;women comprise the majority of low-wage earners and therefore alsothe majority of those without health care; women worry more aboutwhether their children are getting a good education, whether classsizes are small, whether a motivated young person has anopportunity to go to college.
As has been true in her speeches throughout the primary season,Clinton's locus of attention was on the sort of person not likelyto be among those eating her breakfast on a white tablecloth at theHilton ballroom. Instead, Clinton insisted the Democratic Partywould pay attention to those women who served in the hotel, gettingup at the crack of dawn to go to work and leaving their children athome or in childcare, hoping they would be safe. Fairness is anAmerican value, Clinton insisted, and for a moment I saw the oldHillary, with her jaw set and mettle in her voice.
But for most of the speech, Clinton's tone was soft and herlanguage pitched somewhere between Oprah and Lifetime TV. Sheacknowledge how hard it was to "turn on a dime." Adjusting to newcircumstances, she said, was "a process." It was time to "start anew chapter." The ballroom grew very quiet. Clinton seemed to berevealing something of herself, and it triggered at least in me aresponse that was half empathy, half fascination for the spectacleof a warrior defeated.
However, one is not taken into Clinton's confidence for very long.In an instant, the personal turned political. "Everyone who votedfor me has so much in common with those who voted for BarackObama," she concluded. There. She had said it: Get over it and moveon. I have.
The power that Clinton seems to still wield with her supporters wassomewhat astonishing. When Obama's sister, Maya, introduced him,she cited (predictably) the strong women in his life: herself, hismother and grandmother, his wife. "And then there's...um...SenatorClinton." It was a funny but revealing turn of phrase: on the onehand, Clinton was part of the family; on the other hand, she wassomething beyond it, a mythical force that loomed large in theimaginations of the Obamas.