Obama Gets on Topic with Women

At a fundraising Women's Breakfast at the Hilton Hotel Thursday morning in New York City, the main plot concerned how the Democratic Party was going to address issues that traditionally matter to women and how much cash voters would pony up in return to help elect Barack Obama. The subplot was how Hillary Clinton and Barack 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 nice picture: the former rivals chatting backstage, bonding over their shared experience. Politicians are just like us! They make small talk. They try to be friends.

Obama told Clinton she looked somewhat rested. Clinton said she was, somewhat, and she was even trying to exercise every day since liberated from the grueling primary schedule. "As I'm sure you've read," she told the audience, "Barack Obama would get up every morning and go faithfully to the gym. I would get up every morning and 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," Clinton said. Zing. Apparently, being friends does not mean that you can't also be just a little bit bitter.

Throughout her speech, Clinton re-iterated the message that women are working harder for less. Issues like wages, health care, and education 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 also the majority of those without health care; women worry more about whether their children are getting a good education, whether class sizes are small, whether a motivated young person has an opportunity 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 likely to be among those eating her breakfast on a white tablecloth at the Hilton ballroom. Instead, Clinton insisted the Democratic Party would pay attention to those women who served in the hotel, getting up at the crack of dawn to go to work and leaving their children at home or in childcare, hoping they would be safe. Fairness is an American value, Clinton insisted, and for a moment I saw the old Hillary, with her jaw set and mettle in her voice.

But for most of the speech, Clinton's tone was soft and her language pitched somewhere between Oprah and Lifetime TV. She acknowledge how hard it was to "turn on a dime." Adjusting to new circumstances, she said, was "a process." It was time to "start a new chapter." The ballroom grew very quiet. Clinton seemed to be revealing something of herself, and it triggered at least in me a response that was half empathy, half fascination for the spectacle of a warrior defeated.

However, one is not taken into Clinton's confidence for very long. In an instant, the personal turned political. "Everyone who voted for me has so much in common with those who voted for Barack Obama," she concluded. There. She had said it: Get over it and move on. I have.

The power that Clinton seems to still wield with her supporters was somewhat astonishing. When Obama's sister, Maya, introduced him, she cited (predictably) the strong women in his life: herself, his mother and grandmother, his wife. "And then there's...um...Senator Clinton." It was a funny but revealing turn of phrase: on the one hand, Clinton was part of the family; on the other hand, she was something beyond it, a mythical force that loomed large in the imaginations of the Obamas.

Indeed, when he took the stage Obama acknowledged that he needed Hillary Clinton, as well as...um...Bill (brother and sister have really mastered the art of the "um"). He also introduced himself as someone who campaigned with Hillary Rodham Clinton, but "didn't do it in heels."