June 07, 2007
Clinton's Club 44 Courts Women
If it wasn't crystal clear before, it became abundantly so during a campaign event last night: Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign team thinks the biggest hurdle standing between the New York senator and the Oval Office is Barack Obama.
Clinton's No. 1 rival for the Democratic presidential nomination was never mentioned by name, but the competition between the two was the underlying subtext of the otherwise women-focused event. With a major campus and youth outreach program led by former Rock The Vote director Hans Riemer and Young People for Obama events launching around the country that often star his wife Michelle, Obama has been making a play for the country's youngest eligible faction. Clinton, however, has intimated that she won’t be conceding any voting bloc.
Set in the pavilion on the corner of 11th and H Streets in downtown Washington, a handful of celebrities and female public figures were on hand to help Clinton kick off "Club 44" -- so-named because if elected, she would become the nation's 44th president. The hip and catchy-titled coalition calls on women between the ages of 18 and 29 to support her historic campaign to become the first woman to hold the presidency.
The event, which was attended by men and women of all ages with a slight edge toward younger women, wasn't tailored to young people in a conventional way, with the exception of a couple of performances by Kenneth "Babyface" Edmonds and Katharine McPhee. In fact, applause for the two performers was far inferior to the crowd's reaction to those with careers in public service.
Rather, it was billed as a history-making event and purposely featured trailblazing women like the first female vice presidential nominee, Geraldine Ferraro; the first female secretary of State, Madeleine Albright; and the first female Democrat elected to the Senate who was not succeeding a deceased spouse, Maryland’s Barbara Mikulski. A fired-up Mikulski boasted in her speech that "some poor guy didn’t have to die for me to get the job."
When Clinton came on, the cameras came out. After a fair amount of gushing about her and the international change she might be able to effect, the candidate entered to the lyrics, "Her face is a map of the world, is a map of the world" from KT Tunstall’s "Suddenly I See" -- one of the choices in her theme song poll. Due to the immigration bill debate still raging in the Senate, which she had to be whisked back to later in the evening, Clinton delivered a swift stump speech and returned to one of the two core themes of the night, telling all of the attendees under 30 that this election is most of all about them and their future.
Even more than age or gender, however, "experience" was the loud and clear message of the night -- and likely what the campaign wants its supporters to internalize for their own elevator pitch to acquaintances. (Remember, this was a crowd of her supporters, most of whom paid a modest a $20 to come out and see her, and the event's speakers vigorously urged members of the audience to spread the word. Clinton's camp estimated that a whopping 8,000 people turned out for the event.) Ferraro, Albright and tennis star Billie Jean King all heralded Clinton for experience and took some indirect jabs at Obama for the experience he lacks. Ferraro and Albright went so far as to say that on-the-job training hasn’t worked by pointing to the Bush administration, and they advised that the country doesn't need to witness that again.
It seems that the missive might be starting to stick. Upon departing the venue, University of the District of Columbia professor Tuere Marshall volunteered, "Well, that was a good rally." Before attending the rally, Marshall, 55, said she was torn between Clinton and Obama and made the visit to make up her mind. She decided that because of both the turmoil in the country right now and Clinton's familiarity with the White House, she is "what the country needs right now." Marshall added, though, that she would like to see a Clinton-Obama ticket come together next year.
Marshall said she had joked to her family before going, "I hope Obama doesn’t see me here," noting that the symbolism behind Obama’s candidacy means a lot to her as a black woman, as well as to her family and community. She said she will watch how Clinton speaks to the black community and other minorities throughout the campaign. But Marshall also indicated that Clinton "knows how to do it," because the campaign managed to get the Ebenezer Choir, a black gospel chorus from a church in Fort Washington, Md., to perform early in the rally. She also she said she intends to monitor negativity in the campaign, because she doesn’t like "dirty politics," and was consequently pleased by the lack of Republican bashing at the rally.
Photo: Clinton's Senate Web site
Posted at 6:43 AM
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Campaigns, Democrats, Hillary Rodham Clinton, WH 2008
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