Conference call with Hillary
Yesterday afternoon I was extremely honored to participate in a conference call with Sen. Clinton and a bunch of other pro-Hillary bloggers, thanks to the good offices of Peter Daou, the Clinton campaign’s internet guru. The Senator was warm, gracious, and every bit as sharp and energetic as ever. (How does the woman do it?) Her voice was raw from talking all day, but that didn’t slow her down.
I’ve been away from the computer for most of the past 24 hours, so I’m just now sitting down to file my report, as it were, with you all. Let me just run quickly through the key points and highlights of the call:
1. First of all, Sen. Clinton sounded absolutely, 100% committed to staying in this race. I got no sense of her giving up. In fact, she spent several minutes thanking us, the blogging community, for continuing to make the case for her with the public.
2. Her new ad running in Oregon captures her current attitude about the situation: the pundits and Sen. Obama can say she’s out, but she’s still very much in — and still working hard to win votes.
3. She said, “Finally! We have acknowledgement that we are actually ahead in the popular vote!” And she feels that she’s on track to continue to perform very well on that count through the remaining contests.
4. She gave us a quick rundown of the argument she’s making to the super-delegates: it’s the map, not the math. Her strength is in the swing states, boding extremely well for the general election. Obama’s pattern of support, in contrast, makes him a weak bet in the general. (See Bringiton for a masterful presentation of this argument.) The supers need to exercise their judgment to pick the strongest candidate — and that’s Hillary.
5. She’s absolutely committed to getting Florida and Michigan seated, and commented on the irony of the Democratic Party disenfranchising its own members in those states.
6. The May 31 DNC rules committee meeting is very important, and the more press and public attention we can develop around that, the better. (I’m scrambling around for links to the various demonstrations being planned — I think there will be delegations from Florida and Michigan as well as women’s groups.)
7. She said how much she regretted all the vitriol and hostility and sexism that’s been thrown at her supporters. She herself is impervious to it by now, but it distresses her that so many of her supporters have been subjected to this. And she took time again to thank all of us for standing up for her and being courageous.
This just in! I was about to finish up this post when I saw that Taylor Marsh recorded the whole conference call, so you can listen for yourselves. Cool! By all means, give it a listen. You’ll see what a bundle of inspiration Hillary is — smart, knowledgeable, energetic, down-to-earth, warm — and how frankly thrilled all us bloggers were to talk to her. Huge kudos to Peter Daou for organizing the call and to the Senator herself for reaching out to us.
More anon.
6 Responses to “Conference call with Hillary”
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octogalore says:
That is great news, and thanks for passing it along. I’m heading over to TM for a listen.
OK — need to get something off my chest. I just came from here and I’m in shock. How is it that in one of the few Big Feminist Blog takedowns of sexism in the 08 campaign, it devolves into the author apologizing for calling Obama informally by a nickname, and a host of women apalled over… not the sexism as much, but the nickname? WTF?
May 18th, 2008 at 1:20 am EST -
sister of ye says:
Listening to that call almost made me wish I weren’t too lazy to be a blogger. What a great opportunity.
As a Michigan voter, I greatly appreciate that Clinton is fighting for our representation. The constant reiteration of *gasp* “You can’t change the Rulz!” is massively annoying.
Well, 150 years ago slavery was “the rulz,” and 100 years ago no votes for women were “the rulz” and 50 years ago Jim Crow was “the rulz.” There are rules, and there is justice, and my ideals as a Democrat and American has been to work to bring the former in line with the latter.
Just as annoying is the argument, “Well, I don’t like the disenfranchisement, but I dont’ blame Obama for using it for his benefit.” I wonder if those supporters also consider the poll tax a slick electoral strategy that you can’t blame southern politicians were smart to use to their advantage.
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zuzu says:
Octogalore — there’s a reason I left Feministe.
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octogalore says:
Zuzu — I had a feeling. And, apologies for not noting above that your current blog excel in takedowns of 08 campaign sexism.
A guy I used to date confided in me once that a favored technique of his, when in the wrong, was to try to turn things around so that the woman wound up apologizing. I laughed and told him I was shocked that this ever worked. Well, maybe not so much…
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Sis says:
{Octagalore, turning things around and making it clear that people were expected to apologize to you was your whole schtick on IBTP}
Thanks for the link to the conference call Vi. I’ve sent it around on some international list servs.
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octogalore says:
Sis — was that why the blog author recently gave me such a nice welcome? If you’ve got a characterization to inject, speak for yourself.
