The Ladies Who Love Hillary

Moments before Hillary Clinton gave the first major speech of her presidential campaign on Saturday, Ruth Christianson, 28, said of the candidate, “Sometimes I just go sit and read her Wikipedia page.” Christianson, one of the 5,500 who came to hear Clinton speak at Franklin D. Roosevelt Four Freedoms Park on New York's Roosevelt Island, said she is inspired by Clinton's career, how she's "evolved as a candidate and a person."

Much has been made of the obvious fact that Hillary Clinton isn't the thrilling public speaker that Barack Obama was in 2008. But the symbolism of her candidacy is just as exciting for supporters as it was for Obama's. When Clinton gives a speech, listeners rarely reach that political version of suspension of disbelief that both Obama and Clinton's husband are known for: that what she is saying is what she's really feeling at that exact moment and that she’s speaking just to you and you alone. Her comic asides usually sound too practiced. But if she is not an expert at whipping up the crowd with the rhythm of her words, she is a master of the words themselves, particularly "women," which got huge woos every time. One of the biggest applause lines:"Well, I may not be the youngest candidate in this race. But I will be the youngest woman President in the history of the United States!" After the speech, I spotted multiple middle-aged ladies doing little dances as they walked toward the subway.

Mary Jane Sander, 81, said she came to Clinton’s announcement because she read an article in The New York Times this weekend about the difficult childhood of Clinton’s mother and how it led to Clinton's advocacy for children. “I wept when I read it,” Sander said. “The first time she ran, she didn’t want to be called ‘soft.’ This time she’s doing it right. I didn’t even realize it till I read that article.”

The beauty of giving her speech in New York is that beautiful New York people show up. One woman didn’t want to comment on the record because of her job (model). An attractive trio of spectators included two Dutch designers and the head of an outerwear startup called The Arrivals. I spoke to two Canadians, an Australian, and six people from China. Pierre Qian said Clinton was “really aggressive in her diplomacy towards China,” but he didn’t want to go into “details.” Mengyu Chen said she came to the speech because, “This kind of thing doesn’t happen in China, because she’s a woman and because she’s not so young.” Also: “We all watch House of Cards.” When I asked a Canadian why she came, she said rather defensively that the U.S. was Canada’s biggest trading partner so our politics affected her country, okay?

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/122032/ladies-who-love-hillary-clinton