Hillary Clinton’s run for the American White House began in 1776, when Abigail Adams wrote to her husband: “remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than your ancestors.”
In their statement of independence, John Adams and his compatriots declared “all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights.”
But some “men” were more equal than others. Blacks were only three-fifths of a man, a precept accepted in print, if not in unanimous principle. Women were not allowed to vote until 1920.
Nearly two and-a-half centuries after the national declaration of equality.
More than a century and-a-half after a bloody war to abolish the enslavement of Americans of African descent.
In 2008, women finally have an opportunity to finish the job Mrs. Adams began as her husband made his way to Philadelphia to help create a new nation upon the globe.
“Remember, all men would be tyrants if they could. If particular care and attention is not paid to the ladies, we are determined to foment a rebellion, and will not hold ourselves bound by any laws in which we have no voice or representation.”
They are fomenting a rebellion, those women who have been kept “in their place” these many years. They understand being told, by societal acquiescence if not by statute, their job is to care for children so their husbands can go off to slay a beast for dinner.
Hillary Clinton has grown up through the ‘70s when women burned their bras and began taking hammers to glass ceilings.
When women decided they did not need men for any reason other than to make — not raise — babies.
When she cried in New Hampshire, thousands of New England women understood.
I had a friend in college whose husband was a dairy farmer. When she graduated and wanted to put her degree to use, he objected.
He had allowed her to go to college; now she should return to help on the farm.
Hillary Clinton knows about those women. Thirty-five years of campaigning have taught her how to touch them.
She won last week in Pennsylvania by touching the same women. Women wished they could do things, not necessarily instead of, but in addition to, raising children.
There is an acceptance in this nation, in spite of a vast reservoir of empirical evidence, that men of color could, if they wished, be as successful as any white man.
But women, including women of color, know in their bones that is not true for them. They have stood in the bars with their hard-working men and drank shots and beers. They did not necessarily approve, but they did it. They have cried because they have been denied opportunities given by right to their men.
They are proud of their husbands and sons, but now it is their turn, and Hillary is their standard bearer. For a large number of them, large enough number to keep her in the contest, and maybe enough to help her win it, nothing else matters.
If Hillary Clinton beats Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination, it will be because she knows how to touch those women, and he does not.
He never will. He is a man.
