What women want

Tina Brown hits the last leg of Hillary8217;s campaign trail and finds reason to applaud

Hillary Clinton8217;s run-up to the Texas and Ohio primaries was the political equivalent of Hell Week for a Navy SEAL. At least it felt that way for the reporters who8217;d been participating in this killing Democratic marathon since the Iowa caucuses8230; and now 8230; were covering what was being billed as Hillary8217;s last stand.

Here8217;s the good part about the meta-madness of living in the campaign bubble. Sitting on the press bus learning nothing makes you especially receptive8230; It allows you, finally, to see the candidate through the voters8217; eyes, and to realize how resolutely effective, how inspiringly pedestrian Hillary Clinton is8230;

Much has been written about how boomer women have rallied to Hillary8217;s cause she won an impressive 67 per cent of the white women voting in Ohio8230; 44 per cent of the total. It8217;s fashionable to write off this core element of her base as rabid paleo-feminists fighting the tired old gender wars of the past. But Hillary8217;s appeal to the boomer gals is wider and deeper than that. Cynthia Ruccia, a grass-roots political organizer in Columbus, told me that in these last beleaguered weeks, women started showing up in waves at Clinton headquarters 8212; women who told her they had never volunteered in a campaign before. 8220;There was just an outpouring about the way she was being treated by the media,8221; Ruccia said. 8220;It was something we hadn8217;t seen in a long time. We all felt, as women, we had made a lot of progress, and we saw this as an attack of misogyny that was trying to beat her down.8221;8230;

What saddens boomer women who love Hillary is that their twenty-something daughters don8217;t share their view of her heroic role. Instead they8217;ve been swept up by that new Barack magic. It8217;s not their fault, and not Hillary8217;s, either. The very scar tissue that older women see as proof of her determination just embarrasses their daughters, killing off for them all the insouciant elation that ought to come with girl-power in the White House.

She might have a chance of winning them over yet, if she set about dividing the Obama girls from the Obama boys8230; It8217;s worth a try 8212; because there is still romance to the idea of a woman in the White House, spattered and compromised though Hillary8217;s candidacy might be8230; For all the invisible women, it8217;s the only anthem they8217;ve got. And for their sake alone, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton should not give up the fight.

Excerpted from Tina Brown8217;s 8216;Hillary and the Invisible Women8217; in Newsweek