Gloria Steinem: why the White House Needs Hillary Clinton
http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/19/gloria-steinem-hillary-clinton-white-house
I know Hillary Clinton mostly in the way we all do, as a public figure in good times and bad, one who became part of our lives and even our dreams. I once introduced her to a thousand women in a hotel ballroom. Standing behind her as she spoke, I could see the binder on the lectern with her speech carefully laid out – and also that she wasn’t reading from it. Instead, she was responding to people who had spoken before her, addressing activists and leaders she saw in the audience, and putting their work in a national and global context – all in such clear and graceful sentences that no one would have guessed she hadn’t written them in advance. It was an on-the-spot tour de force, perhaps the best I’ve ever heard.
But what clinched it for me was listening to her speak after a performance of Eve Ensler’s play Necessary Targets, based on interviews with women in one of the camps set up to treat women who had endured unspeakable suffering, humiliation, and torture in the ethnic wars within the former Yugoslavia. To speak to an audience that had just heard these heartbreaking horrors seemed impossible for anyone, and Hillary had the added burden of representing the Clinton administration, which had been criticised for slowness in stopping this genocide. Nonetheless, she rose in the silence, with no possibility of preparing, and began to speak quietly – about suffering, about the importance of serving as witnesses to suffering. Most crucial of all, she admitted this country’s slowness in intervening. By the time she sat down, she had brought the audience together and given us all a shared meeting place: the simple truth.
When she left the White House and decided to run for the US Senate from her new home in New York State – something no first lady, not even Eleanor Roosevelt, had dared to do – I was blindsided by the hostility toward her from some women. They called her cold, calculating, ambitious, and even “unfeminist” for using political experience gained as a wife. These were not the rightwing extremists who had accused the Clintons of everything from perpetrating real estate scams in Arkansas to murdering a White House aide with whom Hillary supposedly had an affair. On the contrary, they mostly agreed with her on the issues, yet some were so opposed to her that they came to be called Hillary Haters. It took me weeks of listening on the road to begin to understand why.
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Because it matters for my daughter who is as independent as her mother. 
We feel we've gotten the best of all worlds with Hillary Clinton as president. She's the most qualified, most understanding, most pragmatic, most connected (in Congress and beyond), most fearless, most experienced of the five running for the Democratic nomination. As her slogan reads, she's a Progressive, but a progressive who gets things done. Oh...and she's a woman. 
Now I understand why. These women are married to wealthy men who hold the checkbook and who see a strong woman like Hillary Clinton as a threat to their masculinity. Naturally, their dutifully loyal wives believe the same thing.
Then there's this woman who is a self-made mulit-millionaire, who owns a 10,000 sq/f home in South Pasadena and a beach house at one of California's most exclusive beaches (a client of my husband's), and she's all 100% pro-Hillary! This woman created something in her kitchen that she was able to market to Whole Foods and other grocery giants and made millions doing so. She's the most down-to-Earth, kind, compassionate, and independently wealthy woman my husband's met so far - and she loves and supports Hillary Clinton.
