The Clinton women court PA females
Posted: Thursday, April 17, 2008 4:30 PM by Mark Murray
From NBC/NJ's Athena Jones
HAVERFORD, PA -- For the first time since early in the primary season -- an eternity ago for the candidates and the reporters following them -- Hillary Clinton campaigned with both her mother and daughter today.
Chelsea and Dorothy Rodham accompanied the former first lady on campaign swings in Iowa and New Hampshire late in those campaigns in an effort soften and humanize the candidate's image and to appeal to women voters. Both Chelsea and Bill Clinton have been campaigning extensively for the New York senator across this must-win primary state, and it was Chelsea who introduced her mother today.
"My mother and my grandmother have been my role models my whole life, and I can only hope to be as good a mother to my children as my mother's always been to me," the youngest Clinton said.
"I'm just so proud to be here with my mom and my grandmother. It's also a really nice treat, because I spend a lot of time traveling and talking about my mom but not as much time getting to actually see her and sit next to her," she continued, eliciting "awwws" from the overwhelmingly female crowd. Rodham sat on the stage opposite Chelsea, but did not speak.
The event appeared to be aimed at shoring up Clinton's support among women, a vital segment for her. It was notable that it was held at Haverford College, nestled in a tony suburb outside Philadelphia -- the kind of key area that helps determine the outcome in state primaries. Rival Barack Obama has consistently done better among upscale, college-educated voters, but recent polls show he trails Clinton in the state overall with just five days to go before this contest.
"Some of the issues that I've worked on for a very long time are ones that I'm going to pursue as president, because I think that it's time in the 21st century that we really did do more to support families, including the most important work there is, which is caring for one another," Clinton told the group of students, teachers, and members of the community. She made a special point of greeting a group of women from Bryn Mawr, a women's college that is one of the Seven Sisters colleges like her alma mater, Wellesley. The women cheered at the attention.
Clinton said she was proud that first bill her husband signed was the Family and Medical Leave Act and talked about her goal of expanding it to cover more people. She discussed her breast cancer agenda (saying she would like to find a cure within the lifetimes of the young women present), touched on experimenting with paid leave, and said that progress had been made toward equal pay for women while adding that much more needed to be made.
"I have sponsored the Paycheck Fairness Act. We're hoping we can try and get a vote on it by next Tuesday. It'll toughen penalties in enforcing the provisions of the Equal Pay Act," she said. "If we can't get to equal pay in our workplace there's something seriously amiss and I hope that we can turn this into a big issue and get people to understand it's not a woman's issue, it is a fairness issue and it is a family issue."
(It was not clear whether such a vote could happen so soon or whether the senator would be present in the Senate to vote if it were to come up.)
After speaking for more than 20 minutes, Clinton took questions from the audience on how to help families hurt by Hurricane Katrina, immigration, education, and other issues. Throughout, she made jokes and elicited chuckles from the crowd, while repeatedly referring audience members to her website to find out more about her policy proposals.
A funny moment came when she was asked a question about what people who want to canvass for her should tell people when they go door to door?
"Just knock on the door and say 'You know, she's really nice'," the former first lady joked to laughter from the crowd. "Or you could say it another way 'She's not as bad as you think." She then went on to talk about this election being like an extended job interview and asked that canvassers have a serious conversation about her ability to lead.
