Hard Choices: A Team of Rivals

Reading the opening of this chapter brought to mind all of the heartache of the 2008 Democratic Primary for me.  I was (and remain) a staunch Clinton supporter.  It was devastating to me to see the way she was treated in the press, the nastiest comments, the way primary elections in my home state (at the time) of Michigan was set aside leading to a growing belief that Obama would win.  I don't think I have ever been so emotionally entangled in a campaign before and it hurt when she lost.  Hurt so much that I couldn't bring myself to vote for a Democrat for President for the first time in my life.

I think how hard it was for me to watch Hillary lose and I know how much harder it must have been for her.  Yet, just a few days later, she is meeting with Obama to work on putting him in the White House.

She describes giving her last primary campaign speech, her concession speech.  "If the speech was hard to write, it was even harder to deliver.  I felt I had let down so many millions of people, especially the women and girls who had invested their dreams in me." (pg. 6)

Hillary, I never felt let down by you.  I felt let down by the Democratic Party.  I felt let down by the media and the nation.   Again and again, the sexism that was thrown at you again and again was left unchecked by the people who claimed to be supporters of women's rights.  In fact, it was often thrown at you by those on the Left.  And that angered me.  I remember the sexist jokes about Geraldine Ferraro and it was disgusting that over twenty years later those same jokes and comments were recycled.   And Obama, his supporters, and the Democratic Party were silent... when they weren't making those comments themselves.

It was so hard to forgive for me and many others.   Not for Hillary.   She put the country before herself believing that having a Democrat in the White House was imperative.   She worked with the Obama team to support his candidacy and they developed enough of a working relationship that he wanted her for Secretary of State.

I didn't realize that Hillary had initially turned down the position of Secretary of State.  It makes sense.   She had worked her entre life to improve the circumstances of the American people through policy; the Senate was the best place she could do that if not in the White House.   Serving as Secretary of State was a very different form of service and I can't wait to learn more about it.

Trivia:  Hillary spent a few months in Alaska gutting fish and washing dishes after college.