Thursday, November 3, 2016

I'm with her


Yes, my feet are tired - I was standing on them from around 3 p.m., half an hour before the ASU athletic field opened, with lines already snaking around several blocks.  And HRC was late flying into Phoenix, so it was a long evening ... 

She was inspiring.  Compared with her TV debate appearances, she was really fired up, passionate, gesturing, thoroughly into it with every cell of her body - whoever maintains she's not good with a large crowd (maybe 20,000 there, they were saying) is completely wrong.   She even managed to make very familiar stump speech lines sound as though she was saying them very freshly.  And the Arizona-specific parts were seamlessly interwoven (some good speechwriter at work, there) - inviting us to imagine the horror of Joe Arpaio as Trump's head of Homeland Security, for example; giving a large shout out to the Navajo Nation and the Gila Valley Indians - Pimas, that is - and above all, to Latinos.  AND - I've never before heard a politician give a check-in to university faculty before!  And to LGBTQ people.  And to the importance of not denying climate change, and sustainable energy (I wish we'd heard much more from her about this in the campaign, but better late than never).   She didn't disguise her loathing for Trump, his dishonesty, his complete unsuitability as a role model, his lack of tax paying, his failure to make money even from running casinos, his treatment of women.  Indeed, one of the things that struck me most strongly about the whole crowd, women (some of them self proclaimed nasty women) and men (some of them bad hombres) was the huge enthusiasm for Hillary as a woman - a sense that this was a fully embraced feminist moment.

Gosh - whoever thought that coming to a NAVSA conference would have this as a highlight?

And, as Hillary herself said - you don't want to wake up next Wednesday morning saying - oh, if only I'd done more.  But tonight - and I'm sure it was a long long day for her - she couldn't have given an ounce more.  It was terrific.

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