Hillraising in Indiana
I am a minority on the University of Chicago campus. Not in the ways that the University characterizes me as one—Asian, bisexual, female—but as a Hillary Clinton supporter a stone’s throw from her opponent’s home. The walk to campus takes me about twenty minutes along 53rd Street, and no less than ten Obama signs invade my eyes during that time. This is deep Obama territory, and though Hillary is Chicago-bred, the former is much better received here.
As I don’t run into other Hillary supporters often, the consensus on the grim delegate count in the Democratic primary is mostly beyond my ken. However it feels as if Hillraisers have in turn adopted an attitude of “willful suspension of disbelief” (a Hillarism, albeit on a different topic) about the delegate count. Yet all the pundits have pronounced her as good as dead in this contest—that is, unless she adds Indiana to her trophy wall, next to Pennsylvania.
Which brings us to East Chicago, Indiana. Three days after her Pennsylvania win, the Clinton campaign arranged a rally for her in a gym in East Central High School. The e-vite says that doors open at five; I call the Hillary Indiana press line and they tell me Hillary will be arriving at seven. Waiting for Hillary to arrive fashionably late, the 3000-strong crowd of mostly middle-aged whites waved their signs (given to them by campaign workers a few minutes prior) and howled for her to come. HI-LA-RY! HI-LA-RY!
The crowd, in the meantime, was “treated” to an a cappella performance by a high school group in white T-shirts. A quintet of doo-woppers followed, and went on for what seemed about the better half of an hour. The crowd stood stonefaced by the end, barely yielding a golf clap. Campaign workers placed a podium onstage, then removed it, and local officials spoke and left. When the big H finally arrived—forty minutes late from a steelworker’s union talk in Gary—the crowd resumed waving their new Hillary signs, chanting. The easy-on-the-eyes Evan Bayh introduced Hillary along with some blather about bringing steel jobs back to Indiana, and about her health-care plan—everything that would titillate blue-collar whites in Northwest Indiana.
Hillary began speaking, but her speech in person was not much more exciting than viewing one on TV; to boot, this speech wasn’t addressed to my demographic. Instead, I noticed how tired she was, how hoarse she was after fifteen months of campaigning. It seemed that she had an impermeable mask through which she spoke the words that people wanted her to say—and I wondered what she’d say if offered a penny for her thoughts, rather than a political office.
