The XX Factor: What women really think.

"A Woman Is Like a Tea Bag"

... you never know how strong she is until she is in hot water." This quote from Eleanor Roosevelt is Hillary's latest feminist argument for her candidacy. As she continues to campaign and tries to turn being behind into a virtue, she keeps reminding voters of "women who didn't give up in difficult situations, who fought for equal rights, broke into male-dominated professions and succeeded when others told them to quit," according to AP. She reads letters from supporters urging her to hang in there, even as the delegate math closes in on her.  

What do you think of this latest deployment of feminism? For the moment, it seems fair enough to me. It is a sign of her toughness that she's still out there—and poised to win West Virginia tomorrow—and making the strong-woman link explicit can only help to rally the women who support her. But at some point in the next month, barring an unforeseen Obama implosion, Hilllary's perseverance is likely to go from sort of admirable to entirely delusional. Sure, make our day, show you can take the heat of losing. But if Hillary tries to hang up the Democratic nomination all summer, that won't be feminist. Just selfish. I feel reassured that she knows this, or at least knows that a lot of Democrats feel that way, since her advisers last week started promising that she'll only go until June. No tea bag is forever. Nor should it be.