The XX Factor: What women really think.

Can the Unity Clock Start Running Now, Please?

Hillary was on her game tonight. She looked good. She spoke well. She touched on the groups of voters she feels she owns and the problems of theirs she wants to solve. And, alas, she went from more conciliatory (congratulating Obama) to less (I won the popular vote, the 18 million people who voted for me). Fair enough that she doesn't want to drop out tonight. But couldn't she have done more to start laying the groundwork for unity? Marjorie and Kim have been expressing their doubts lately about how blacks and women can come together after the gibes and elbow-throwing of this campaign. The same question more generally applies to the two halves of the Democratic Party. I'd like to think voters can do some of this on their own, and that the divisions don't run as deep and aren't as full of acrimony as they've seemed lately. But the signals Hillary sends now matter enormously. And tonight, she' s still telling us that who the Democratic nominee is matters more than what he or she does—or, really, whether he or she wins. A friend of my mother's who is a Hillary supporter told an Obama fundraiser recently that she needs time to heal. That will be a lot easier if Hillary starts the clock running. Tenacity is a feminist trait, yes. But a strong woman should also know how to make a gracious exit.