The XX Factor: What women really think.

Of Women and Whitman

Meghan: I hadn't noticed that in his opening catalogue of binary-distinctions-beyond-which-we-must-move, Obama didn't mention that most primal of all binaries: men and women! That does seem like an extraordinary omission, one that I'd almost think was an accidentally skipped line (was he reading from a teleprompter there in Grant Park?) if it weren't for the ultra-precise and carefully calibrated delivery of the entire speech. Obviously Obama is, ideologically speaking, a feminist, but it's odd that rift in the electorate--which defined his primary campaign as much as any other factor--didn't spring more immediately to mind.

But how incredible that you got to be standing in Grant Park with all the other men and women, blacks and whites, gays and straights, etc., on that historic night. The frisson of awed patriotism you describe is exactly the mood evoked by this Whitman quote, from Leaves of Grass, sent to me the morning of election day by a friend who has a way of finding the perfect poem for every occasion:

 If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,
'Twould not be you, Niagara - nor you, ye limitless prairies - nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite - nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyserloops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon's white cones - nor Huron's belt of mighty lakes - nor Mississippi's stream:
This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, I'd name - the still small voice vibrating - America's choosing day...

Obama's Victory Speech: 100 Percent Hillary-Free

Did anyone else notice that Obama’s victory speech last night (which started out a little stiff and stump-speech-y, I thought, then soared to the firmament with that Ann Nixon Cooper kicker) never mentioned Hillary Clinton? Believe me, this isn't PUMA resentment speaking—he was by no means obligated to mention the woman who ran a fierce, interminable, and at times dirty campaign against him, and he may well have had good political reasons for not doing so. I just don’t understand what those reasons were. After all, it was a speech about getting past the old resentments and limitations, and as Obama pointed out, the 106-year-old Cooper was born disenfranchised for two reasons: She was black and a woman. After the rhetorical valentine he'd just sent out to McCain, who spent the past two months framing him as a shady, dangerously naive socialist, why not reach out to Hillary supporters with an acknowledgement of the politician who tempered his campaigning steel in the primaries? Was it just a matter of keeping any hint of old-school Clinton politics at bay?