SusanCampriello: My Works

“I know that I desperately need her, and Bill Clinton, in this campaign,” the presumptive Democratic nominee said this morning at an event for New York Women for Obama. Sen. Obama pointed to a number of issues facing not just women, but husbands and children, such as limited paid sick and family leave and and unequal pay for men and women, saying finally that he and Sen. Clinton would change the country together.

After an ovation this morning lasting a full minute, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY) and Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) addressed guests of New York Women for Obama at a breakfast in Midtown.

Both senators assured the audience of roughly 2,300, most of whom were women, the next Democratic president will fight for abortion rights, diplomacy in foreign relations and a close in the gender-pay gap.

Although both senators thanked each other for their respective ground-breaking primary campaigns, which, they say, have strengthened the Democratic party, there was a marked inequity in the support for which they are giving each other now that the contest for the party nomination is drawing to a close.

Sen. Clinton started her address to the audience by encouraging those who supported her in the primary now to back Sen. Obama.

“Anyone who voted for Hillary Clinton has so much in common with those who voted for Barack Obama,” she said. “It is critical that we join forces.”

However, Sen. Clinton spoke more to the importance of a Democratic win in November than about Sen. Obama as the future president.

She charged that the current administration is responsible for an image of America that does not accurately reflect the ideals of the America she knows, regarding the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, climate change and supporting accessible health care.

“Will we ever start acting like Americans again?” she asked.

A Democratic White House would, she predicted, would prevent the appointment of conservative justices to the Supreme Court, and would allow Americans “to be proud again of who we are, not who George Bush and Dick Cheney say we are.”

Sen. Obama thanked Sen. Clinton for her services as a senator and a first lady, saying that going forward, her tireless work will help win the battle for universal health care, to transform the country’s energy policy and to make the economy better for working families.

“I know that I desperately need her, and Bill Clinton, in this campaign,” he said.

Unequal pay and unpaid family leave from a job does not only hurt women, as Sen. Clinton pointed out. Husbands, he said, feel pressure to earn more income if their wives lose pay for sick leave or family leave. Children, he said, may not receive adequate care or attention if their parents have to work long hours or funding for after school programs dries up.

Women, he said, are not only the backbone of American families, but also of the middle class.

“We won’t truly have an economy that puts the needs of the middle
class first until we ensure that when it comes to pay and benefits at work,
women are treated like the equal partners they are,” he said to cheers. “I don’t accept an America that makes women choose between their kids and their careers.”

Sen. Obama illustrated the ideological gap between himself and Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), telling the shocked audience that his presumptive opponent thought women simply require more education and training than their male counterparts in order for women to receive equal pay.

As president, Sen. Obama said that he would ensure gender equality in the workplace.

Sen. Obama also addressed the possibility of a more conservative Supreme Court, saying that Sen. McCain wishes to overturn Roe v. Wade, but that he will defend women’s reproductive rights.

Planned Parenthood endorsed Sen. Obama only a day earlier.

Sen. Obama said that together, he and Sen. Clinton will not only win the election in November, but transform the nation.