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Hillary Clinton just finished speaking and clearly felt comfortable in the labor crowd, walking through the audience to the stage, shaking hands all the way. The speech was an amalgam of anti-Bush rhetoric and promises to unions on the minimum wage.

"People say to me, when you're president, with labor have a seat at the table?" she hollered. "Labor built the table."

There was a unifying collectivist theme underlying the speech, from mocking Bush's "Ownership Society" as the "You're on You're Own"--or YoYo society to calling healthcare a "fundamental right." In Clintonian fashion, she appropriated the language of the right by calling her healthcare plan the "health choices menu"--despite the fact that it denies individuals the choice not to have healthcare.

Toward the conclusion she ended the speech by knocking down the straw man : "If you hear someone say America can't elect a woman president..." Uh, actually, nobody is saying that. But it makes for good political theater, especially when coupled with an anecdote about 90-something women who approach her saying, "I was born before women could vote, and I'm going to live long enough to see a woman in the White House."

topics:
Hillary Clinton, Unions