The weight of Hillary Clinton’s history-making campaign reduces some women to tears, according to a “question” from NPR White House reporter Tamara Keith on Monday. As though she were doing PR for the Democrat, Keith gushed, “Secretary, last night when you took stage in Sacramento, there was a woman standing next to me who was absolutely sobbing. And she said, you know, ‘It's time. It's past time.’”
She continued, “People here and people just come up to you and they get tears in their eyes.... Do you feel the weight of what this means for people?” Unsurprisingly, Clinton replied in the affirmative: “I do. I do. And you saw it yesterday. I've seen it for more than a year. My supporters are passionate. They are committed.”
The candidate announced that her supporters have the “belief that having a woman president will make a great statement, a historic statement about what kind of country we are.” ABC reporter Liz Kreutz, rather than find this question embarrassing for a so-called journalist, deemed it “great.”
Keith's question sounds very similar to the type of fawning interviews Brian Williams (among others) would conduct with Barack Obama:
“On the bus ride along the snowy road to Lebanon, New Hampshire, I showed him this week’s Newsweek, hot off the presses. [to Obama] How does this feel, of all the honors that have come your way, all the publicity?...Who does it make you think of? Is there, is there a loved one?”
— NBC’s Brian Williams on the January 7, 2008 Nightly News.Anchor Brian Williams: “Here in Berlin today, not far from where the wall once stood, the man from Chicago, Illinois, the first ever African-American running as presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party, brought throngs of people into the center of Berlin, streaming into this city, surging to get close to him, to hear his message....I heard one American reporter tonight say it's hard to come up with a list of others who could draw such a crowd, but then again it's hard to know what we witnessed here today.”
— NBC Nightly News, July 24, 2008.
A transcript of the question is below:
CNN Newsroom
6/6/16
2:37TAMARA KEITH: Secretary, last night when you took stage in Sacramento, there was a woman standing next to me who was absolutely sobbing. And she said, you know, 'It's time. It's past time.’ And you see the women — you see people here and people just come up to you and they get tears in their eyes.
HILLARY CLINTON: Right.
KEITH: Do you feel — do you feel the weight of what this means for people?
CLINTON: I do. I do. And you saw it yesterday. I've seen it for more than a year. My supporters are passionate. They are committed. They have voted for me in great numbers across our country for many reasons. But among those reasons is their belief that having a woman president will make a great statement, a historic statement about what kind of country we are, what we stand for. It's really emotional. And I am someone who has been very touched and really encouraged by this extraordinary conviction that people have.
It’s predominantly women and girls but not exclusively. Men bring their daughters to meet me and tell me they're supporting me because of their daughters and I think it makes a difference for a father or mother to look at their daughter just like they can look at their son and say you can be anything you want to be in this country, including president of the United States.
